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]]>
Rhian Gallagher]]> Books]]>
And so, the Robert Burns Fellowship has once again been taken up. This year, the Fellow is poet Rhian Gallagher. Salt Water Creek is one of her previous publications.

In her own words: ‘The Fellowship enables spaciousness and totally recalibrates the creative life…For the first six months I have been immersed in the early history of the Seacliff Asylum, exploring the history in relation to Irish migrants. I have written poems responding to the site and the history, with other poems attempting to enact individual voices using the letter poem and the monologue. This has been a rollercoaster and has pushed my writing practice in new directions…much is in draft.
The Burns is enabling on so many levels and not least, I have been living in the place that is central to the work. I am reading a great deal of poetry and enjoying the luxury of reflective time.
People in the English & Linguistics Department have been kind and helpful and welcoming. I have tended to go into the office towards the end of the week…Writing poems seems to happen elsewhere but this has always been the case for me I think. Poems just do seem to come from elsewhere
.’]]>
Rhian Gallagher]]> Books]]>

Paula Boock was born and educated in Dunedin; she is a graduate of the University of Otago. Before her tenure as Burns Fellow, she had four published works, including Dare, Truth, or Promise (1997), which won the NZ Post Children’s Book of the Year Award in 1998. During her tenure, Boock worked on a novel with the provisional title of ‘Boydi’, a work for adults set in Dunedin. Boock is also an accomplished scriptwriter: she has worked on The Insider’s Guide to Happiness (2004), The Insider’s Guide to Love (2005), Bro’Town (2004-09), and Burying Brian (2008).
Power and Chaos, is ‘an adaptation of the cult television series’, The Tribe. Boock continues to write and produce scripts through her company Lippy Pictures.]]>
Paula Boock]]> 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]]>
Nurse to the Imagination: 50 Years of the Robert Burns Fellowship. In his 45 years in the English Department at Otago, Jones was first to introduce and teach several papers on New Zealand literature; he also wrote extensively on the topic. Jones’s volume has proved indispensable in the researching of this exhibition.]]> Edited by Lawrence Jones]]> 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]]>

In her own words:
I was surprised to be awarded the Robert Burns Fellowship…it was one of those heart-stopping moments when I was called up and told I’d got the residency.
“Mother’s Day” was written in 2007 while I was Burns Fellow. It is the third of a trilogy. It is set in Invercargill. I was there with a friend one day, and we were driving around. It was windy and all the rubbish wheelie bins had blown into the centre of the road. Later, we drove home via Kaka Point. It was Sunday, Mother’s Day, and family groups were in the cafe eating lunch. I felt quite moved by the scene, that kids and adults had set aside this time to be together. I had grown up in a family that didn’t believe in Mother’s Day (or Father’s Day), and I didn’t go in for it either. But, it clearly meant something to the people around me, and there was a lot of love and respect in that room. So, that’s where the novel started. Rubbish bins and families
.’]]>
Laurence Fearnley]]> 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]]>

Noel Hilliard applied for the Robert Burns Fellowship in 1960, without success. Unusually, given his subsequent success with the Maori Girl series, Brasch wrote an entry in his journal, including Hilliard in a sentence with the words ‘no-hopers’ and ‘also-rans’. When he finally came to Dunedin for his Burns year in 1971, Hilliard worked on the draft of the third book of his tetralogy, Maori Woman. The first novel in the series was Maori Girl (1960). Power of Joy (1965) and The Glory and the Dream (1978) are the second and fourth books that complete the series. All the novels were Hilliard’s response to the injustices of racism he had witnessed in New Zealand in the 1950s.]]>
Noel Hilliard]]> Books]]>

John Caselberg came to Dunedin in the 1940s to study medicine at Otago; he did not complete his degree. Around the same time, he became friends with some of the talented, artistic coterie that inhabited Dunedin in the form of James K. Baxter, Charles Brasch, and Colin McCahon. In the early 1950s, Caselberg published his first book of poems, and Brasch published some of his stories in Landfall. He wrote in several genres – plays, poetry, short stories, biography – and took up the Burns Fellowship in 1961. This enabled him to research archives at the Hocken Library that contributed to this anthology, Maori is My Name.]]>
Edited by John Caselberg]]> 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]]>
Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect (1786) was an instant success. Soon after his death, numerous Burns Clubs were formed in his honour in commemoration of his life and oeuvre; Dunedin’s own was established in 1861. He had become the ‘People’s Poet’, and the emigrating Scottish diaspora took him wherever they went. This biography of Burns was written by John Gibson Lockhart (d. 1854), the son-in-law of Sir Walter Scott (d. 1832).]]> J. G. Lockhart]]> Books]]>
According to Charles Brasch’s journal entry for 8th June, 1969, it took Warren Dibble a few months to find his feet as the Robert Burns Fellow. Brasch comments that Dibble only ever felt ‘at ease’ on the stage which is where he spent a lot of time during his tenure. He also collaborated with artist, Ralph Hotere, and joined Hone Tuwhare for poetry readings. Dibble called his Burns Year a ‘kickstart’, in that he began works that he was never brave enough to attempt before. Dibble left New Zealand for Australia in the 1970s. This letter was written by Dibble to Special Collections Librarian, Dr Donald Kerr, regarding the exhibition held for the 50th Anniversary of the Robert Burns Fellowship.
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Warren Dibble]]> Correspondence]]>
Landfall about the establishment of the Fellowship.]]> Edited by Charles Brasch]]> Periodicals]]>
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]]>

Sarah Quigley shared the other half of the Burns Fellowship year with Nick Ascroft. She was a graduate of Oxford University where she had completed her thesis on the life and works of Charles Brasch, one of the founders of the Robert Burns Fellowship. The same year that Quigley arrived in Dunedin for her tenure, the embargo was lifted from all Brasch’s papers and diaries held at the Hocken Library. She soon made herself at home in the Library’s reading room to research his extensive archives. Here is Quigley’s essay, ‘Towards a Biography’, which formed part of Enduring Legacy, a publication that came out as a celebration of the embargo lifting. Quigley currently lives in Berlin.]]>
Edited by Donald Kerr]]> 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]]>

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]]>

Fiona Farrell was on her way to Dunedin to take up residency as the Burns Fellow when the February 2011 Christchurch earthquake struck. She did a u-turn after hearing on the radio of the damage caused. A month later, after shoring up her family and Christchurch home, she headed back to Dunedin. The catastrophic event would colour her whole tenure.
Farrell wrote The Broken Book, which began as a book about walking but ‘headed off piste into chapters about walking round Christchurch in 2010 and 2011’. She wrote River Lavalle, an ecological opera about the destruction of New Zealand’s rivers; and she began work on a major project of ‘twinned volumes, the non-fiction “The Villa at the Edge of Empire”, and its accompanying novel, “Decline and Fall on Savage Street”[above right], two books placing the rebuilding of Christchurch in a political, historical and philosophical context.’]]>
Fiona Farrell]]> 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]]>

Hone Tuwhare was born in Northland in a bilingual home where he was able to indulge his love of reading. A boilermaker by trade, Tuwhare began to write in earnest in 1956 and published his first collection, No Ordinary Sun, in 1964 – it sold out in a matter of weeks, and was reprinted several times. Tuwhare’s tenure in 1969 was a ‘mini-Burns’, part of a Centennial commemoration of the Robert Burns Fellowship. It ran from June to October. The publication, Come Rain Hail, was the result of this tenure, his first time as Fellow at Otago. It was printed in the Bibliography Room, attached to the English Department. The cover design is by Tuwhare’s friend, Ralph Hotere.]]>
Hone Tuwhare]]> Book]]>

In the early 1960s, Ronald Allison Kells Mason (1905-71) was struggling both physically and mentally, with pneumonia and depression. His award as Robert Burns Fellow for 1962 served as a great fillip for him, and he described it as a ‘reprieve from death’. Before his tenure, Mason had not published anything for 21 years. During the year, he intended to write short stories and undertake research for a Rewi Alley biography, but his focus became publishing previously written poems. Collected Poems came out in July of that year. Later that month he was hospitalised with depression. He recovered, with medication, and continued with his Burns year. The love and gratitude Mason had for Dunedin and its ‘Scottishness’ saw him remain in the city for three more years.]]>
R. A. K. Mason]]> 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]]>

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]]>