Jenny Bornholdt in Central Otago 2018. Image by Grahame Sydney. Photo: Provided
There is too much poetry in the world
and yet
here you are
James Brown
“Short poems - in a way they can be like bullets,” says Jenny Bornholdt. “You read one and you’re left reeling around a bit. It’s like being struck by something.”
The author of many collections of poems herself Jenny has also been rather good at editing anthologies. Now she has turned to collecting a book of poems that all have one thing in common - they're short. Short Poems of New Zealand has been published by Victoria University Press, and the poems range from the well-known Denis Glover (“I dream not of Sussex downs…”) to fresher writers like Maria McMillan.
Jenny with partner Gregory OBrien - who illustrates this handsome wee book - are this year artists’ in residence at the Ernst Plischke designed home in Alexandra, Central Otago of late arts philanthropists Barbara and Russell Henderson. It has been a writers’ residency since 2007. It is here during this precious time the book was finished, Jenny tells us, and Gregory did the illustrations.
Jenny observes that even though we live in an age of shorter attention spans – with Twitter, status updates and text messages – writers aren’t necessarily writing shorter, in fact quite the opposite she reckons.
So how long is short? Jenny restricted her cull to poems of nine lines, feeling that ten lines is almost too easy for poets.
How short can you go? One word will do, says Jenny, though the shortest in her book ‘Anorexia’ is a slim five words. It’s the spaces around the words that are as important as the words themselves sometimes.
Photo: Provided
