Yvonne du Fresne

From the newsletter of the International Institute of Modern Letters

We are sad to learn of the death this last weekend of Yvonne du Fresne.

Yvonne du Fresne's chief early encouragers were Robin Dudding of Islands and Chris Hampson of Radio New Zealand, and her collection of short stories, Farvel, one of the first fiction titles published by Victoria University Press back in 1980, makes a special point of acknowledging their support.
Farvel was a voice- and subject-discovering book for du Fresne. Its stories come to us through the eyes of a small child, Astrid Westergaard, growing up in a Danish family in the Manawatu in the 1930s, a time when all the classroom maps were still covered in British Empire pink.
Farvel is thus about the discovery of both personal and national identity. Bill Manhire wrote in his introduction: “Like the oldest Norse tales, the Farvel stories have all the flair and pace of oral narrative . . . . But a better way of describing their effect might be to borrow the image of embroidery which appears so often in them. Farvel is like a tapestry, with fresh scenes being added story by story until at the last the richness of a complex picture is revealed. And Yvonne du Fresne's language can be like a needle flashing in and out of linen. Her writing has the intense, controlled exuberance of one of her Danish women at work on a piece of tapestry - human energy directed well.”

Yvonne du Fresne went on to publish more books, novels as well as short stories, and a fuller account of these (along with a Writers in Schools interview) is posted on the NZ Book Council's website.

A study of her work - For Was I Not Born Here?: Identity and Culture in the Work of Yvonne Du Fresne - was published last year.

A service for Yvonne will be held at the Cockburn Street Chapel, cnr Cockburn Street and Onepu Road, Kilbirnie, Wellington on Thursday, 17 March at 2pm.