Now You Shall Know Jennifer Compton’s New Collection

Wellington-born poet and playwright Jennifer Compton’s new collection Now You Shall Know “has an early late-career energy about it – and a focus on what is really important,” the Sydney Morning Herald’s Geoff Page says in a review of the book.

“The book also has a significant autobiographical dimension, making it almost a livre composé. Its six sections deal successively with important aspects of family life – from the burial of parents to reminiscences of childhood and education, family myths and ‘characters’ – and conclude with a somewhat whimsical section on gardening. The poems throughout have a strong emotional core with minimal decoration even though Compton’s language can be both playful and musical.

“She settled in [Australia in] 1972 and has often gone back [to New Zealand]. ‘The Narrative Arc of Christchurch’, her account of the aftermath of the earthquakes in that city in 2010-11 is both graphic and moving.

“As Compton makes clear, however, progress from that point was less than even. One of the most powerful poems in the book is called ‘Physics’. It’s a personal reminiscence (and indictment) of how the mindless misogyny of Compton’s New Zealand adolescence deterred generations of women from studying science. It’s a poem which, unfortunately, has not lost any of its relevance.”

Compton’s collection This City was published by Otago University Press in 2011 and won the Kathleen Grattan Award in New Zealand.

She lives in Melbourne.

Original article by Geoff Page, The Sydney Morning Herald, March 20, 2015.