Jennifer Compton has won the prestigious Kathleen Grattan Award for Poetry for 2010 with a collection ‘The City’ written as writer in residence at Randell Cottage.
The Kathleen Grattan Award was judged this year by Randell Cottage trustee Vincent O’Sullivan who read the work ‘blind’ (the submissions were read unnamed). His choice from the many collections of work submitted was ‘This City’ by Jennifer Compton, a long resident in Australia who still writes as a New Zealander and was here for two stints recently, one as the 2008 Randell Cottage Writer in Residence in Wellington, New Zealand, and another as this year’s Visiting Literary Artist at Massey University in Palmerston North.

Vincent says Jennifer’s volume ‘sustains a questing, warmly sceptical mind’s engagement with wherever it is, whatever it takes in, and carries the constant drive to say it right’. The Randell Cottage trustees congratulate Jennifer on her win. Her new book of poetry – ‘Barefoot‘ – was published by Picaro Press this year. You will find two Barefoot poems Rongotai and Inheritance and two other Jen Compton poems on Tuesday Poet sites.