Poetry - Jennifer Harrison
Jennifer Harrison is a Melbourne writer and child psychiatrist who has specialised in developmental disorders such as austism. She runs the Alfred Hospital's Developmental Assessment Program for children and adolescents.
Jennifer is a long-term judge and supporter of the Arts Awards poetry category.
She has written four books of poetry and one collaborative collection, Mosiacs and Mirrors. Her first book, Michaelangelo's Prisoners, won the 1995 Anne Elder Award and was shortlisted for National Book Club of Australia. Her third individual collection, Dear B, was short-listed for the 1999 Age Book of the Year, the 2000 Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry (the NSW Premier's Prize) and the inaugural Judith Wright Poetry Prize.
Supported by a literary grant from the Australia Council, Folly & Grief, her fourth collection (inspired by the traditions of commedia dell arte and the street performers of metropolitan and rural Victoria) was published by Melbourne's Black Pepper Press in 2006.
Jennifer convened the reading series ‘Writers at the Water Rat' for the Fellowship of Australian Writers (Vic Inc.) between 2000 and 2001 and, in 2003, she co-edited Said the Rat!, an anthology of writing commemorating that series. Jennifer won the South Australian CJ Dennis Award in 2002, and in 2003 the NSW Women Writers in The Best Australian Poetry 2003, Best Australian Poems 2004, The Best Australian Poetry 2005, Best Australian Poems 2005.
Jennifer is interested in the interface between photography and poetry. Her photographs have been exhibited in the Reveries Gallery in Bendigo, Victoria and her poems in the National Gallery of Victoria. She has reviewed poetry for the Australian Book Review, Island and Blue Dog.
Poems from Jennifer's collection, Folly & Grief have appeared in the following literary magazines: Australian Book Review, Blast, Blue Dog, Cordite, Divan, Heat, Island, malleable jangle, papertiger, Perigee (USA), Poam, Quadrant, Salt-lick Quarterly, Softblow (Singapore), Southerly, Space, The Age, The Poet's Republic, The Weekend Australian, Thylazine.
