Menzies, Rosemary

Rosemary Menzies

Contents

Aotearoa NZ Poetry Sound Archive (2004):

CD25

1. A White Flower
2. West Coast – New Zealand
3. There Is A Way
4. The Year’s Numbers
5. To My Child
6. Now You’re 16 You Must Choose A Career
7. At Auckland Zoo
8. For My Daughter Travelling Alone
9. How To Balance
10. After The First Winter
11. Sarajevo 1996
12. from Poem For Sarajevo
13. Toward A Common Tenderness
14. Poem For The End Of The Century

Bio / Bibliography:

Rosemary Menzies was born in Auckland, New Zealand. She graduated from Otago and Auckland Universities. She has specialized in English language teaching and Dance, lecturing in both at tertiary level. She is a teacher and a writer and has read her poetry in schools, universities, churches, prison, on radio and TV, at festivals and peace concerts. From 1982 to 1993 she co-ordinated a regular weekly/monthly platform for poets and musicians in Auckland. In 1995 she won the Auckland City Council cup for public speaking. In 1993/94 she attended Emerson College in England to further her studies in the philosophy of Rudolf Steiner. She has been an active member of the Peace Movement in New Zealand for many years. In 1994 she made two journeys into Bosnia during the war and returned to New Zealand to raise awareness and support for survivors in Bosnia and Croatia. She returned to Bosnia in 1995, 1996/97, and 1998/99 to live and work in a humanitarian capacity as an independent volunteer. She has given poetry readings in schools and cultural centres throughout Bosnia. Her three collections of poems for Bosnia have been translated into Bosnian/Croatian, published bilingually and distributed as gifts to schools and public libraries – and further afield by the National and University Library of BiH. She has been an invited guest poet at many literary events in Bosnia, Croatia, Macedonia and in Berlin. She is an honorary member of the Bosnian Cultural Society in Zagreb and of the Rotary Club of Downtown Auckland. She is married with 2 daughters. She enjoys oil painting.

Rosemary Menzies’ first two books of poems, More Than Words and I Asked the Moon, were self-published. In 1985 she produced and co-edited The Globe Tapes : 42 New Zealand Poets Read Their Work. Following publications are: To Where the Bare Earth Waits (Hudson/Cresset, 1988), Poems for Bosnia (Illyria Press, 1995), Pjesme za Bosnu (Durieux, Zagreb) (in two bilingual editions, 1995 and 1996), New Poems for Bosnia (Illyria Press, 1998), Nove Pjesme za Bosnu and Logor Omarska (both bilingual editions, published Sarajevo 1999). Rosemary’s poems have also been published in Outrigger; Echoes; Titirangi Poets; Poetry NZ; Watch Her Colours Fly: Poetry About Peace And Freedom; The NZ Peace Diary, Kiwi & Emu: An Anthology Of Contemporary Poetry By Australian And New Zealand Women; Printout, Dangerous Landscapes: An Anthology Of New Zealand Poetry, and in publications in India, Holland, Croatia, and Bosnia.

A Eurythmy Group in Hastings, New Zealand has choreographed and performed Rosemary’s poems in 1997, 1998, and 2002. The Dutch artist Irene van der Laag has created sculptures inspired by Poems for Bosnia. Ronald Dellow, an Auckland composer, has put 9 poems from New Poems for Bosnia to music for piano and voice (2001). Bryony Jagger has composed and performed music for oboe and piano for songs from New Poems for Bosnia (2001). Jonathon Besser has composed 5 movements for violin, cello and piano inspired by Poems for Bosnia. These have been recorded by Radio New Zealand (2002).