Joanna Preston

Last updated

Joanna Preston
Born1972 (age 51–52)
Sydney, Australia
Occupation
  • Poet
  • editor
  • creative writing tutor
CitizenshipAustralian and New Zealand
Education University of Glamorgan (MPhil)
Notable works
  • The Summer King (2008)
  • Tumble (2021)
Notable awards Mary and Peter Biggs Award for Poetry (2022)
Website
joannapreston.com

Joanna Preston (born 1972) is an Australian poet, editor and creative writing tutor based in New Zealand. She has published two award-winning collections of poetry.

Contents

Life and career

Preston was born in Sydney in 1972, [1] and grew up in rural New South Wales. She moved to Christchurch, New Zealand, in 1994. In 2001 she won first place in an international haiku competition judged by Jim Kacian. [2] From 2003 to 2006 she lived in England, where she obtained a MPhil in creative writing from the University of Glamorgan. [3]

Her first collection of poems, The Summer King, was published in 2008. [4] It won the inaugural Kathleen Grattan Award for the best original collection of poetry by a New Zealand or Pacific resident or citizen, and the Mary Gilmore Award for the best first collection by an Australian poet. [5] [6] The poems in the collection were mainly produced during her studies at the University of Glamorgan, and its publication by Otago University Press was part of the Kathleen Grattan Award. [7] The Waikato Times described it as a "dazzling debut", with her poems "beautifully worked, insightful, emotionally gentle yet unsettling". [8]

She was the editor of takahē magazine from 2014 to 2016. [1] [5] Together with James Norcliffe, she was the editor of an anthology of earthquake poems written shortly after the 2010 Canterbury earthquake and subsequent earthquakes, titled Leaving the Red Zone and published in 2016. [9] [10] She has said that the experience of the Canterbury earthquakes led to her and her students writing many poems. [11] [12] She has also edited a number of anthologies for the New Zealand Poetry Society. [13]

Her second collection of poems, Tumble, won the Mary and Peter Biggs Award for Poetry at the 2022 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. [4] Judge Saradha Koirala said of Preston's work: "Simply written, yet dramatic and powerfully eloquent, each poem in this book is a banger." [4] Reviewer Chris Tse had predicted it would win the top prize in advance of the ceremony, describing it as "a wide-ranging collection that traces the paths we take in life, and reflects on the experiences and wisdom we gain from our travels". [14]

Selected works

Poetry collections

As editor

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Catherine Chidgey</span> New Zealand writer

Catherine Chidgey is a New Zealand novelist, short-story writer and university lecturer. She has published eight novels. Her honours include the inaugural Prize in Modern Letters; the Katherine Mansfield Fellowship to Menton, France; Best First Book at both the New Zealand Book Awards and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize ; the Acorn Foundation Fiction Prize at the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards on two occasions; and the Janet Frame Fiction Prize.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cilla McQueen</span> New Zealand poet (born 1949)

Priscilla Muriel McQueen is a New Zealand poet and three-time winner of the New Zealand Book Award for Poetry.

Ōrongohau | Best New Zealand Poems is an annual online anthology of poems chosen by guest editors. The anthology began in 2001 and is published by the International Institute of Modern Letters at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand. It is supported by a grant from Creative New Zealand.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tusiata Avia</span> New Zealand poet and childrens author

Donna Tusiata Avia is a New Zealand poet and children's author. She has been recognised for her work through receiving a 2020 Queen's Birthday Honour and in 2021 her collection The Savage Coloniser won the Mary and Peter Biggs Award for Poetry at the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. The Savage Coloniser and her previous work Wild Dogs Under My Skirt have been turned into live stage plays presented in a number of locations.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fiona Farrell</span> New Zealand writer (born 1947)

Fiona Farrell is a New Zealand poet, fiction and non-fiction writer and playwright.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David Eggleton</span> New Zealand poet and writer

David Eggleton is a New Zealand poet, critic and writer. Eggleton has been awarded the Ockham New Zealand Book Award for poetry and in 2019 was appointed New Zealand Poet Laureate, a title he held until 2022. Eggleton's work has appeared in a multitude of publications in New Zealand and he has released over 18 poetry books (1986–2001) with a variety of publishers, including Penguin.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sue Wootton</span> New Zealand poet

Sue Wootton is a New Zealand writer, specialising in poetry and short fiction.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Emma Neale</span> New Zealand novelist and poet

Emma Neale is a novelist and poet from New Zealand.

Kay McKenzie Cooke is a poet from New Zealand.

Rhian Gallagher is a poet from New Zealand.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">James Norcliffe</span> New Zealand writer

James Samuel Norcliffe is a New Zealand novelist, short story writer, poet, editor, teacher and educator. His work has been widely published and he has been the recipient of a number of writing residencies. Several of his books have been shortlisted for or won awards, including The Loblolly Boy which won the New Zealand Post Junior Fiction Award in 2010. He lives at Church Bay, Lyttelton Harbour, New Zealand.

The Kathleen Grattan Award is one of New Zealand's top poetry awards. It is named after Kathleen Grattan, an Auckland poet, who died in 1990. The award was first made in 2008.

John David Dickson was a New Zealand poet. A 1988 recipient of the Robert Burns Fellowship, he published three books of poetry and was the 2000 writer in residence at the University of Waikato.

John Newton is a New Zealand poet, novelist, literary critic and musician. His poetry appears in several major New Zealand anthologies, he has written books about literary history and art, and his first novel was published in October 2020. He was the 2020 Robert Burns Fellow at the University of Otago.

Alice Te Punga Somerville is a poet, scholar and irredentist. Dr Te Punga Somerville is the author of Once were Pacific: Māori connections to Oceania which provides the first critical analysis of the disconnections and connections between 'Māori' and 'Pacific'. Her research work delves into texts by Māori, Pacific and Indigenous peoples that tell Indigenous stories in order to go beyond the constraints of the limited stories told about them. In 2023 she won New Zealand's top award for poetry, the Mary and Peter Biggs Award for Poetry, for her collection Always Italicise: How to Write While Colonised.

Lynley Carol Edmeades is a New Zealand poet, academic and editor. She has published two poetry collections and held a number of writers' residencies. As of 2024 she is the editor of the New Zealand literary journal Landfall.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jeffrey Paparoa Holman</span> New Zealand poet and writer

Jeffrey Paparoa Holman is a New Zealand poet, writer, and retired academic. He has published ten poetry collections, a historical non-fiction book and two memoirs, and has received several writing awards and residencies. He returned to his university studies in adulthood, completing his PhD in 2007 and becoming an advocate for lifelong learning. Many of his works feature elements of te reo Māori and Māori culture, as well as focusing on his own history: growing up on the West Coast of New Zealand, labouring and working-class culture, and his relationship with his parents, particularly his father.

Kirsten Warner is a New Zealand novelist, poet and journalist. Her debut novel, The Sound of Breaking Glass (2018), won the Hubert Church Best First Book Award for Fiction at the 2019 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards.

Tayi Tibble is a New Zealand poet. Her poetry reflects Māori culture and her own family history. Her first collection of poetry, Poūkahangatus (2018), received the Jessie Mackay Prize for Poetry at the 2019 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. Both Poūkahangatus and her second collection, Rangikura (2021), have been published in the United States and the United Kingdom, and in 2023 she was the first Māori writer to have work published in The New Yorker.

Mary Morris Cresswell is a poet and science writer living on the Kāpiti Coast, New Zealand.

References

  1. 1 2 "Biography". A Dark Feathered Art: Joanna Preston. 10 March 2009. Retrieved 12 August 2022.
  2. ↑ "NZ poets scoop awards". Waikato Times . 16 April 2001. ProQuest   313636043 . Retrieved 13 August 2022.
  3. ↑ "The Summer King". Otago University Press. Retrieved 12 August 2022.
  4. 1 2 3 Gates, Charlie (16 May 2022). "Vikings, astronauts and Lucifer: the stories about life that proved a winner for Canterbury poet Joanna Preston". The Press . Retrieved 12 August 2022.
  5. 1 2 "Earthrise". Best New Zealand Poems. 2014. Retrieved 12 August 2022.
  6. ↑ "Canterbury writer Joanna Preston's eclectic collection". Radio New Zealand . 21 November 2021. Retrieved 12 August 2022.
  7. ↑ "Preston's a poet and now all of New Zealand knows it". The Press . 24 November 2008. Retrieved 13 August 2022.
  8. ↑ Dornauf, Peter (27 November 2009). "Dazzling debut full of thrills". Waikato Times . ProQuest   313398488 . Retrieved 13 August 2022.
  9. ↑ "Joanna Preston and James Norcliffe – Canterbury Poems". Radio New Zealand . 28 February 2016. Retrieved 12 August 2022.
  10. ↑ Matthews, Philip (30 March 2016). "Poetry from a broken city". Stuff . Retrieved 12 August 2022.
  11. ↑ Matthews, Philip (16 September 2011). "Bearing witness". The Press . ProQuest   894055761 . Retrieved 13 August 2022.
  12. ↑ Matthews, Philip (21 May 2011). ""The city I love, the city has fallen"". The Press . ProQuest   867967128 . Retrieved 13 August 2022.
  13. ↑ "Joanna Preston". New Zealand Poetry Society. Retrieved 12 August 2022.
  14. ↑ Woulfe, Catherine; Tse, Chris (2 March 2022). "Surprises ahoy: presenting the 2022 Ockham finalists". The Spinoff . Retrieved 12 August 2022.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.