Bernadette Hall

Bernadette Hall (born 1945 in Alexandra, New Zealand) is a New Zealand writer and poet. She was raised in what she describes as a small-city Catholic community that was proud, theatrical and pretty much enclosed. After a career as a teacher of Latin and classical studies she started writing full-time in her forties. She has held residencies at both Canterbury University and Victoria University and is widely published. She spent 10 years as the editor of Takahe magazine and five as the poetry editor of The Press, Christchurch's main daily newspaper.

Hall's The Lustre Jug is a finalist in the 2010 New Zealand Post Book Awards.

Works

Plays

• Glad and the Angels (1992)
• The Clothesline (1993)
• The Girl Who Sings Waterfalls (1992)

Poetry Collections

• Heartwood (Caxton Press, Christchurch, 1989)
• of Elephants etc. (Untold Press, 1990)
• The Persistent Levitator (VUP, 1994)
• Still Talking (VUP, 1997)
• Settler Dreaming (VUP, 2001)
• Merino Princess: Selected poems (VUP, 2004)
• The Ponies (VUP, 2007)
• The Lustre Jug (VUP, 2009)

Awards and honours

• 1991 Writer in residence at the University of Canterbury
• 1996 Burns Fellow at the University of Otago
• 2004 Antarctica New Zealand Arts Fellowship
• 2006 Writer's fellowship at Victoria University
• 2015 Prime Minister's Awards for Literary Achievement in Poetry