Jac Jenkins lives on a small beef farm in North Hokianga. As a writer, she prefers the focus and intensity of the short forms: poetry, flash fiction and flash non-fiction. She is the author of the poetry collection Moon Too Heavy (Pavlova Press, 2025) and has had her work published in many anthologies, such as Pav Deconstructed, the Fast Fibres Poetry series and several of the NZ Poetry Society annual collections. Her writing can also be found many places online including Flash Frontier; Turbine | Kapohau; Room Magazine; The American Journal of Poetry and Stasis. Her poem 'Uncoupling' won the takahē prize in 2013.
Jenkins comments: 'I'd never been to a poetry slam and didn't quite know what to expect. I was in Wellington for the university year, completing a poetry thesis that included a selection of poems about the weight women bear for not being a man. My partner and I paid the koha (loosely, donation) and found a seat. To me, a middle-aged woman living a quiet, mostly rural life, it was overwhelming. Loud, sassy, passionate, energetic, earnest, young, and urban. Everyone so keen to fix the world. Beautiful, but also raw, I-centred, vulnerable, and a little violent to my senses. Even the word slam, as the event's name, comes with violence attached. "Glottal Stop" arose out of that mix of feelings.'
Links
Moon Too Heavy at Pavlova Press
Photographer credit: Claire Gordon