Jennifer Barrer is a New Zealand poet who has produced five collections of poetry. Jennifer’s literary career began in her childhood and her first book of poetry, Te Rangianiwaniwa (The Rainbow) was published in 1988.
Jennifer is also a professional actress and director and trained with Dame Ngaio Marsh in Christchurch. She has appeared in several theatre productions, in films and on television. She became the first New Zealand director of the Standardised Patient Programme at the Christchurch School of Medicine from 1994-1999 and in 1996 was awarded a Winston Churchill Fellowship from which her report Under the Rainbowwas published. The report examines the patient/doctor perspective in medicine.
She lives in Christchurch and is working on a sequence of poems entitled After the Earthquake as well as her autobiography. She was a visiting writer at the Michael King Writers’ Centre in September 2011.