Welcome to this site, where you can read a selection of poems by Janet Kenny.

Janet Kenny left New Zealand to pursue a career as an operatic and concert singer in London, then settled in Sydney, Australia, where she worked in the anti-nuclear movement and jointly compiled, wrote and edited a book about the nuclear industry, Beyond Chernobyl, published by Envirobook in 1993.

Her poems have been published in printed and online journals, including Avatar, The Chimaera, Folly, 14 by 14, Iambs & Trochees, The Literary Review, Mi Poesias, The Guardian, The Spectator, The New Formalist, The Barefoot Muse, The Raintown Review, The Shit Creek Review, Snakeskin, Lavender Review, Soundz ine, Victorian Violet Press, The Susquehanna Quarterly and Umbrella. Her work is in the collections The Book of Hope and Filled With Breath: 30 sonnets by 30 poets and in the Outer Space anthology, Cambridge University Press. She shared an anthology of bird poems, Passing Through, with Jerry H. Jenkins. She has received three Pushcart nominations.

Her latest book, Whistling in the Dark (2016, Kelsay Books) can be ordered from https://www.amazon.com/Whistling-Dark-Janet-Kenny/dp/1945752092. The selection of poems on this site includes six from the latest book — please see the links on the left.

Her previous book, This Way to the Exit (White Violet Press), can be ordered from http://www.amazon.com/This-Way-Exit-Janet-Kenny/dp/0615615937. The selection of poems on this site includes three from the book — please see the links on the left. 

Janet lived for many years in Sydney with her husband and visiting currawongs. She now lives in Hervey Bay, Queensland, with visiting butcher birds, spangled drongos, ospreys, pelicans, assorted honeyeaters and flying foxes.
Janet Kenny: image

 

A lost poem found:

On the Edge

The pier extended out to sea,
a wooden prayer to human skill.
Beneath it instability
reminded us that sea can kill.

A wash of light transformed the scene.
Horizon dazzled into one
immeasurable blue and green
all subjugated by the sun.

A child who wore a tutu danced
beside the water, shook her head
and told the waves to stop, advanced
to us then danced away instead.

No logic matters in a space
where elements become confused.
The heavy fishermen lent grace
to every implement they used.

Wood, weathered like the people there,
withstood the seasons and survived
well-toughened in the open air,
intractable and uncontrived.

The start of sea, the end of land
where limbic systems half recall
the time we crawled up on the sand
to claim the earth and take it all.

 E-mail Janet