Jennifer Maiden – December 17 2017

International Human Solidarity Day – December 20 2017

A day to celebrate our unity in diversity and encourage new initiatives for poverty eradication.

Jennifer has published 20 poetry collections as well as The Term and several Play With Knives novels. She holds a Bachelor of Arts from Macquarie University and in addition to writing, runs writers’ workshops with a variety of literary, community and educational organisations. Together with Margaret Cunningham, Jennifer has co-written a manual of questions to facilitate writing by torture and trauma victims. Her awards include three Kenneth Slessor Prizes for Poetry, two CJ Dennis Prizes for Poetry, the FAW Christopher Brennan Award for lifetime achievement in poetry, the overall Melbourne Age Book of the Year and the ALS Gold Medal. She has held residencies at the Australian National University, Western Sydney University, Springwood High School and the NSW Torture and Trauma Rehabilitation Service. Jennifer has been awarded several Fellowships by the Australia Council. Aside from writing, her artwork has appeared on several of her book covers, including The Winter Baby, Acoustic Shadow, The Trust, and some of her books published by Quemar Press.

The Fox Petition
Giramondo, 2015; ISBN 9781922146946
Jennifer Maiden’s new collection deals with xenophobia and the rejection of otherness, whether immigrant or domestic. It takes as its emblem the fox, representing our fear of the introduced and ill-reputed, but its title also refers to the petition of the great Whig statesman, Charles James Fox, for the rights of all people, including freedom of speech and habeas corpus. Fox himself is the subject of some of the poems, while others focus on the crisis in Greece, Hillary Clinton and Eleanor Roosevelt reflecting on poverty and human rights in Iowa, and the development of Julie Bishop in relation to the vulnerability and sensibility engendered by politics and crisis. There is a dialogue between Obama and Gandhi on the methods needed to ensure political results, Kevin Rudd tries to explain Manus Island to Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Keith Murdoch and his son Rupert discuss their attempts at idealism in the glass penthouse apartment of the latter.

Intimate Geography: Selected Poems 1991-2010
Bloodaxe Books, 2012; ISBN 9781852249267
Intimate Geography is a selection from Jennifer’s recent collections, Acoustic Shadow, Mines, Friendly Fire and Pirate Rain. “Always pointedly serious, her poems can also be flamboyant or risque, outrageously witty or daringly provocative. They blur, challenge and cross the boundaries between real and imagined, fact and fiction, inner lives and the world outside us. Politicians and world leaders appear as themselves …. But at the centre of all these satellite lives, mapping their intimate geography, is Jennifer Maiden herself: questioning, engaging, pouncing and processing to create defiantly humane poetry of impassioned moral witness.” – Sydney Morning Herald