Cold Hub Press ~ Jenny Powell

            

            Publication date November 14, 2017


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freepost per copy – national & international

price NZ$29.95

Marlene Dietrich in Gore

for the Gold Guitar Awards


Marlene is waiting in the street,

her breath in the night

a silhouette. She shivers and shrinks

into her coat, swansdown

scraping the gutter. It was never

meant for this.


Marlene is waiting under a street light,

guitar at her feet in its

well-travelled case.

They are scheduled to sing

after the break. He promised

to be early.


Even in gloves her fingers

grow numb, her fists

tighten. Soon she won’t

be able to play, the ripple of strings  

too slow, soon her honeyed voice

will ice over.


Marlene is waiting, even

through the last duets,

a blonde Venus always falling

in love with love. Inside, the judges

shake their heads

and cross her out.


© Jenny Powell 2107

I am the bird who appears in your dreams

I am the bird whose song you hear

I am the flash of feathered blaze

I am still a surprise to you


In South D Poet Lorikeet Jenny Powell, with her customary acuteness and lightness of touch, writes of girlhood, difference, displacement, losing one’s footing, peering into the looking glass. Permeated with colour, time, identity and love, these new poems deconstruct and reconstruct and curve in unexpected directions, with key words that repeat and bind like fine strands, and themes that twist and replicate like the patterns of DNA.


Jenny Powell is a Dunedin poet, performance poet and creative writing tutor. Her poetry has been published in a wide range of literary magazines. Her collections include Sweet Banana Wax Peppers (HeadworX, 1998), Hats (2000) and Ticket Home (Cold Hub Press, 2012) and Trouble (Cold Hub Press, 2014). As an artist interested in collaborative work, she has published Double Jointed (2003) with ten poets of her choice, and Locating the Madonna (2004) with poet Anna Jackson. Montecillo Child, her performance piece for voices, soundscape and images, debuted at Toitu Settlers Gallery, Dunedin, in 2015. Her collaborative multi-media work, Alive In Berlin, an exploration of displacement and uncertainty, was recently produced by Talking House as part of this year’s Dunedin fringe festival.


The Case of the Missing Body, (an NZ Book Council Book of the Month) Powell’s account of discovering purposeful physical movement, and the subsequent relationship between body and mind was published by Otago University Press in 2016.


Cover image: Kathryn Madill, ‘Big Alice’, 2017

South D Poet Lorikeet

Jenny Powell

ISBN: 978-0-473-41105-3

Softcover, 88 pp, 210 x 145mm