Sherry Grant, originally from Taiwan, is a concert pianist and cellist based in Auckland, New Zealand. She started learning the piano from the age of 3, later also taking up the cello at special music schools in Taiwan. When she moved to New Zealand with her family, Sherry studied cello performance at Auckland University. After returning from postgraduate studies in Manchester, UK, she studied computer science, physics and also a diploma for secondary school teaching in music/physics/ICT. After graduation from Auckland University Sherry worked mostly as a freelance chamber musician, music teacher and collaborative pianist who trains just about any orchestral instruments plus the voice.

Sherry spent many years raising her four musical children, as soon as the youngest of them started school in 2019, Sherry organised 14 concerts and performed in 12 of these concerts (including 10 viola recitals because her favourite instrument is the viola). These projects were War & Peace Arts & Music Festival (May 2019, featuring Milan Milisavljević, principal violist from the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, USA) and 100 Years Journey (Oct 2019, featuring Robert Ashworth, principal violist at the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra, NZ). During these concerts Sherry premiered with her violist friends five new viola compositions she commissioned in 2019.

Sherry now performs as the pianist in the Taioro Ensemble with Donald Maurice (viola/viola d’amore) and Sharn Maree (Maori poet). She is also the host and artistic director for the upcoming International Scriabin 150 Online Festival, celebrating Scriabin’s 150th birthday through music, poetry, art, theosophy, philosophy and more. In November 2021 Sherry hosted the Hindemith & Copland Festival online, interviewing several of H&C’s renowned first generation composer pupils such as Samuel Adler and Yehudi Wyner.

Sherry took up poetry writing for the first time in June 2020. During the first 1.5 years she wrote over 3000 poems, a mixture of short form poetry and longer rhymed poems. Sherry is best known for her haiku/senryu, cherita and rengay. Sherry is the inventor of a new poetry form called the ‘nonaku’ which is consisted of 9 lines, with 7 lines of word counts of 1-2-3-4-3-2-1 plus 2 lines of 2 up to 9 words and a blank line separating these two parts (Note it is not syllable count). In 2020 Sherry’s longer poems were long listed at Glass House Poetry Competition (India) and short listed at the NZSA Heritage Literary Awards. In 2021 a rengay she wrote with Alan Peat (UK) won the first place at the Otoroshi Rengay Contest.

So far Sherry’s short form poems have been published at nearly 60 journals/anthologies around the world. Sherry had her very first poem published at ‘the cherita’ and she tries to write poetry in different forms whenever she can. Sherry’s first poetry book ‘Bat Girl’ was written in 2020 with her then 6-year-old daughter Zoe, who was also the co-author and illustrator for this book. Zoe has joined her mother on this poetry writing journey since the beginning and become quite a good haiku poet herself. Zoe has just turned 8 years old and already she is known for her haiku/senryu and also rengay and well published in journals around the world.

Zoe will be recording podcasts and hosting haiku / rengay workshops with her mother regularly. The mother-daughter duo have had nearly 10 interviews as guest poets in 4 countries since 2021. The pair of them have written collaboratively with poet friends around the world (particularly rengay which Sherry translates into traditional Chinese for publication at journals), and will be publishing a new rengay annual anthology and running an annual international rengay contest, apart from publishing their own solo poetry collections and collaborative writing. Little Zoe is also planning to be editor to a new short form journal “Haiku Zoo” for young poets aged 3-20 years, with Sherry as her assistant.

Another new initiative Zoe and Sherry have started in September 2021 is Chalk on the Walk Haiku / Monoku, during a long Auckland lockdown. They share poems by chalking on their sidewalk daily before sharing the photos at two Facebook groups, and on the days they couldn’t chalk they share haiga instead. Sherry will be gradually publishing her poetry books, including the 3 volumes dedicated to Scriabin. They can be ordered directly from her.

“http://www.batgirlbook.com”

“http://www.artsinfinitypress.com”

“http://youtube.com/channel/UCBQSXiql-TSWBQUZdrcLA7w”

sherrygrantpoetry (at) gmail (dot) com