Thursday, March 22, 2012

Wellingtonian interview: Jenny Bornholdt

Jenny Bornholdt

story by JOSEPH ROMANOS - DomPost - 20/03/2012

FAIRFAX photo - Jenny Bornholdt: "For a start, saying I was a poet sounded too grand and a bit weird.''

Poet Jenny Bornholdt talks about her first job in journalism, living in France and why she travels everywhere with a notebook.

Were you a budding poet at school?
English was my best subject and I liked writing essays, but it never occurred to me to write poems.
I note you became a journalist.
When I left school, I worked as a proof-reader at The Evening Post for a few months, then in 1978 did the journalism course at Wellington Polytechnic.
Was that a good year?
I loved it. We were all much the same age and had a lot of fun. We did work experience on various newspapers and – very important to me – learned shorthand and typing.
What was your first newspaper job?
I worked for a year on the Waimate Daily Advertiser. I covered everything from sport to court, took all the photos, a great experience.
But in the end you didn't stay with journalism.
I felt I was always moving on to the next thing, that nothing really lasted. It didn't seem quite enough. Looking back, I might have gone into feature writing, and The Listener would have been perfect, but I didn't have the confidence to apply for a job there.
So what did you do?
I did Bill Manhire's writing class at Victoria University in 1984. I had written some poetry by then. In fact, you had to have a portfolio of work to submit with your application for the course and I wrote some poems for that. I loved the course. [Novelists] Elizabeth and Sara Knox were on it, and so was [playwright] Ken Duncum. Until then, I'd mostly read novels but I found that poetry was my thing. It was incredibly stimulating.
Can you teach someone to write poetry?
A person has to have a feel for it. But you can help them. You improve your poetry by reading and by slogging at it. The more you do, the better you get.
Did it take you a while to describe yourself as a poet?
For a start, saying I was a poet sounded too grand and a bit weird. But it became more feasible to be a poet and I became comfortable with it.

Full interview at Stuff.co.nz

Footnote:
  Bornholdt's latest books are The Hill of Wool (2011), and  The Rocky Shore (VUP October 2008) which won the Montana New Zealand Book Award for Poetry in 2009.

NZ Book Council entry.

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