Still close with Otago flatmates after 60 years

Getting a call on her birthday that she had won the Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement (PMALA) in Poetry was a “wonderful surprise” for Otago alumna Dinah Hawken.

“I feel thrilled to be in such good company, including some notable Dunedin poets.”

Taranaki born, Dinah came to Dunedin in the early sixties to study physiotherapy at Otago and spent her first year at the then Dominican Hall. The Hall ran from an 1880s building in Park Street, bought by the Dominican Sisters in 1946 and eventually sold in 1978 to become part of Aquinas College.

“The nuns were all very nice and more lenient than some of the other halls, which was rather good.”

Dinah says she keeps in close contact with her former flatmates from her Otago student days. At the time of her interview, Dinah was planning to meet two of her former Otago flatmates for lunch the following day.

“There were seven of us who lived in those big houses in Dunedin and we’ve remained great friends and kept in touch ever since.

“There were a lot of social activities in those days. New learning was exciting and socially it was great fun.”

After working for around a year as a physiotherapist, Dinah decided to study Social Work at Te Herenga Waka/Victoria University of Wellington (VUW). There she met her future husband Bill Mansfield who was studying international law.

From there she developed an interest in psychotherapy and counselling and spent more than 20 years as a student counsellor at VUW.

While working at VUW Dinah took the creative writing course developed by Otago alumnus and former PMALA winner, Bill Manhire (BA, MA Hons, M.Litt) CNZM, which she says was a “major turning point for her”.

“I began to take my writing more seriously and my first book of poetry was published in 1987 by Victoria University Press. My eleventh book is due to come out next year.”

Dinah says her husband Bill had a career at the NZ Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT) and they had two postings in New York, where Dinah took the chance to further her studies, initially completing a BA and later a Master of Fine Arts.

Dinah’s last book of poetry Faces and Flowers (2024) brought her back to Dunedin to stay in the Caselberg Trust house in Broad Bay, and undertake research in the Hocken Library.

She says the book is a response to the work of Dunedin artist Patricia France, who began painting in her fifties, while in Ashburn Hall (a Dunedin psychiatric hospital).

“She was a part of the strong group of artists and poets in Dunedin in the seventies and eighties,” Dinah says.

Dinah’s brother, Professor Michael Hawken, completed his PhD in Physiology at Otago in 1979 and has had an academic career as a neuroscientist in the United Kingdom and at New York University where he currently works.

Dinah is slowing down, but plans to keep on writing as long as she can from her Kāpiti Coast home.

Fellow Otago alumna Barbara Else (MA, 1969), won the PMALA award for Fiction.

Kōrero by Kerry Dohig, Communications Adviser Development and Alumni Relations Office.