Jenny Johnson, Dancer & Poet

Jenny Johnson

2010-08-18T06:23:00.002-07:00

Jenny was born in Bristol on November 2nd, 1945, to Jewish parents. Her mother’s ancestors came from Belarus, and her father was an American naval officer during the 1939-1945 World War. As they were unable to share in her upbringing, Jenny was placed with various "mothers" until 1947 – when she was finally adopted by the Johnsons, who lived in Westbury-on-Trym. She began to write poems at the age of 5, by which time she had been an enthusiastic pupil in a ballet class for 2 years. From 1957 to 1964, she attended The Red Maids’ School – the oldest girls’ school in the country.

Poetry writing – including a poem about the meeting with her birthmother in 1984 – continued until she was 50, after which her creative energy became almost dormant for a decade. When, quite unexpectedly, it re-emerged, it was through choreography for circle dance groups. This is now Jenny’s passion and she is grateful for the influence of her main teachers: Julie Bell and Chrisandra Harris in Nottingham, Judith and Raymond Thompson in Exeter and Val Dawes in rural Devon, who leads workshops for those who love Friedel Kloke Eibl’s dances in particular. Recently, Jenny has embarked on a 3-year course run by Friedel and her daughter, Saskia. This opportunity to study the deeper aspects of dance has arrived at just the right time, as a 7-year course of healing through sound comes to an end.

Jenny sees all circle dance as an opportunity to integrate mind, body and spirit: to heal the individual, the community and the wider world. She first came to it in 1996 while beginning to recover from her third bout of severe depressive illness. The music she uses is widely varied and she believes that there is no real divide between the sacred and the secular: if music – of whatever kind – touches her heart and inspires her to create a dance, that in itself is to be honoured.

Jenny now lives in Exmouth, Devon, with her husband, Noel; here, by the sea, she finds the energy much more conducive to creativity than it was in the city. In the last few years, she has begun to write poetry again - and regularly illustrates her poems, both old and new, for the eco-journal GreenSpirit. She is also an experienced Reiki practitioner - and a somewhat less experienced comic actor. Besides having a son, Alex, who is married and lives in Nottingham, she is the owner of an adult tricycle, Triksi.

GreenSpirit

2010-08-17T19:28:00.000-07:00

The following illustrated poems appeared in GreenSpirit, the journal of the GreenSpirit organisation (formerly the Association for Creation Spirituality) and are reproduced by kind permission.

The poems come from either The Wisdom Tree or Neptune's Daughters. All poems and illustrations are copyrighted to Jenny Johnson.

Main index of poems

Wind versus Sun / Beech Owl Barn / Perdita / Rapport / June / Marianne / Chinese Angelica / Whitby / Borderland

WIND VERSUS SUN
from A Year of Dreams

The hand on the field is a shiver of sunlight:
the brittle-backed land is a spectre of life.
Closed in a nightshell,
it hears the long fingersteps whisper of whiteness,
feels the bunched palms on its eyelids of grass.

Wind is a whiplash, astringent with power —
a crab-apple fear in a frostbitten bone.
Sun protests steadily,
wrests from the wizened field seedlings of gold.

Copyright © JENNY JOHNSON
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BEECH OWL BARN

They sleep downstairs, close to their Cornish earth —
a granite-mason, his wife and child.

Upstairs, above the birthing-room, a balcony faces
land safe as lambs;
and looks into the garden, where the Buddha, the standing stones —
even the disused telephone kiosk — accept their places.

The husband is filling the belly of the barn
with his own creations:
at one with the woody grains and tones, he understands
how to implant his vision there; and when to reveal it.

His wife cuts their saffron-cake, pours jasmine tea;
like her husband, she remembers beyond time,
beyond imperfection —
where sleeping and rebirthing are unnecessary.

Here, they have learned how standing stones may sometimes
form an ellipse, rather than a pure circle:
how a sapling, enclosed and guarded by this granite,
may be off-centre.

Their little daughter, recalling still more, knows
that all is well.

Copyright © JENNY JOHNSON
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PERDITA

Although I have entered the ancient heart of a wood
and have circled it for hours -
I cannot find a source for
this crying of a baby:
this crying without crescendo; without rest.

Suddenly, a lake's broad face peeps through the firs;
and a white swan floats towards me,
looking me in the eye:
she climbs on to the bank as if to make for the
lakeside well. Thirstily, I follow.

Willing the water to rub from awareness
my nightmare of tears, I find myself
staring through refectory windows: staring past
meals at the hearth; right into the far, far corner -
into the howls of an old baby.

Instantly, as I become her,
I am sucked into the loud light, the pattern of
pain without centre....
Then, half separate, I stand at the refectory door -
and walk towards her; and take her to the
cradle of myself: to the room's hearth:
the cauldron, the ladle.

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RAPPORT

Sally McLennan,
alone on the lawn in her clean linen apron,
feels once more the wholesomeness of blossom, of earthenware,
of mown grass and stone....
She has sown and grown so many things!

Her father - somewhat suited to his thrawn, threadbare chair;
to his room that bears no pastel colour; no flower -
refuses to be touched by her nurturing hands.

Her nine-year-old son,
totally unaware of any screen, any stained air,
teaches him immediately.

There begins an even finer kind of growing.

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JUNE

Now she is well past fifty, hay fever avoids her -
enabling her to nurture those foxgloves; to celebrate:
throughout two summers, she will ask for frangible pink
to involve the bees;
will respond to the novelty of pollen-coloured sun.

Suddenly full of how garden and gardener enjoy each
other,
her poet-friend - whose mind rather than hand
tries to ennoble -
perceives how the life can evolve slowly where there is
friction between white and dark; tart and dulcet.

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MARIANNE

We are lost - or found - in this meditation centre: are the oval
around the crystal - around purple for Advent
or Lent.

The frailest in the ellipse is Marianne, the potter - who endures
tumours on her liver: whose eyes have become much more
luminous than any quartz. She is dressed in contemplative
blues.

I imagine the unchosen cells - orbited by a blue-and-white
fizzy light. To the owner, death seems as youthful as her
grandchild: it is the crony in the valley....
Distance is irrelevant: signs and destinations are at once
very far - and very near.

From outer space, Great-Grandmother Earth can only be
partially seen. She remains, in her bubble of blue-and-white,
mostly benign - despite the violation, the neglect, which make her
contract inwardly;
or expand in the wrong places.

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CHINESE ANGELICA

Angelica sinensis, my herb-sister,
the sister of ginseng:
your root floats in my tumbler of water -
its fragrance an arch between savoury and sweet.

As soon as I have opened - you begin
your balancing act on my first three bodies:
physical; emotional; mental.

You become - refiner of the contours;
my chromium strengthener:
my gardener of thoughts.

Afterwards, resting on my bed - I feel like I do
in my Indian cotton: energy - shaped like a
vase; like a frond within that vase.

We are daily inseparable, you and I;
your vibrations are subtler than mine:
you continuously heal....
We are just two of many.

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WHITBY

Feel, beneath the illuminated harbour arms,
what powers of life and death have passed - still pass.

Watch - through that whalebone arch below the
captain's memorial statue - how the east cliff displays

charged ruins:
relics of the abbey of St Hilda - the Mother...

Whitby! - with its jet, its whipped silvers and soft golds;
its one hundred and ninety-nine steps:

where cowherd Caedmon, after one vision,
became an estuary of song;

where Lewis Carroll, strolling on rhythmic sand,
rehearsed The Walrus and the Carpenter;

where Captain Cook unfurled his need for
expansive dreams;

where Bram Stoker, absorbing the same force as
Caedmon, Carroll and Cook, dwelt compellingly on blood;

where fisher-folk, with mended green and orange nets,
continually ply between the Esk and Northumbrian sea.

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BORDERLAND

Ascending towards midsummer,
with evening clouds above the River Otter -
over the curve of incoming tides -
I am drawn to the border of newborn consciousness.

These wildfowl are stilled: they are held within reflections of
taming sunlight. High on my right,
a helix of larksong begins....
Whichever way I turn, there are mellowing headlands.

In Sidmouth, I am nourished by straight rain;
by the cerise-browns of Devon sandstone.
Challenged further west, I run along the damp shore
in luminous boots.

The estuary beach feels abandoned
except for the gull and the shell -
and a current of expectancy
out there ... in here.

But now, where do I go?...
The essence of the place calls out: "Today you have sampled:
tomorrow, you travel inland:
here, on the very edge, you may play ... play."

Suddenly, a child leaps high by the fringes of the water.
I dance alongside: I become White Wave....
Always, we are close to an unseen guardian, she and I:
in the sorrow-joy; the sea-sky.

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2008-01-02T02:20:00.000-08:00

WIND VERSUS SUN
from A Year of Dreams

The hand on the field is a shiver of sunlight:
the brittle-backed land is a spectre of life.
Closed in a nightshell,
it hears the long fingersteps whisper of whiteness,
feels the bunched palms on its eyelids of grass.

Wind is a whiplash, astringent with power —
a crab-apple fear in a frostbitten bone.
Sun protests steadily,
wrests from the wizened field seedlings of gold.

Copyright © JENNY JOHNSON
back to index: all poems / illustrated

2008-01-02T02:10:00.000-08:00

2008-01-02T02:00:00.000-08:00

2008-01-02T01:50:00.000-08:00

2008-01-02T01:40:00.000-08:00

2008-01-02T01:30:00.000-08:00

2008-01-02T01:20:00.000-08:00

2008-01-02T01:10:00.000-08:00

2008-01-02T01:05:00.000-08:00

ELFRIDA'S TALE

In the days when pollution remained in town,
when the suburb had barely begun to fatten,
she came to a limestone, countryside cottage.

London-born, nectarine-cheeked,
she lived in the exuberance of her sons;
in the stillness of her husband.

Hardly a jot of uncertainty — envy — could be
spotted in her lane, or on the neighbouring farm.
Each year — home smelt of beeswax, sunned
cotton; the butterfly starred in the play of the hedgerow.

But once town had chosen to cleanse itself, to approach
more subtly — once the farmer believed in
expensive, miracle spray — then the likes of Elfrida, and her
kinsfolk, were spirited away.

Copyright © JENNY JOHNSON
back to index: all poems / illustrated

2008-01-02T01:00:00.000-08:00

2008-01-01T04:50:00.000-08:00

IDYLLWILD, CALIFORNIA

In the moment between dreaming and waking,
the sky needs to be hidden,
the unbidden words furled:
in Idyllwild, a time long after the dream
is the time to begin.

Blue jay, robin and woodpecker
witness the dawn –
at one with the butterscotch tang of the pine-bark,
the chocolate bark of the manzanita.

By forest boulders on Mount San Jacinto,
raccoons, lizards, are keenly aware
of wolf, coyote,
mountain lion, black bear.

Now, words fly wild as disturbed feathers;
then swoop like an eagle
thru pure, bare sky.

Copyright © JENNY JOHNSON
First published in Poetry Salzburg Review
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2008-01-01T04:40:00.000-08:00

WESTER ROSS

Wherever I go, I sense mountains:
pyramids and paps
of sandstone, limestone and gneiss
replenish the psyche.
To watch is to touch.

Lochs live peacefully among them,
purple and turquoise: at Gairloch,
a great skua soars over the boat;
I see a cormorant, a harbour of porpoises;
a gray seal, almost asleep,
her head above the water.

On the horizon, Skye, Harris,
brighten and fade in a thin mist.
In Plockton, the lowest of rainbows
grazes Loch Carron;
the sun turns theatrical,
illuminating a tiny island.

Near the Pass of the Cattle,
Highland cows and Jacob ewes
are unfazed by the passing car –
or by any invader, past or present.

Copyright © JENNY JOHNSON
First published in Poetry Salzburg Review
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2008-01-01T04:30:00.000-08:00

TRIASSIC COAST

Midsummer Day, two thousand and three:
east Devon light on the chicks of kittiwakes,
on cormorants and shags,
on the rust-red Triassic stacks
of Ladram Bay.

A peregrine falcon responds
to the focusing of eyes:
flies niftily from her cliff-nest
to circle the boats.

On Budleigh Salterton pebbles,
naturists lie in a breezy sun:
on the moist sand at Orcombe Point –
the coast’s west end –
a kitesurfer takes to her heart
the energy of sky, of afternoon tidelines.

She keeps it for only a second:
she frees it, sending it
high above the water.

Copyright © JENNY JOHNSON
First published in Poetry Salzburg Review
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2008-01-01T04:20:00.000-08:00

SHANKLIN RAIN

All this July day, soft rain has soaked
my orange American cotton:
I have walked through a chine
that is like a subtropical biome.

Under the platform’s roof,
the station clock makes dripping sounds.
A small woman talks to herself on a painted bench
to assuage the loneliness –
her voice, like that of a radio broadcaster,
switched on and off … and on …
Behind us, a waiting-room is locked.

Outside, mist nets the east cliff;
while diesel and steam, with their different
rhythms and gauges,
take visitors, commuters, backwards and forwards
like a pendulum, a tide.

Copyright © JENNY JOHNSON
First published in Reach
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2008-01-01T04:10:00.000-08:00

AFTER THE TERIYAKI

After the teriyaki - the trampoline.
Eleven is lean; ravenous,
In the in-between time before sunset,
before the onset of puberty,
he becomes the ManBoy;
the defender of his Mother -
Mother who is creative with her courage.

His father is irregularly absent.

The cat, Sky, curls its blackness
into his heart.
Nana is witness to it -
to his suppleness with words,
to his innocence tinged with dark.
She is fearful of asymmetry.

Eleven is lean; ravenous:
Fifteen has a talent for design.
As an only sister, she becomes
the storm's eye: his balance:
his compass.

Copyright © JENNY JOHNSON

First published in Sarasvati

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2008-01-01T04:00:00.000-08:00

ALLOWING IT TO LOOSEN

Not consciously, quickly
releasing the hurt of it,
but allowing it times
for loosening in secret....
That is the key.

For seventeen years,
my namesake was a close friend.
In the end, when she sliced me from her prime,
I became too ungrounded for grief.

Now, as my strength rises,
I strive less.
Recurring dreams of the namesake
remind me to wait, wait
for my heart to unbind its hurt.

2008-01-01T03:55:00.000-08:00

PLAYING WITH AIR

As parasitic stems embroider the oak –
a paraglider pilot begins his attachment.

As a gate brays open –
he manoeuvres the risers,
is a puppeteer with his marionette;
an Aeolian harpist.

Now that he is the bold one,
his canopy cowers and billows
in fits and starts.

Harnessed and helmeted –
so tiny, so new against Cretaceous rock! –
he runs, at last, towards the vagaries
of chalk’s precipice:

sprung like a child….

In this moment, he is one with a
hiss of distance between sky and sea –
like a soaring pterodactyl,
like a gravitating angel.

But he finds himself caught between
the currents of abandon and control.

2008-01-01T03:50:00.000-08:00

DERELICT

Haggard as November, he thirsts for the river.
How fast it winds! –
as though it were cleaning a secret wound
on the hip of the land.

And under the night’s untenanted sky,
he listens to the loosened –
to the wind-without-code on the birdless tree,
to the plummeting leaf, with its brief goodbye.

And he listens. And he listens to the chastened, the blanched.

Copyright © JENNY JOHNSON
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2008-01-01T03:40:00.000-08:00

SONG CIRCLE
from A Year of Dreams

Make me your bairn, my laird of the looms,
for one is the weaver and one is the web,
but both are the priests of the cycle of Song.

Allow me a lull, my lullaby king,
for one is the crooner and one is the slumber,
but both are the priests of the cycle of Song.

Prepare me a cairn, my steward of stones,
for one is the craftsman and one is the crown,
but both are the priests of the cycle of Song.

Copyright © JENNY JOHNSON
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2008-01-01T03:30:00.000-08:00

THE CLEANSING
from A Year of Dreams

She brought him a thimble of milk from his childhood,
her breath on its bony rim timid as down.

He chose her a chalice that steamed with her youth;
it boasted of bridles round wrathful brown heads.
Gold-soft he watched: he would win her.

She lent him a tankard of froth from his manhood.
Strong as wet ropes, he strode round its warmth.

He gave her an earthenware jug for her cleansing,
took – from her morning-cheek – crumbs of cold sleep,
slops of small tears.

Copyright © JENNY JOHNSON
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2008-01-01T03:20:00.000-08:00

THE CONTENTIOUS WIFE

She arrives insufferably late.

Her visited husband tenses, reddens, listens:
her companion slackens….

Both of them are conscious of the concentrated hatred –
in her voice, in her eye.

Yet neither man turns violent:
through the willow-laced window comes abundant sweet light.

And then a youngster appears; who swings between the chair-arms:
wanting, wanting laughter.

Copyright © JENNY JOHNSON
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2008-01-01T03:10:00.000-08:00

WILLIAM AND STELLA

While William the librarian hibernates,
while Stella, in wellingtons, gardens,
I make myself walk between rain-scented lines of deciduous trees –
trying, in vain, to ease the expanding mind into routine’s
narrow lanes.

Time and again I reflect upon yesterday’s dream –
when every archway, every porch that I approached
became too low….

William the librarian continuously sleeps,
judiciously nourished with words – which seem fluid things….
Stella, wisest among the latest wet blooms,
communes with what neither confines nor excludes.

Copyright © JENNY JOHNSON
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2008-01-01T03:00:00.000-08:00

THE NURSERY

When I was thirteen,
when my mind hurt with Latin unseens and theorems,
when lunch-times became petty,
I would leave the classroom, hall, kitchen,
would climb past staff-room and green-room, and enter the nursery -

where the starched matron was unconcerned with analysis,
with academic fashion-shows.
I would lie on the ottoman, staring at the white paint
of cleansed cupboards, a glass of kaolin near my hand,
my throat constricted by the nameless phobia-in-charge.

Convalescents came and went: Fiona, with the magnolia
knee; Rosemary, light pirouetting in her eye.
I learnt to listen to the assistant, Olive Broomfield,
who talked about Ireland, her homeland: about mountains; moss;
tubercular blood…. Softly, I would acquaint her with my poems.

Copyright © JENNY JOHNSON
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