New Zealand-born poet Jan Kemp first performed and published in the late sixties and seventies and was the only woman poet in The Young NZ Poets (Heinemann, 1973). Her first collection was Against the Softness of Woman (Caveman Press, Dunedin, 1976). Up until now she has written ten books of poetry, the latest being Dancing Heart - New & Selected Poems 1968-2024, edited with an introduction by Jack Ross (Tranzlit, Kronberg im Taunus, Germany, 2025) and three prose works: Spirals of Breath, 21 short stories and two novellas (Tranzlit, 2020), Raiment (Massey University Press, Auckland, 2022) and To see a World (Tranzlit, 2023). She lives in Kronberg im Taunus, Germany where she sings in a choir, walks its parks, and sometimes writes & takes part in music/poetry performances, her most recent being in 2025 on William Blake's Songs of Innocence & Experience. Her poems and stories have been translated into Italian and German.
Links
Jan Kemp's Aotearoa New Zealand Poetry Sound Archive page
Photographer credit: Jean-Marc Junge