Jenny Boult

Jenny Boult (8 October 1951 – 1 November 2005), also known as MML Bliss, was an Australian poet, playwright, and editor.

Biography

Jenny Boult was born in Warwickshire, England in 1951, migrating to Western Australia with her family in 1967.^[1] Her family consisted of mother Florence Mary (Molly) Boult (maiden name Elliot), father Leslie Dean Boult, younger brother Jeremy Dean Boult Jr and younger sister Christine Anne Boult. Jenny attended Applecross Senior High School in Perth and won a Commonwealth scholarship to the University of Western Australia. She lived for a time in Sydney and Melbourne before returning to Perth with her infant son, then movedto Adelaide with Harry Bardwell and her son Daniel in 1977.

Jenny was instrumental in setting up the Friendly St poets in Adelaide at the Box Factory and she lived in McLaren St for many years before moving to Norwood.

In 1994 Jenny moved to Tasmania with her long-time friend and partner, now deceased. She died in 2005 after a long battle with lung cancer.

Her nearest relative is her granddaughter Alice, who lives in Port Lincoln.

MML Bliss says she was once told in the post office of a country town in the north-east of Tasmania that she might be Jenny Boult on the mainland, but in Derby, she was Mrs. Smith.

Poems, stories and plays by Jenny and MML Bliss have appeared in magazines, journals and anthologies in Australia and overseas. Jenny Boult's works have been translated into French, Swedish, Norwegian, Urdu, German and Italian.

MML Bliss lived for many years in Launceston, Tasmania and was President of the Tasmanian Poetry Festival. She was a book reviewer for Thylazine and Sidewalk magazines and awarded a Hydro Tasmania Fellowship for 2003. In 2002 was awarded a Booranga Writers Fellowship at Wagga Wagga in NSW.

Publications

Books by Jenny Boult

• The Hotel Anonymous poems (Bent Enterprises, 1981)
• Handbaggery poems (Bent Enterprises, 1982)
• Can’t Help Dreaming playscript (All Out Ensemble, 1982)
• flight 39 poems (Abalone Press, 1984)
• "i" is a versatile character short stories (Words and Visions, 1984)
• the white rose and the bath (1986)
• About Auntie Rose poems (Omnibus / Puffin, 1988)
• abrasion in Hot Collation poems (Penguin, 1993)
• here poems (The Teller’s House, 1999)
• poems (Friendly Street Poets)
• moonshine poems (PressPress 2002)
• Legend! poems (Cornford Press 2002) - a book of poetry for children of allages.
• RAVO poems (Cornford Press 2003)

Forthcoming collections

• unspoken poems (SideWalk Collective 2003)

Works

• The Hotel Anonymous (1980)
• Handbaggery (1982)
• The White Rose and the Bath (1984)
• 'I' is a versatile character (1986)
• Flight 39 (1986)
• Ravo (2003)

Boult was joint winner of the 1981 Anne Elder Award for "the hotel anonymous", her first collection of poetry.

References

External links

• Poems at The Write Stuff