The fourth recipient of the Seresin Landfall
Residency is writer Pat White, who plans to use the Residency to work on a collection of ‘Watershed Stories’: essays about our landscape
and environment. He will think and write about people –
such as H.D. Thoreau, Bashō, and Annie Dillard – who may have lived alone in
huts, often near water. Waterfall
Bay in Marlborough, where the Residency is located, will be the ideal place to
do this.
‘I have been
researching this idea for a while now, and can think of no better place to be
when I start the writing,’ Pat White says.
The collection will
be a loose follow-up to his book of essays How
the Land Lies: Of Longing and Belonging (VUP, 2010).
Pat also expects to write some
poetry – on a previous residency, while working on a life of the West Coast
author Peter Hooper, he wrote a suite of poems that will be published in a
limited edition by Wai-te-ata Press in October.
‘I
am particularly grateful to Seresin Estate and Landfall for the opportunity to spend my time writing in a place where other tasks do not
intrude. Such times are valuable, as they are a rare gift. I shall be able to devote
myself to the new work, uninterrupted, for weeks on end.’
Michael
Seresin says ‘Pat White is the deserved winner of this year’s award. Waterfall
Bay, surrounded by water & calm, is ideal for his writing project. I wish
him well.’
The inaugural Seresin Landfall Residency
recipient was C.K. Stead, who spent six weeks in Tuscany in 2009 completing his
memoir South-west of Eden. To
celebrate the award’s establishment, an additional residency was made available
that year to Jenna Shaw, who completed her first novel while at Waterfall Bay. The
second recipient was Wystan Curnow, who worked in Tuscany on his forthcoming
book on Colin McCahon. In 2011 Serie Barford stayed in Marlborough and worked
on a short story collection based on the concept of ‘teu le va’, the notion of
taking care of the relationships within and between the visible and invisible
worlds.
Entries for the 2013 Seresin Landfall Residency
close on 31 January 2013.
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