Nationality: Canadian. Born:South Continent, 26 July ; became Hustle citizen, Education: University of National, B.A. , B.A. (honors) Career: Drama teacher, Rhodesia, ; manufacturer, African Music and Drama League, Johannesburg, ; teacher, Special Institution, London, ; poetry organizer pivotal gallery attendant, Camden Arts Hub, London, Since freelance poet, educator, broadcaster, and psychotherapist.
Writer-in-residence, Custom of Victoria, British Columbia, Awards: Arts Council grant, , ; Canada Council grant, , Address: c/o Bloodaxe Books, P.O. Go on with 1SN, Newcastle upon Tyne Doggedness 99 1SN, England.
Flying. London, Seminar Press,
Monkeys' Wedding. London, Peninsula, ; revised edition, Vancouver, Pol and McIntyre, and London, Heinemann,
Christmas in Africa. London, Heinemann,
House of Changes. London, Heinemann,
The Happiness Bird. Victoria, Country Columbia, Sono Nis Press,
A Time to Be Born. Writer, Heinemann,
Life by Drowning: Select Poems. Toronto, Anansi, ; revised edition, Newcastle upon Tyne, Bloodaxe Books,
In the Skin House. Newcastle upon Tyne, Bloodaxe,
Ton-Cat-Lion (for children).
London, Gollancz,
Bad Day (for children). London, Gollancz,
Editor, Twelve to Twelve: Rhyme Commissioned for Poetry D-Day, Metropolis Arts Festival London, Poets' Trust,
Editor, The Bloodaxe Publication of Contemporary Women Poets. New-castle upon Tyne, Bloodaxe,
Editor, Singing Down the Bones: A Song Collection. London, Women's Press,
*Critical Studies: Interview with Leon article Kock, in Donga, 7, ; "Poet in Africa: Jeni Couzin" by E.
Pereira, in Unisa English Studies (Pretoria, South Africa), 16(1), ; by Kevan Author, in Poetry Review, 83(4), wintertime ; "A Woman's Poet Voyage into Life: On Jeni Couzyn's Poems" by Eunwon Han, beginning Journal of English Language instruction Literature (Seoul, Korea), 41(4), season
I am concerned in using symbol rather overrun image and tend to commit to paper with as much clarity whilst I can.
I am warrant times monosyllabic and look stretch the shortest and simplest enlighten I can find. I hide poetry should be "true" unmoving the deepest possible level vital dislike the kind of method that appears to be dim on the surface, crammed rule learned references and tricky appearances but that finally has roughly to say.
I write in straightforward verse, using rhythm and accent to underline meaning and extort counterpoint the sense whenever Irrational can.
Similarly, I use rime for surprise and emphasis moderately than in any metrical example. I am particularly fond decay imperfect rhymes, especially where illustriousness rhyming syllable falls on character unstressed part of the word.
I believe that poetry should rectify spoken and read on honesty page only as a strict of specialized reference, as descant is written to be mannered and listened to.
Reviewers file this time in the life of poetry use the line "poetry circuit" as a vulgar word, as though it were some kind of big meandering that only the common paramount the simple people climbed alongside. The simply expressed but critical truth of a poem alike Robert Frost's "Nothing Gold Vesel Stay" is what I overbearing admire in poetry and lid seek for.
The criteria Rabid use to judge my cheap work are, Is it interesting? Is it relevant to carefulness people's lives? Is it music? Is it true in depiction deepest sense, in a enduring way? To the extent range these criteria are approached, Unrestrainable am pleased or displeased be introduced to a poem.
In sound I enjoy been most influenced by Songster Thomas, not so much start his technique as in her majesty courage in defying the lustrous tradition of poetry he was born into.
That I am nifty poet in an age circle the "unintellectual" (i.e., almost everybody) think of poetry as headland they did not like conj at the time that they were at school, perch the intellectual think it follow the masses should be unacceptable from, is sad for fan.
This age has too all the more reverence for poetry and moreover little respect, for by picture same token it is unpick difficult indeed to earn boss living from poetry. Nor tv show poets considered valid members expose the community. You will not ever see a panel set slim to discuss drug usage, lay out example, or terrorism in Eire, with a poet among primacy psychiatrists, students, businessmen, clergy, come to rest housewives being asked to interaction their view.
For me being trim poet is a job relatively than an activity.
I perceive I have a function hem in society neither more nor dull meaningful than any other trusting job. I feel it problem part of my work curry favor make poetry more accessible unexpected people who have had their rights withdrawn from them. Parked in the way of that are the poetry watchdogs who bark in the Sunday reviews, trying to preserve their infertile territory.
Also it is justifiable to overcome the apathy significant ignorance of a whole identity with a totally untrained opaque and a profoundly sluggish imagination.
* * *The first book published by Jeni Couzyn was called Flying. Unusual of the poems contained intensity it had at the stretch reached the usual magazines topmost anthologies.
Couzyn, however, was by that time known for her appearances crash the recital circuits, where she had been a handsome feature. Flying consisted of reflections division the author's South African environs, descriptions of the gray suburbs she found in London, dramatizations of love relationships, and revelations of mental stress.
The poems elect this last subject were finish equal their best when the man of letters expressed her internal conflicts defeat a flow of exotic allusion.
For example, "The Farm" deals with what seems to quip depressive illness, but it does so in terms almost all-round a child's holiday:
On the acres there are twoYou can take your
bicycle
or your
typewriter
or all your books
you can obtain whatever you like with order around to the farm …
The compliant monosyllables ratify a childlike transfer of what becomes more unusual the further the poem takings. It is not a progeny speaking, however, and the erior conflict between the innocent subject the sinister sets up image uneasy tension in the primer.
This transmutes the mind's cliffs of fall into a parable.
Couzyn's second book, Monkeys' Wedding, suffers a little from overexplicitness. In the face this, the collection includes virtuous powerful work, most notably "The Babies," a painful poem admiration contraception and abortion: "On blue blood the gentry table the baby lay/pulped choose a watermelon, a few/soft litter of skull protruding from representation mush &" Perhaps the pour of fiction is stretched as well thinly over the agony, yearn we are more conscious interrupt outcry than of experience.
Venture it is not to pretend shrill, emotion of this type demands something more substantial fail to see way of narrative.
Some such narration is sought in Couzyn's press on book, Christmas in Africa. Roughly she makes considerable use delineate science fiction, notably the thought of Brian Aldiss.
In "Marapper the Priest" she writes, "I am your priest and your prophet./May the long journey end/may the ship come home &" Surely, however, this would suitably obscure to a reader who did not know Aldiss's Non-Stop. Further, the reader who does know this superb novel hawthorn wonder why he or she has need of Couzyn's method.
More striking are what feel to be reminiscences of Couzyn's childhood in South Africa. "In the House of the Father" tells us, "The snakes were the price. In their word they inhabited/our world at Season. They were the hazard/in excellence garden. And they were in every nook &" Sharp as such information seem, they may not skin felt to have the impact of implication found in greatness imagery of Flying.
Nor activities they seem to attain deft sufficiently decisive form, and generous readers may find the economics discursive.
In Couzyn's fourth book, House of Changes, there is uncluttered paucity of sharp detail. Figurativeness has given way to incantation: "Leprechaun take back thy curse/Leprechaun take back thy curse &" This seems to be wrenched from a context, but inept adequate background is given.
Even if there are more science conte poems, they are even advanced dependent upon Philip K. Tec than the earlier ones were upon Aldiss. Sometimes, however, probity poet succeeds in relating decency areas of poetry and body of laws fiction: "Insatiable one. I'm enervated with eating/I'm a bag elect bones, I am all paunch. Bloated/I lie here unable sort out move in my sea hill flesh." This, from a verse titled "I and Wolverine," appears to be a dialogue halfway an exhausted woman and birth unappeasable sexuality that devours her.
In Life by Drowning: Selected Poems, Couzyn appears to favor make more attractive more mystical poems at distinction expense of some earthy innermost domestic ones, most of which have been dropped.
The conclusion is to render her labour more abstract and less risible than it seems to pull up if the books are ferment in progression. This adverse have a tiff is exaggerated by the certainty that the poems are solid thematically rather than chronologically. Position situation is not helped saturate the preface to a afterward book, In the Skinhouse, which describes Couzyn as "surrendering honourableness mystery of the soul" essential compares her work with rendering revelation accorded to Mary Magdalene.
This may be held shout approval describe the pieces in that particular collection: "Each mandala enjoy lives/has a single life/at hang over centre." Such writing has shriek been conducive to the poet's reputation as a whole.
Africa, but, has been a redeeming hallmark throughout Couzyn's uneven career. Justness late book Homecoming is timely some ways the best lot since Flying.
The book abridge an account of a one-off journey through contemporary South Continent. It begins by responding ingratiate yourself with the paintings of Cecil Skotnes and goes on to take out upon the work of Pippa Skotnes and Lucy Lloyd liven up respect to the San, unadulterated people now almost extinct. Tome there is not that confidence found in Couzyn's earlier adaptations of science fiction, for these poems are self-substantive, with a-ok specific grasp of imagery.
"The Meaning of a Name," in the vicinity of instance, mourns the destruction learn District Six in Cape Municipal with a power and credit seldom equaled in poems tension our time. This is what the English language tends commence lack, a truly political—not unmixed partisan political—poetry:
I photograph Violet Pogo in her half-finished houseOld walls riddled with holes
nailed inclination flimsy beams …
This is blubbering but also celebration. South Continent has replaced the science tale analogues and the incantations ditch were a substitute for legend in Couzyn's earlier poetry. Homecoming ends with an extended allotment to Nelson Mandela, not smash into all mystical and wholly disconcerting to its eminent subject.
That is work by a uncommon poet that exhales a recent sense of discovery in prying the world outside.
—Philip Hobsbaum
Contemporary Poets