berni m janssen, a text artist, performer, Creative Director and facilitator, has been making art for more than 40 years, both independently and in collaboration with musicians, performers, writers, composers and visual artists from diverse communities.  She has been an artsworker, artist-in-residence, workshop facilitator and mentor. Her work appears in books, anthologies, magazines and online, and has been performed on radio and at festivals around the world. James Hullick, CEO and Director of Hullick Studios and JOLT Arts, has described her as "one of the great Australian performance text artists". She lives in Dja Dja Wurrung Country in the Central Highlands of Victoria.

ENA was created for the JOLT 2022 Artistic Program and has had three seasons of live
performance, including at the 2023 Sonic Poetry Festival. This broadcast features a live recording of the first half of Movement 1 ENA, Speak Bitterness, recorded at JOLTED Artspace in October 2022.

Drawing on women’s experiences across decades, ENA uses poetic assemblage to explore the past, the ways it continues to shape the present, and the patterns that remain to be challenged. It tells the stories of a generation of women, bringing together text, soundscape, performance and recorded material in what has been described as a  "sonic romp". 

ENA is available as a text art book, drawing  on the traditions of poetry and spoken word art forms. The text is narrated by the character ENA, a feminist looking back on her life as a young activist before contemplating her place in the world as an older creative thinker. It can be purchased here:  https://hullickstudios.com/product/ena-berni-m-janssen-book/

To hear berni m janssen discuss her work, including ENA, listen to this interview broadcast on Spoken Word on Thursday, 25 January 2024: https://www.3cr.org.au/spoken-word/episode/berni-m-janssen-poetry-femini...

The second half of Movement 1 of ENA, Speak Bitterness will be broadcast in October 2026.

For copyright reasons, a podcast of this radio perofrmance of ENA, Speak Bitterness is not available. 

Photo by Vicki Jones

Produced by Tina Giannoukos