Jan Kemp MNZM is a poet and short fiction writer who was born in Hamilton in 1949, and spent her childhood in Morrinsville and teenage years in Howick. She obtained a BA, trained as a teacher, then returned to the University of Auckland, graduating with an MA (Hons) in English in 1974. She spent three months in the South Pacific and left New Zealand again in 1976 to live and work abroad, including in Canada, Malaysia, Hong Kong and Singapore, before settling in 2008 in Germany. She has published many collections of poetry, established the Aotearoa New Zealand Poetry Sound Archive, and co-edited, with Jack Ross, a series of New Zealand poets in performance.
