Kennedy, Anne
IN BRIEF
Anne Kennedy is an inventive poet and fiction writer. She has also developed scripts and worked as an editor. In her first two collections of poetry, the poems appear in sequence, and focus on female protagonists. While her first book explores domesticity and motherhood, the second is focused on a family of giants, particularly a young woman giant. Her poems and short stories have been included in anthologies and journals, and she has received several key awards.
ProfilePlace of residence: Hawai'i |
FROM THE oxford companion TO new zealand literature
Kennedy, Anne (1959– ), is a writer of fiction and filmscripts, one of the most successful of the innovative younger postmodernists.
Born and educated in Wellington, she has been a piano teacher and music librarian and since 1986, a freelance scriptwriter and editor, co-writing with Peter Wells and others. Her short fiction has been chosen for most recent anthologies, but has not yet been collected. 100 Traditional Smiles (1988) is ‘a brief work of fiction in many small sections’.
Her novella, Musica Ficta (1993), plays ingeniously between music and language, between the medieval and the modern, and between [New York, Auckland and wartime Nottingham]*. It, too, is constructed of short, apparently discontinuous fragments, using multiple points of view, some in verse, some with the lyric intensity of haiku, often dependent on wordplay (‘During a London peasouper a woman disappeared into thin air’)*. Places, possessions and colours feature strongly as people try to make sense of memory and create connectedness.
Kennedy’s essay in The Source of the Song (ed. Mark Williams, 1995) comments on her Catholicism, including reference to Musica Ficta. The influence of film and television is evident throughout her work, as well as a rich weaving of musical elements and allusions, including in Musica Ficta parodic entries for the Oxford Companion to Music.
RR
* Please Note: The Oxford Companion is incorrect in stating that Musica Ficta plays between New York, Auckland and wartime Nottingham. This statement refers to 100 Traditional Smiles. In addition, the quote attributed to Musica Ficta ('During a London...') is correctly attributed to 100 Traditional Smiles.
Author entry from The Oxford Companion to New Zealand Literature,
edited by Roger Robinson and Nelson Wattie (1998).
Additional Information
Anne Kennedy won the Bank of New Zealand Katherine Mansfield Short Story Award in 1985. She was the University of Auckland Literary Fellow in 1995.
Kennedy has also published a novel, A Boy and His Uncle (Picador, 1998) and written the screenplay for the film Monkey's Mask, from the verse novel by Dorothy Porter.
Her first book of poetry, Sing-Song (Auckland University Press, 2003) is described as an extraordinary and unusual sequence of poems. Told from a mother's point of view, the poems deal with the domestic life of a family, in particular the gruelling experience of eczema from which the little girl suffers.
Sing-Song received the Montana Award for Poetry at the 2004 Montana New Zealand Book Awards.
The Time of the Giants is Kennedy's second sequence of poems and is much less tied to the poets own experience (Auckland University Press, 2005). Wonderfully inventive, moving and amusing; it focuses on a family of giants and in particular a young woman giant and her efforts to conceal from her lover (normal size) just how tall she really is. Characteristically, this fabulous tale also includes gentle satire on contemporary manners, witty language and a warm, affectionate tone. It was nominated in the 2006 shortlist for the Montana New Zealand Book Awards.
Media links and clips
- Anne Kennedy’s bibliography in the Auckland University Library's New Zealand Literature File
- The University of Hawai'i English department
- Scottish Poetry Library introduction to Anne Kennedy
- Anne Kennedy’s Turbine contribution
- Anne Kennedy on the New Zealand Electronic Poetry Centre
- Anne Kennedy in Best New Zealand Poems 2005
- Anne Kennedy’s collection Sing Song on the Auckland University Press site
- Anne Kennedy on the New Zealand Electronic Text Centre
