Janet Frame (1924-2004) was one of New Zealand's foremost modern writers, best-known for her prizewinning novels and for the three-volume autobiography later adapted by Jane Campion into her film "An Angel at My Table". Janet Frame called poetry 'the highest form of literature because you can have no dead wood in a poem'. Its attraction is abundantly evident in her novels where her already 'poetic' prose - intensely lyrical, heavily metaphorical - is at times completely pared down to poetry. She published only one collection in her lifetime, "The Pocket Mirror" in 1967, but she never stopped writing poetry, allowing the manuscripts to accumulate in an old fibreglass bowl she'd originally used as a bath for her geese. Her second, posthumous collection "The Goose Bath" (2006) was compiled from this treasure trove, but not published outside New Zealand."Storms Will Tell" is a comprehensive selection of her beautiful and thought-provoking poems drawn from both those books. Her poems illustrate the shape of Janet Frame's life: her childhood and later years in mental hospitals blighted by mis-diagnosis of schizophrenia; her travels around the world, including her time in England; her life as a writer and return to New Zealand; and, growing older and facing illness and death. There are love poems, meditations on mortality, flashes of humour and startling imagery. And always she celebrates the power of the human imagination. Also in 2008: Virago publish "Towards Another Summer", a previously unpublished, short novel by Janet Frame (written in London in 1963), and a new edition of "An Angel at My Table".
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She has shown, so quietly, a mastery of the English language which dazzles one beyond ordinary praise. --Naomi Mitchison
There is a range of forms...There is even greater richness of content and image. Like the compass she writes of, Frame's is a sensibility which seeks to taste "every drop of distance". It would be hard to find a more fecund sense of the natural world in any recent writer. --Bill Manhire
Everything she presents is illuminated and thrown into sharp focus by the limpid clarity of a highly individual vision; she can be detached and passionate at the same time. --Fleur Adcock, TLS
There is a range of forms...There is even greater richness of content and image. Like the compass she writes of, Frame's is a sensibility which seeks to taste "every drop of distance". It would be hard to find a more fecund sense of the natural world in any recent writer. --Bill Manhire
Everything she presents is illuminated and thrown into sharp focus by the limpid clarity of a highly individual vision; she can be detached and passionate at the same time. --Fleur Adcock, TLS
About the Author
Janet Frame was born in Dunedin in 1924. As well as her poetry, she published eleven novels, five collections of stories, a children's book and a three-volume autobiography (adapted by Jane Campion into her film An Angel at My Table). Her posthumous second collection The Goose Bath was published in New Zealand in 2006. It won the prize for best book of poetry at the annual (Montana) New Zealand Book Awards in 2007. 2008 sees the publication of Storms Will Tell: Selected Poems from Bloodaxe, and from Virago, the first UK publication of Towards Another Summer, a previously unpublished short novel, written in London in 1963, and first published in New Zealand in 2007, as well as a new edition of An Angel at My Table.Janet Frame won numerous literary awards at home and abroad, was made a CBE in 1983 for services to literature, and received New Zealand's highest civil honour in 1990 when she was made a Member of the Order of New Zealand. In 2003 she was among the inaugural recipients of the Prime Minister's Award for Literary Achievement, was named an Arts Foundation of New Zealand Icon Artist, and was a contender for the Nobel Prize for Literature. She died in 2004.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
By The Rat
Format:Paperback
The avid Frame reader who, like me, has enjoyed Living in the Maniototo (Recipient of the prestigious Commonwealth Writers Prize) will know that Frame's poetry is dazzling. When a poem interrupts the flow of an author's prose in a novel, the reader can still rely on what came before and what is coming afterwards to understand the poem. But in a collection of poems, we are on our own and yes it can be a difficult experience (but reading Shakespeare is the same isn't it) but it can be rewarding and very moving too.
0 of 2 people found the following review helpful
By Samiam
Format:Paperback
Fans of Janet Frame are well aware of the abiding respect and admiration she held for poets and her assertion that her own poetry most often did not "work" for one reason or another. This posthumous collection of poems unfortunately affirms her own assessment. I suggest readers go to Janet Frame's fiction, which often includes snippets of poems, to get a sense of her real potential.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
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3.0 out of 5 stars
2 reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
on reading poetry
22 July 2011
By The Rat
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Paperback
The avid Frame reader who, like me, has enjoyed Living in the Maniototo (Recipient of the prestigious Commonwealth Writers Prize) will know that Frame's poetry is dazzling. When a poem interrupts the flow of an author's prose in a novel, the reader can still rely on what came before and what is coming afterwards to understand the poem. But in a collection of poems, we are on our own and yes it can be a difficult experience (but reading Shakespeare is the same isn't it) but it can be rewarding and very moving too.
1 of 6 people found the following review helpful
1.0 out of 5 stars
Major Novelist/Minor Poet
20 Oct 2009
By ExPat
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Paperback
This book compiles a selection of Frame's poetry, including the posthumously released "Goose Bath," which was awarded the 2007 poetry prize in her native New Zealand, resulting in some controversy among the local literary set.
Although a talented and original prose writer, Frame's poetry is generally uneven; fleetingly lyric at best and ploddingly pedestrian at wost. That is not to say that this volume is without its highlights, but the vast majority of these superiour poems (one still cannot call them great on the order of Frame's idol Rilke) are those from the previously published "Pocket Mirror." I recommend readers interested in checking out Frame's poetry purchase a used copy of this slim volume from the sixties before paying for this posthumous collection. Better yet, skip Frame's poems (the limitations of which she herself freely acknowledged) and read (or re-read) one of her novels.
Although a talented and original prose writer, Frame's poetry is generally uneven; fleetingly lyric at best and ploddingly pedestrian at wost. That is not to say that this volume is without its highlights, but the vast majority of these superiour poems (one still cannot call them great on the order of Frame's idol Rilke) are those from the previously published "Pocket Mirror." I recommend readers interested in checking out Frame's poetry purchase a used copy of this slim volume from the sixties before paying for this posthumous collection. Better yet, skip Frame's poems (the limitations of which she herself freely acknowledged) and read (or re-read) one of her novels.
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