A first collection from a new New Zealand poet, Johanna Emeney, this is a fresh, contemporary poetry book for both 'literary' and 'non-literary' readers. Poems to listen to in the car, copy into diaries, stick on fridges and send to friends ... these are Volkswagen verses. It's a collection which deals predominantly with relationships - between family members, friends and partners. A CD of Jo reading her poems accompanies the book.
Johanna's work has appeared in the UK in The Guardian , and in Metro, North & South, Takahe and other New Zealand publications.
An English teacher, Jo Emeney currently lives on Auckland's North Shore after a number of years in the UK. She tutors workshops for both young and older people, including the Young Writers' Workshops on behalf of the Michael King Writers' Centre, Devonport.
Breaking News:
Johanna Emeney was one of six finalists for the 2011 Hippocrates Prize for Poetry and Medicine - one of the highest value poetry awards in the world for a single poem. She was runner-up in the Open Division for her poem, Radiologist's Report, and the first person to have two poems in the final selection. This year's Hippocrates Prize attracted some 1,500 entries from 23 countries. Watch Jo read for the Hippocrates symposium, Warwick University 5 May 2011
Mark Lawson in the Guardian, Saturnday 7 May 2011 Case histories: the poetry of medicine
From Keats to Michael Crichton there is a long tradition of doctor-writers. A Holby City fan and frequent literary awards panellist finds judging a prize for medical poems fascinating
The young New Zealand poet, Johanna Emeney, who had both a runner-up ("Radiologist's Report") and a commended entry ("Peripheral Neuropathy") in the general section, proves to be an excellent example of how medical poetry can arise from personal experience and the digital democratisation of information. The medical members of the panel were impressed by her easy use of clinical terminology ("lytic", "cyanotic") but this fluency results from being a relative or carer of the sick. "I'm a classic example of the Google-doctor generation," Emeney told me from Auckland, where she has just published her first collection. "When my mother was ill, I was determined to understand the words her doctors were using because it was suddenly so important to penetrate that language. I was buying £100 oncology textbooks. But it does open up a whole world of imagery and words." Her ward-round thesaurus then unwillingly expanded: "There's a rather long family history of illness." The poetic and hypochondriacal legs of the judging panel had sometimes needed medical help with the stethoscopic references, so had she considered footnotes for civilian readers? "I prefer not to. The editor of my collection did say she had never used a dictionary as often before." Between her own poems, Emeney is working on a PhD about medical poetry. The Hippocrates prizes, as they head into a fourth year, will ensure that her research will be, as it were, symptomatic of increasing interest in this fascinating body of work about the working of bodies.
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