Bernadette Hall
Bernadette Hall was born in Central Otago and lives in a tiny beach settlement 45 km north of Christchurch, in the South Island of New Zealand. An award-winning poet and playwright who for many years taught Classics, Hall published her first collection, Heartwood, in 1989.
In 2004 she spent time in Antarctica on an Antarctic Arts Award. The resulting book, The Ponies (VUP, 2007), was a further collaboration with the Dunedin artist Kathryn Madill. In 2007 she was awarded the Rathcoola Fellowship, open to New Zealand painters and writers, and spent six months in Co. Cork. Her ninth collection of poems, The Lustre Jug, based on this Irish experience, was published by Victoria University Press in 2009 and was a runner-up in the 2010 New Zealand Post Book Awards.