The poems in What to Wear observe that life means doing ordinary and marvellous things, like going to Bunnings, falling asleep on the train, losing and finding poems, losing and dreaming of our mothers, loving, dying, and deciding what to wear.Cover photography: Deborah SmithCover design: Dexter Murray
RRP: $25.00 NZD
Author: Jenny Bornholdt
ISBN: 9781776923069
Publisher: Te Herenga Waka University Press
Published: 2/12/2026
Pages: 72
Format: Paperback
Jenny Bornholdt has published over a dozen books of poems, including Lost and Somewhere Else (2019), Selected Poems (2016) and The Rocky Shore (winner of the Montana New Zealand Book Award for Poetry, 2009). She has edited a number of anthologies, including Short Poems of New Zealand (2018), and has worked on numerous book and art projects with artists including Annemarie Hope-Cross, Pip Culbert, Mary McFarlane, Noel McKenna, Mari Mahr, Brendan O’Brien and Gregory O’Brien. In 2018 she was the co-recipient, with Gregory O’Brien, of the Henderson Arts Trust Residency and spent 12 months in Alexandra, Central Otago. She was New Zealand’s poet laureate in 2005–2007, and in the 2014 New Year Honours she was appointed a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services as a poet.
