Overview

Pioneering New Zealand poet Jan Kemp’s memoir of her first 25 years is a vivid and frank account of growing up in the 1950s, and of university life in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It tracks from an innocent Waikato childhood to the seedy flats of Auckland, where anarchic student life, drugs, sexual experimentation and a failing marriage could not keep her away from poetry. She became one of the few young women poets of her era to be allowed into the then male poet club. Weaving its own patterns and colours, Raiment shines a clear-eyed light on the heady, hedonistic hothouse of our literary community in the 1970s and reveals what it took, back then, to be an independent woman.

Full Product Details

9781991151148

Table of Contents

Reviews

For its perceptiveness, revelation, introspection, subtle prose and occasional poems, Jan Kemp’s Raiment is an accomplished, necessary read -- Siobhan Harvey A young life lived in thrall to love and language -- Steve Braunias It brings the reader right next door to you -- Morrin Rout An important testament to the history of New Zealand literature -- Cathie Dunsford

Author Information

Jan Kemp MNZM is a poet and short fiction writer who was born in Hamilton in 1949, and spent her childhood in Morrinsville and teenage years in Howick. She obtained a BA, trained as a teacher, then returned to the University of Auckland, graduating with an MA (Hons) in English in 1974. She spent three months in the South Pacific and left New Zealand again in 1976 to live and work abroad, including in Canada, Malaysia, Hong Kong and Singapore, before settling in 2008 in Germany. She has published many collections of poetry, established the Aotearoa New Zealand Poetry Sound Archive, and co-edited, with Jack Ross, a series of New Zealand poets in performance.

Tab Content 6

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

Countries Available