John Jenkins
Biography (current 2005)
John Jenkins was born in Melbourne in 1949, in the bayside suburb of Elwood, the youngest of two children. He was educated at Burwood Technical School and Box Hill High School and studied Business at the Swinburne Institute of Technology. Sometimes associated with the group of poets known as the ‘Generation of ’68’, Jenkins was one of the first poets to read at Melbourne’s famous La Mama theatre, and in the 1970s helped to write pop songs with various bands and musicians.
His parents were specialty tailors who had a small shop, and made ceremonial outfits such as mayoral robes, bridal wear and ecclesiastical gowns. The family moved to Box Hill, which was then on the semi-rural fringe of a rapidly expanding suburbia, where John played along the landscapes and leafy flood plains of Gardeners Creek, a tributary of the Yarra sometimes depicted in Heidelberg School paintings.
He worked for a publisher of children’s books/ library supplier and took part in readings and performances in Melbourne. John’s first book, Zone of the White Wolf, appeared in 1974, just before he moved to Sydney, where he lived on a small grant from the Australia Council.
Shortly after settling in his new city, a collection of short experimental fiction, which he had co-edited with Michael Dugan, appeared in 1975. It was John’s passport to meeting many of the Sydney literati, including Ken Bolton — who soon became a close friend.
This was a heady and tumultuous era in Australian literary and social history, well documented in Frank Moorhouse’s amusing record of the times, Days of Wine and Rage.
John’s second book of poems, Blind Spot, appeared in 1977; and he also began working as a journalist, first for a Sydney art journal and then a large commercial magazine company.
John’s moved frequently in Sydney, before travelling to Indonesia, then returned to Melbourne in 1979.
Back in his home town, John began working with the musician Kim Bessant, and the dancer Margaret Norwood, forming a trio which performed in venues and theatres around the city — including La Mama, Grant Street, Comedy Club, the Universal and others. This was a happy and productive time, and it was through a series of creative collaborations that John met the dancer Shan Shnookal, and the two have been together ever since.
They travelled together to London in 1981, where John worked as a research assistant for the BBC, in the Beeb’s regional radio division. Later, he travelled throughout Europe.
He also met many of the rising generation of new Australian composers, and wrote a libretto with composer Richard Vella, and several radio plays with his good and long-time friend the composer Rainer Linz.
John’s third book of poems, The Inland Sea, appeared in 1984; followed by several pamphlets and booklets of poems after 1986. He also co-edited a second collection of short fiction, published in 1984.
Meanwhile, John had been working widely as a journalist, for a variety of magazines and newspapers, and in radio.
He also travelled extensively, in SE Asia, China, Japan, India, Europe, the US and elsewhere, working on travel magazines and as a book editor.
John’s first non-fiction title, 22 Australian Composers, appeared in 1988; and his second, Arias: Recent Australian Music Theatre, in 1997. (See the website http://www.rainerlinz.net/NMA/upclose/ and the archive at http://www.rainerlinz.net/NMA/22CAC/TOC.html)
A decade earlier, while John was visiting his old friend Ken Bolton in Adelaide, the two poets began writing a series of mysterious and wonderful poems, ‘of unclassifiable genre’. These, and others that followed, found their way into Airborne Dogs, their first co-written book, published in 1988. Six more jointly authored books were to follow over a 14-year period, including their verse novel, The Ferrara Poems, which was made into a 40-minute film.
Their most recent book is the ‘wild but wise’ tour-de-crazy from PressPress, Nutters Without Fetters (2002). And more are to come.
In recent years, John has become a teacher of creative writing, while continuing to work as a poet, journalist and editor. Seven years ago, he moved to a 20-acre property in Kangaroo Ground, high on a ridge on the edge of the Yarra Valley, and with spectacular views to bush-clad Christmas Hills.
In these expansive surroundings, he is neighbour to ducks, parrots, wedgetail eagles and up to 100 kangaroos grazing outside his house. He has three horses (‘Rose of the Apocalypse’, ‘Inspector Kelly, retired’ and ‘The Gogomobile’). He takes some interest in equestrian sports, and more in local politics and conservation debates.
In this new setting, John continues to have a distinguished writing and editing career. His verse novel, A Break in the Weather (Modern Writing Press), was short-listed for the 2003 FAW Christina Stead Award for fiction, and John was winner of the 2003 National Shoalhaven Poetry Prize.
His most recent non-fiction title is Travelers’ Tales of Old Cuba (Ocean Press, 2002) and his latest collection of poetry, Dark River, from Five Islands Press (2003). He has recently returned from teaching at the Irish Writers’ Centre, Dublin, as 2004 winner of the James Joyce Foundation Suspended Sentence Award, and is presently (2005) working on a new manuscript of thematically-linked poems, and an unclassifiable non-fiction book about Australian shadows, rivers, landscapes and much besides.
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http://www.austlit.com/a/jenkins/bio.html