2024 Programmes

Jan Kemp

Jan Kemp

Germany based Aotearoa NZ poet/memoirist/short fiction writerJan Kemp first wrote & performed her poems in the late 1960s/early 1970s and was the only woman inThe Young NZ Poets (Heinemann, 1973).An Auckland University English Honours graduate, she has a Teaching Diploma and TEFL certificate. She lived and worked at universities overseas including PNG, Hong Kong & Singapore before settling in Germany in 1994with a long sojourn in NZ from 1999-2007 when she founded theAoNZPoetry Sound Archive. In 2005 she was awarded an MNZM for services to literature. She has published nine poetry collections, and most recently a memoir Raiment (Massey Press, 2022) and its sequel To see a World (Tranzlit, 2023) as well as Spirals of Breath, 21 short stories & 2 novellas (Tranzlit, 2020). She sings in a choir in Kronberg in Taunus where she walks its parks and presently writes multi-media presentations including poems set to music performed by soloists, chamber choir and musicians.