Hall, Bernadette
IN BRIEF
Like a number of New Zealand women writers, poet and playwright Bernadette Hall did not begin to publish until her 40s, but quickly cemented her reputation as one of the country’s more distinctive poetic voices. She was the 1996 Burns Fellow at Otago University and in 2004 shared an Artists in Antarctica Fellowship with friend and collaborator, Dunedin artist Kathryn Madill. The author of more than five poetry collections, her work has been published in a range of national and international anthologies. Hall was the 2006 Victoria University Writer in Residence and in 2007 held the Rathcoola Residency in Donoughmore, Ireland.
FROM THE oxford companion TO new zealand literature
Hall, Bernadette (1945 –), poet and playwright, was born in Central Otago and has an MA in Classics from University of Otago. She was the 1996 Burns Fellow at Otago University.
Her first collection of poems, Heartwood (1989), was described by Ken Arvidson as ‘the work of a poet of very individual sensibility’. Three subsequent collections, Of Elephants etc (1990), The Persistent Levitator (1994) and Still Talking (1997), have cemented her reputation as one of the more distinctive poetic voices to have emerged since the late 1980s. Friendship, love (religious and secular) and the process of writing are recurrent preoccupations in her work, which is characterised by a crisp, often cryptic, lyricism, combined with a visionary intensity.
Author entry from The Oxford Companion to New Zealand Literature,
edited by Roger Robinson and Nelson Wattie (1998).
Additional Information
In 1992 Hall won the Aoraki Festival playwriting award with her play ‘Glad and the Angels’.
While continuing her professional life as a high school teacher, Hall went on to produce two more collections of poetry:
Settler Dreaming (VUP ) was published in 2001. In 2002 it was shortlisted, along with books by the Australian writers John Tranter and Les Murray, for the inaugural Tasmania Pacific Poetry Prize. Featuring design and artwork by Kathryn Madill, it was also shortlisted in the 2002 Spectrum Print Book Design Awards.
The Merino Princess: selected poems (VUP)with artwork and design by Kathryn Madill was published in 2004.
‘Hers are poems whose technical finesse resonates and performs. They are the work of a questing, generous, civilised mind, one that quite knows what its values are and says so in ways that are definingly unique.’ Vincent O’Sullivan
‘The Merino Princess… is triumphant evidence that Bernadette Hall has arrived on the local version of Mt Parnassus in style … Hall’s work succeeds by being ultimately tough-minded and wary … Hall sails up like the Flying Nun, a ‘persistent levitator’ buoyed by her own lightness of being and her linguistic felicity…’
David Eggleton, The Listener, February 19-25, 2005, vol. 3380.
At the end of 2004, inspired by a trip to Antarctica, Hall retired from high school teaching to focus her energies on her writing.
The Way of the Cross was published in 2005 to mark the Centenary of the Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament, Christchurch. It contains fourteen poems by Hall and photographs of the Stations of the Cross sculpted by Llew Summers which are installed in the Cathedral.
The Ponies (VUP), a collection of Antarctic poems, was published in 2007.
‘The Ponies is a subtle and sophisticated book…. Staring at the wide white page of Antarctica, Hall sees through the optical illusions of its swirling vapours to its magnetic core, the numinous ground where myth and meaning are generated.’
David Eggleton, The Dominion Post
The Ponies is concerned with the unsettlement of one’s view of things. In the Antarctic poems, Hall takes the voice of previous explorers to demonstrate that the ‘hazardous beauty’ exists more as an exploration of an inner world than a physical reality. It’s a quality of intimacy that the poems share with the rest of the collection … This collection is profound and beautiful, not least because (the poems) speak gratefully of the integrity and restorative possibilities of the poet’s craft.’
Isabel Haarhaus, New Zealand Herald
For 10 years Hall was the poetry editor of Takahe magazine. Subsequently for 5 years she was poetry editor for the Press. In 2002 she co-edited Big Sky, an anthology of Canterbury poems (Shoal Bay Press). In 2006 she edited Like Love Poems, (VUP) selected and mostly unpublished work by her friend, the Wanganu painter and poet, Joanna Margaret Paul.
‘We owe an immense debt of gratitude to Victoria University Press and, in particular, Bernadette Hall for bringing us this beautifully produced, fastidiously and intelligently edited collection.’ Hugh Roberts (The Listener, June 24, 2006)
She has received several major awards for her writing. She has been writer in residence at the University of Canterbury (1991), Burns Fellow at the University of Otago (1996) and held the writer’s fellowship at Victoria University (2006) where she was attached to the International Institute of Modern Letters. In 1997 she took part in the International Writers’ Programme in Iowa, and in 2004 she shared an Artist in Antarctica award with her friend and collaborator, the Dunedin artist, Kathryn Madill. In 2007 she held the Rathcoola Residency in Co. Cork, Ireland.
Hall’s work has been widely published in journals, magazines and newspapers, and in anthologies. These include Great Sporting Moments (ed. Damien Wilkins, VUP, 2005); Contemporary NZ Poets in Performance edited by Jack Ross and Jan Kemp (AUP 2007 includes a CD); Moonlight edited by Andrew Johnston (Godwit 2008); Swings + Roundabouts edited by Emma Neale (Godwit 2008). Twenty Contemporary New Zealand Poets edited by Andrew Johnston and Robyn Marsack ( VUP 2009). She has performed her work on radio and at festivals both here and overseas. In 2007 she took part in a WOW tour of the Bay of Plenty with Elizabeth Knox, Deborah Challinor and Vince Ford. A film treatment of her poem ‘snap’ made by Third Party Productions was played on Artsville, TV One in 2005.
Poems included in Best New Zealand Poems 2001, 2005, 2006, 2007.
2001 The Lay Sister
2005 The History of Europe
2006 The White Dress
2007 Under Erebus
2008 Leda at the Bilabong
Her essay on the art of Kathryn Madill is included in Look This Way: New Zealand writers on New Zealand artists edited by Sally Blundell, AUP, 2007.
In 2008 Hall became a founding staff member of the Hagley Writers’ Institute in Christchurch.
Media links and clips
- There is a bibliography about this author in the Auckland University Library's New Zealand Literature File.
- Read and listen to recordings of Bernadette Hall's poems on the New Zealand Electronic Poetry Centre's website
- Bernadette Hall is available for writer visits as part of the Book Councils Writers In Schools programme.
- Interview with Bernadette Hall on the NZETC website
- VUP author information about Bernadette Hall
- Information about Hall at the IIML
