What is it like to be a writer in residence at Randell Cottage? How does this special ‘moment out of time’ free up the creative mind?

Lynn Davidson has just completed her six-month stay in the Cottage. She shares her reflections on the experience in a newly released video, interwoven with readings from her latest poem.

For Lynn, the residency opportunity came to her like “a beautiful life raft on a rough sea” allowing her the tranquillity to drop deeply inside herself as she wrote.

She says, “the historical aspect of the cottage … was incredibly helpful to me as I wrote about, and imagined, my settler family migrating from Scotland to New Zealand in the mid-1920s. The neighbourhood and the cottage itself helped me to imagine my way into their lives as newly arrived immigrants to Wellington.”

Lynn is continuing work on her memoir of creative essays and poetry, which she hopes to submit to her publisher in the next twelve months.