Our most recent resident, Rachel O’Neill, has reflected on the six months they spent in Randell Cottage in a new video and report to Trustees.  

In the report, Rachel says, “The Fellowship enabled me to dive deeper into longer-form narrative poetry, especially lyric work that explores the visual potential of the page.” 

They pose the driving question, what is the music of the moment?, responding that their listening practice during the residency had enabled them “to be attentive to the sensory and imaginative nuances of time and place, particularly Thorndon and broader Pōneke… Part of my ‘listening practice’ involved collecting ‘found instruments’ and sounds from my immediate environment that I would ‘play’, record, and edit into sound design works, which in turn sparked a sort of ‘audial image’ that seeded various forms of poetry… Sounds of all kinds became sensory portals for me.”