Paddy Richardson recalls her Burns tenure: ‘[The] year was highly significant in my development as a writer. I was astounded to be offered this opportunity, and I drew confidence from that. Best of all, though, it gave me what all writers long for: enough time, funding, and the space to work consistently on projects that I’d tried to fit within the demands of work and family.
I worked on and mainly completed “The Company of a Daughter”, and a collection of short stories, “If We Were Lebanese”. I gained a lot in terms of working out the process of writing a novel; how the first draft is always tough for me and the main object is to make it as full and comprehensive as possible, but to also push on to finish it so I have something solid to work with. The year also reminded me of how essential writing is to me, and the memory of how fulfilling it was influenced my later decision to become a full-time writer
.’]]>
Paddy Richardson]]> Books]]>

Christine Johnston remembers her time as Burns Fellow: ‘The Burns Fellowship could not have come to me at a better time. I had published my first novel “Blessed Art Thou Among Women” and had started on another. I was in the habit of writing short stories and several had been published or broadcast in the previous decade. A novel for young readers, [“The Haunting of Lara Lawson”], was about to be published [1995]. Blissfully optimistic, I enjoyed the luxury of a stipend and a pleasant room in the English Department. For that “annus mirabilis”, I am forever indebted to Charles Brasch and the Robert Burns Fellowship.’
Stories that Johnston wrote that year were among those published in The End of the Century and Other Stories.]]>
Christine Johnston]]> Books]]>

Bernadette Hall recalls her time in Dunedin as Burns Fellow: ‘In 1996, my family drove me down from Christchurch to Dunedin to deliver me for the year’s Burns Fellowship…in a “bread van”, a converted campervan called “Martha”. My mother, who had died on Christmas Eve, her 85th birthday, was there too, her ashes in a green cardboard box. Our first task on entering the city was to lay my mother’s ashes to rest in the Anderson’s Bay cemetery, in the grave of my father, Jim.
I was solitary a lot of the time in 1996, in mourning, and yet also breaking into new freedoms. “Still Talking” published in 1997 was the result. Anthony Ritchie turned one of the “Tomahawk Sonnets” into a song. At the moment, my desire is to see the beautiful Stations of the Cross [Joanna Margaret Paul] painted in the Church of St Mary Star of the Sea in Port Chalmers in the 1970s…fully embraced as being among the amazing gifts that Dunedin, my hometown, has to offer
.’]]>
Bernadette Hall]]> Books]]>

Owen Marshall describes his Burns year: ‘Holding the Burns Fellowship in 1992 was a privilege and a pleasure. The assured income, amenities and support gave me the opportunity to complete my first published novel, “A Many Coated Man”, which was subsequently short listed for the Montana Book Awards.
Important as the financial assistance is, the validation of one’s craft is more significant and lasting. As well as assisting my writing, my tenure brought with it the benefit of being within the fraternity of Otago writers and artists, many of whom are friends. Whenever I now visit Dunedin and the university, I recall my good fortune to have been a Burns Fellow.’]]>
Owen Marshall]]> Books]]>

Lynley Hood was born in Hamilton, and moved to Dunedin in 1961 to begin study for a Masters in Physiology at Otago. She worked as a medical researcher until 1979 when she became a full-time freelance writer. During her Robert Burns Fellowship year, she worked on the biography and story surrounding the notorious Southland infanticide, Minnie Dean (1844-95). Hood’s subsequent book, Minnie Dean: Her Life and Crimes, was a finalist for the New Zealand Book Awards in 1995. She has had several awards during her literary career and was made Doctor of Literature (examined) by the University of Otago in 2003. Hood continues to live in Dunedin.]]>
Lynley Hood]]> Books]]>

Stuart Hoar recalls his Fellowship year: ‘What a great year it was for me. I was made very welcome by the English Department and enjoyed living in Dunedin so much that I stayed on there until the beginning of 1997. The Fellowship meant I could write full time and so I produced two stage plays, a radio play, and also started researching a novel [“The Hard Light”] that was published in 1998.
I recently was in Dunedin for a brief stay and was reminded how much I enjoyed living in the city back then, and how much I enjoyed the landscape, the great countryside walks so near to the city, the surrounding beaches and having access to Central Otago. These experiences are now part of who I am. For me the Burns Fellowship was an honour and a wonderful experience (the two don’t always go together) for which I am very grateful. Long may it continue!’]]>
Stuart Hoar]]> Books]]>

Renée describes her tenure: ‘Only the second time I’d been to Dunedin...The university environment seemed alien at first but became less so as the year moved on. Or, maybe I cared less. I worked on a play, “Jeannie Once”, which, a year or so later, had its first performance at Fortune Theatre, and my first novel, “Willy Nilly” (1990), was launched in the Staff bar one Friday night.
Although I felt out of my depth, I enjoyed Friday afternoons during the winter term when some third year students came to discuss their work. I am certain I was no help to them but they entertained and amused me. My enduring memory is of the friends I made and the fun we had and the way no-one in Dunedin is surprised or puzzled or disapproving when you say in answer to the question, ‘What do you do?’, ‘I’m a writer’…a very important year for me in all sorts of ways, both professional and personal. I grew to love the city, the South, and of course not having to worry about money for that year was a real boon
.’]]>
Renée]]> Books]]>

David Eggleton is diverse in his literary pursuits – he writes poetry and short fiction, is an award-winning reviewer, was editor of Landfall from 2010 to 2017, and this year he takes up the Fulbright Pacific Writer's Residency at the University of Hawai’i, Mānoa. This list certainly reflects only a small percentage of his many accomplishments.
He describes his Burns tenure as follows: ‘[I] wrote poems [“Empty Orchestra”], stories and essays as well as contributing reviews and articles to a variety of publications. Committed to poetry in performance, [I] also gave a large number of readings in a range of venues, and worked on recording a CD collaboration of …poetry set to music by a number of Otago-based musicians which was later released by the Wellington record label Jayrem Records.’]]>
David Eggleton]]> Books]]>

John Dickson was born in Milton and graduated with an English degree from the University of Otago. For many years, he worked at the Bill Robertson Library in Dunedin before being made redundant in 2007. Dickson began writing poetry as a teenager, and was first published in 1986 with What Happened on the Way to Oamaru. He read philosophy, loved jazz, and was an accomplished linguist. His poetic influences included T.S. Eliot, Blaise Cendrars, and Francis Ponge. During his tenure as Robert Burns Fellow, Dickson ‘began’ the poems that would later be published in Sleeper. In the acknowledgments to the volume, he states that he felt ‘honoured’ to gain the Fellowship for a year.]]>
John Dickson]]> Books]]>
Cilla McQueen]]> Books]]>
By the time Brian Turner became Robert Burns Fellow in 1984, the English Department had been housed in the Arts (Burns) Building for about 15 years. Turner had an office on the third floor, with a view of Flagstaff to the northwest.
He describes his time: ‘What a boost it gave, and has continued to give to New Zealand writers and our writing in general. For me, as a writer and personally, I felt as if I came of age in the 1980s. In all sorts of ways, the ‘80s were the happiest of times for me. My partner backed and supported me wholeheartedly. Being awarded the Burns confirmed and reinforced my hopes to be seen as a versatile New Zealand writer with truly worthwhile things to offer.’
During his tenure, Turner wrote poems for Bones, the play, Fingers Up, three essays, and a ‘sequence of poems on the naturalist and explorer Richard Henry’.]]>
Brian Turner]]> Books]]>

Cilla McQueen describes in her own words her tenure as Burns Fellow: ‘The Fellowship gave me carte blanche, I assumed, to stretch the bounds of the poetry I knew. In 1985, joyful collaboration with local musicians produced improvised theatre pieces such as “A Maniac at the Joystick” at Allen Hall. A solo performance, “Shocks and Ripples”, was directed by Lisa Warrington. A Fulbright Writer’s Fellowship took me to Stanford University for a month-long conversation on radio drama with Martin Esslin.
In 1986, a “Spinal Fusion Diary” linked words with drawings. “Fancy Numbers” at Marama Hall incorporated half a piano, a drama class and two performance artists, the score a series of drawings of Otago Peninsula. “Bad Bananas”, with guitarists Ali Mcdougall and Jim Taylor, enjoyed several outings. Some poems and songs from these years found a place in “Wild Sweets” (1986) and “Benzina”
.’]]>
Cilla McQueen]]> Books]]>

In a letter from Robert Lord to Jeff Kirkus-Lamont, dated 4th February, 1989, Lord recalled his tenure as Fellow. He listed his activities as follows: The play, The Affair, was completed and performed in Dunedin, Wellington, and Palmerston North; China Wars, a play, occupied much of Lord’s time and was performed in Wellington, Christchurch, and at time of writing, was being rehearsed in New York; a radio play, The Body in the Park, was completed and purchased by Radio New Zealand; the play, Bert and Maisy, was recorded, broadcast, and subsequently published; Country Cops, was revised, published in New York in 1989, and staged in Vermont the same year; and also he organised a Dunedin Playwrights Workshop at the Globe Theatre. A busy year for someone whose intention was to escape the ‘rat race’ of New York.]]>
Robert Lord]]> Books]]>

Bill Sewell was born and grew up in Europe. His parents were academics and came to live in New Zealand in 1965. Sewell studied German at the University of Auckland, and completed his PhD thesis on the German poet, Hans Magnus Enzensberger (b. 1929), at Otago. Sewell would later go on to lecture in the German Department in the same institution. His Burns year was spent writing poetry. Many of the poems were published in Solo Flight (1982), and Wheels Within Wheels. It is clear from these poems that the landscapes surrounding Dunedin, and the weather Sewell experienced in the city had a definite influence on his writing.]]>
Bill Sewell]]> Books]]>

Philip Temple writes both fiction and non-fiction. Most of his earlier works have a distinct ‘outdoors’ flavour: books on mountains, exploration, New Zealand landscapes, and the environment. These reflected his own personal pursuits and experiences in mountaineering and adventuring.
In his own words, he describes his year as Fellow: ‘While I held the Burns in 1980 I completed revision of “Beak of the Moon”, and undertook a great deal of research for another novel…my tenure of the Burns allowed me to apply for the higher degree of Doctor of Literature…which was awarded after examination of my work to 2004.’
Temple also began planning New Zealand Explorers in his Burns year. He returned to live in Dunedin in 1990.]]>
Philip Temple]]> Books]]>

Among other things, Rawiri Paratene wrote a draft of his drama, Erua; worked on the teleplay, Dead Certs; performed his poems in venues around Dunedin; and completed a series of lectures called ‘Constantly in Pursuit of Joy’. He enjoyed having an office where he would work at all hours of the day and night – he even named it – ‘Zong’.
Paratene describes his time as Burns Fellow: ‘I confess that, at the time of writing, my application was probably the best thing I’d written at that stage. It was certainly imaginative, claiming I had completed a radio play tackling the dilemma of conservation, called “Save Us a Place to Live” – I hadn’t. So when I got a response that I was on the short list and that they were interested in the radio script…I quickly (overnight) drafted the play…[it] wasn’t bad. I completed the script in my tenure…The Fellowship was a fruitful and important part of my development as a dramatist.’]]>
Rawiri Paratene and Ian Mune]]> Newspapers]]>

Although he was born in Christchurch, Peter Olds has been living in Dunedin since the mid-1960s. He met James K. Baxter in the city, and the older poet influenced him and his work, as did other former Burns Fellows, such as Hone Tuwhare and Janet Frame. Olds was first published in 1972, when Lady Moss Revived came out of Caveman Press; Lawrence Jones, in Nurse to the Imagination, describes him as ‘an anti-elitist poet of the youth culture’. Olds’s tenure as Burns Fellow in 1978 was a one-term stint, and some of the poems included in Beethoven’s Guitar were written during his time at Otago. Olds has been described in recent years as a ‘living legend’; he continues to live and work in the city.]]>
Peter Olds]]> Books]]>

Michael Noonan describes his year: ‘The Burns Fellowship provided a year of freedom to work on projects of my choosing without the pressure of deadlines or worries about where the next cheque was coming from. A special highlight was to be invited by both OUDS [Otago University Dramatic Society] and the Globe Theatre – with whom I had been active in my student days at Otago – to direct plays of my choosing. At the Globe, I directed a wonderful cast in “Words Upon The Windowpane” by W.B. Yeats. For OUDS, it was a study of the New Zealand Temperance Movement with both the Mozart and Frances Hodgkins Fellows involved. It was a year of relaxed creativity, a welcome opportunity to explore ideas for future projects.’
Noonan also worked on an adaptation for television of Bill Pearson’s Coal Flat, a novel about the West Coast Mining town of Blackball. Unfortunately, it never made it to the small screen due to cutbacks in broadcast budgets.]]>
Bill Pearson]]> Books]]>

In a letter dated 31st January, 1989 to then University of Otago Reference Librarian, Jeff Kirkus-Lamont, Keri Hulme recalls her time (one term: three months) as Robert Burns Fellow. During her tenure, Hulme published poems under a pseudonym in the student paper, and rewrote the ‘the bone people’. Hulme says that: ‘It wasn’t the final re-write (that took place in my garage at Okarito a year later) but it certainly cleared the mental decks for action.’
The Bone Peoplewas first published in 1984, and Hulme won the Booker (now Man Booker) Prize for her work in 1985 – a first for New Zealand. She also recalls in the letter that she wrote poetry, which would later be published in The Silences Between [Moeraki Conversations] (1982).]]>
Keri Hulme]]> Books]]>

Roger Hall expounds on his tenure as Robert Burns Fellow: ‘I was, I think, only the second playwright to get the Burns. At the time (and for many years) the University of Otago was the only university to offer arts fellowships. A privilege. The time enabled me to complete “Middle Age Spread” (which I’d been struggling with at home part-time); write my first panto “Cinderella” (“A waste of Burns Fellows’ time” one academic muttered). I got the Fellowship for a second year and wrote “State of the Play”. The Burns (and, later, generous support from the English Department) enabled me to become a full-time writer for which I’ve always been grateful. And Dunedin took the Fellows to their hearts: dinner – and other –invitations poured in. In the end, we stayed seventeen years. A great time for Dianne and me and a solid foundation for life for Pip and Simon.’]]>
Roger Hall]]> Books]]>

In 1974, Hone Tuwhare held the Burns Fellowship again, this time for a full year. He spent his tenure putting together a collection of previously published poems for Something Nothing: Poems (1974). He also wrote for a new collection, which culminated in this volume, Making a Fist of It. Throughout his career, Tuwhare toured the country, reading his poetry to audiences in his resonant and distinctive voice. He moved to Kaka Point in the Catlins in 1992, and is now remembered as one of New Zealand’s most important poets.]]>
Hone Tuwhare]]> Books]]>

Born in Gisborne, Witi Ihimaera began writing seriously in the 1960s, and published his first book, Pounamu Pounamu, in 1972.
He describes his Burns tenure in his own words: ‘Ah, Dun Eideann! The land of Scotitanga! Was I the only Maori in Maori Hill? I may have been. But, I was adopted by your iwi and found shelter among your people. In particular, Rakamaomao, your southern wind was kind and, blowing from the shore enabled me - following my first three books, when I needed direction - to launch my fourth, “The New Net Goes Fishing”, seaward. And so the lines taking the trailing hooks through the breakwater flowed forward into Te Ao Marama.’]]>
Witi Ihimaera]]> Books]]>

Sam Hunt began writing poetry when he was still at high school; he was first published in Landfall in 1967. His tenure as Burns Fellow was for ten weeks only, and he chose to live in Alan and Pat Roddick’s crib on Akapatiki Beach, near the harbourside settlement of Otakou, on the Dunedin Peninsula. He wrote a lot, and some of his output from that time was printed in, Drunkard’s Garden. Hunt’s poems are written to be read aloud, and he has spent most of his career travelling and performing his works in his own inimitable style. Perhaps the coffee stains on the cover of this volume are an indication of Hunt’s popularity?]]>
Sam Hunt]]> Books]]>

Graham Billing was born in Dunedin, educated at Otago Boys High School, and the University of Otago. By the time he took up his tenure as Robert Burns Fellow, he already had several novels, plays, and works of non-fiction under his belt. His early career as a seafarer, and the time he spent in Antarctica at Scott Base, in the 1960s, proved to be enduring inspirations in his writing. Billing spent his Burns year drafting his fifth novel, The Primal Therapy of Tom Purslane. The novel was not published until 1980, as soon after the end of his Fellowship, Billing’s life ‘derailed’. He managed to get back on track at the start of the next decade but sadly never regained his former reputation as a writer]]>
Graham Billing]]> Books]]>

Ian Wedde was an emerging writer in his mid-twenties when he arrived in Dunedin for his Burns year in 1972. In his own words:
Rose and I stayed in a small stone cottage in Port Chalmers. A son, Carlos, was born, and I wrote most of the “Earthly: Sonnets for Carlos” as a happy consequence. We’d been living in Amman, Jordan, 1969-70, where I began work with Fawwaz Tuqan on translations of the poems of Mahmoud Darwish – completed during the Burns year. Much of the Otago environment shaped “Spells for Coming Out” (1977) and, obviously, the protest broadside poem, “Pathway to the Sea” (with Ralph Hotere), protesting against the aluminium smelter at Aramoana.’
Like most Burns Fellows, he made some firm friends, who he says ‘have outlasted the shelf-lives of those books!’]]>
Ian Wedde]]> Books]]>