Journal of Italian Translation - Brooklyn College - Academic Home ...

An award-winning poet and fiction writer, she started writing
in her twenties and her work appeared in several magazines
before being published in the three-poet collection AUP New Poets
1 (1999). In 1999 she was highly commended in the Landfall essay
competition, and her fiction was included in the anthology The
Picnic Virgin (1999). Family and domestic life soon became her
main interest and also the subject of her first “solo” book, The Long
Road to Teatime (2000). In 2001 she was named Waikato University
Writer in Residence and published the Pastoral Kitchen (2001) whose
themes in part were inspired by the pastoral locations from her
time in Hamilton. Later on in Catullus for Children (2003) and The
Gas Leak (Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2006) she returned
to themes of domestic life.
The following poems are from her latest book, Thicket, published
this year by Auckland University Press. Jackson’s fifth
collection of poetry has been described as “an accomplished book
from a poet of unease, who constantly turns her attention to the
brambled path, the track less-followed, the subterranean presences
in everyday life.”
In deceivingly simple, colloquial language Jackson subtly
captures the “unknown unknowns” of life as we often fail to see
it – an unexpected song or unheard voice; a smashed glass or a
glassy lake; a giddy potato or a rebellious ghostess; a paper trail
or a paper knife. This is the catalogue of Jackson’s imagination and
her poetry is constantly poised between the virtuosity of an aria
and an earth-bound recitative; between the thrill of a light-headed
vision and the realization of a curious mind.
The confessional voice and hybrid style of this poet are particularly
challenging for the translator – whoever travels through
the highway of Jackson’s poetry must expect hairpin bends.