The Robert Burns Fellowship
The Robert Burns Fellowship is New Zealand's premier literary residency. It was established in 1958 by a group of anonymous Dunedin citizens to commemorate the bicentenary of the birth of Robert Burns, and to perpetuate the community's appreciation of the part played by the related Dunedin family of Dr Thomas Burns in the early settlement of Otago. The Fellowship aims to encourage and promote imaginative New Zealand literature and to associate writers with the University.
The annual, 12-month Fellowship provides an office in the English Department and not less than the minimum salary of a full-time university lecturer. It is open to writers of poetry, drama, fiction, biography, autobiography, essays or literary criticism who are normally resident in New Zealand, and who, in the opinion of the Selection Committee, have established by their published work, or otherwise, that their writing would benefit from their holding the Fellowship.
Previous Fellowship recipients
- Michael Harlow, 2009
- Sue Wootton, 2008
Michele Powles
Robert Burns Fellow 2010
I have to admit to almost falling off my chair when I got the phone call about this residency. “You want me, are you sure?” I am so new at this, this writing world, these spiky letters and fulsome characters. But once assured that no, there had been no mistake, I was elated, excited, electric – a glorious list of glowing adjectives. To be able to dive into an expanse of time where only books and words and characters and syntax and punctuation and words and words and words matter is incredibly exciting. But it goes further that that: towards some sort of legitimacy, towards a buoying of self belief. To be able to call oneself a writer, one that follows after a long list of New Zealand’s literary champions, is entirely precious.
The Burns Fellowship is so wonderfully packaged too: paid permission to generate thousands of strings of words; and the time and space to leave the words alone for a period before rearranging them into books and stories. And the Library of course, a repository for afternoon reading, all within arms reach. There is too something delicious about it being hosted in Dunedin, a city cloistered in the vibrancy of student life and yet expansive in its ocean views and commitment to wildlife. I used to live in Edinburgh, and I’m hoping some of that sister city’s creaky history sits within Dunedin’s bones, while the newness of New Zealand will tamper it with a fresh attitude.
And with this generous amount of time (because everyone wants to know what you’ll do with this time) I want to complete a novel project I started in the UK almost two years ago, and start a couple of other projects that have been festering in my head for too long. I want to implant in myself the smell of winter snow and cement an ability to let it out on a hot sunny day. I would like to dream, and think and simply, write.