Cooke, Kay McKenzie
IN BRIEF
Kay McKenzie Cooke is a poet and short story writer with an extensive background in the early childhood sector. She won the Jessie Mackay Best First Book Award for her poetry collection, Feeding the Dogs, at the2003 Montana New Zealand Book Awards. Her poetry has also appeared in a range of literary journals and magazines, as well as anthologies. Her second volume of poetry, Made for Weather, was published in 2007.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Cooke, Kay McKenzie (1953-) is a poet and short story writer. She was born in and raised in Southland, and is of Kati Mamoe, Ngati Kahungunu, Cockney and Northern Irish descent.
Cooke attended Dunedin Teacher’s College in the 1970s, and has continued to live and work in Dunedin. For the last 18 years, she has worked in the Early Childhood Sector. She is currently the lecturer in charge of the New Zealand National Nanny Certificate at Otago Polytechnic.
Cooke’s poetry has appeared in Takahe, the NZ Listener, Sport, JAAM, Southern Ocean Review, Trout, Glottis, and Poetry NZ. Her work has also been anthologised in the Poetry Society of NZ Anthologies, including a haiku published in the NZ Haiku Anthology (2ed.)
Cooke’s first book of poetry Feeding the Dogs was published in 2002. Best described as reflexive, the collection is autobiographical and in it Cooke writes about town, landscape, family and everyday life. Feeding the Dogs received the Jessie MacKay Best First Book Award for Poetry at the 2003 Montana New Zealand Book Awards.
When describing the collection, Cooke writes that it comes from ‘the sense of isolation that I felt living on a farm in Otama Valley, with tussock-covered hills and no shops and bus trips to school.’
Cooke has also had a story produced for the children’s television show Chatterbox.
Media links and clips
- Search for Kay McKenzie Cooke in the Trout online journal Author Index
