Billy Bird

2016

Central PR9641 N43 B55 2016

Auckland: Vintage; with kind permission

Robert Burns Fellow 2012: Emma Neale (b. 1969)

Poet, novelist, and current editor of the literary and art magazine, Landfall, Emma Neale remembers her tenure:
‘My year as a Burns Fellow helped me to intensify my concentration, pull together a book of poems, realise that one novel idea I had was in fact better played out as a short story; and it enabled me to write three-quarters of the first draft of a novel. Attending poetry seminars and guest lectures changed the course of several of the pieces I was working on – so having close contact with academics, critics, and graduate students who were writing new poetry themselves all helped to add intellectual and creative nutrients to the work I was doing. It was immeasurably enriching and helpful.’

The novel, Billy Bird, is one of the publications to come out of the year, as well as the poetry collection, Tender Machines (2015) and the short story, ‘The Fylgja’.