JENNY JOHNSON
Jenny was born in Bristol on November 2nd,
1945, to an Anglo-Jewish mother and an
American father. Her maternal grandparents,
Meyer and Frances Geller (ne
é
Berg), came
from Minsk
–
in what is currently known as
Belarus
–
while 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 Gladys
and Leighton Johnson, who lived in Westbury-
on-Trym. She began to write poems at the age
of six, by which time she had been an enthusi-
astic dancer in a ballet class for two years.
From 1957 to 1964, she was a pupil at
The Red
Maids’ School
(now Redmaids’ High School).
Poetry writing, including a poem about the meeting with her birthmother, Sylvia, in
1984, continued until she was fifty, after which her creative energy became almost
dormant for a decade. When, quite unexpectedly, it re-emerged, it was through both
poetry and choreography for circle dancers. The latter has been a passion almost
equal to that of writing and Jenny is grateful for the influence of her main teachers:
Julie Bell and Chrisandra Harris in Nottingham, Valerie Dawes in Devon and Friedel
Kloke-Eibl, who lives in Germany.
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. There is no real
divide between the spiritual and the secular, she believes: if music, of whatever kind,
touches the heart and is the inspiration for a dance, that in itself is to be honoured.
Jenny now lives in Exmouth, Devon; here, by the sea, she finds the energy much more
conducive to creativity than it was in the city. In 2015, she returned to poetry writing
on a regular basis. Her latest book, Dreamlines, consists of forty-two poems based on
her own dreams, plus eight shorter pieces that are mainly set in her home area. She
was married to fellow writer Noel Harrower for thirty-three years until his death in
2023. Her son, Alex, lives in Nottingham and works in Intelligence.
Sylvia Sutton (neé Geller) died in 1986 in Hampshire, having returned to England after
many years of living in Chicago. Jenny is in touch, via Facebook, with her half-sister,
Penny Leuillette, and her cousins, Perree Geller, Ronny Lamb and Peter Sykes. She is
always searching for relatives, however distant, so would be delighted to find more
of them!
Photograph by Rob Masding,
based on a portrait
by Naa Ahinee Mensah