Robert Lord Residency: Where the unexpected happened

By Sudha Rao | Posted:

I was fortunate to be granted a month’s residency at the Robert Lord Cottage in November 2021 to focus on writing and anything associated with writing. I was eager to return to Dunedin. I grew up in Dunedin after leaving Pondicherry, India, where my father had been a Reader in Pathology at the Jawaharlal Institute of Post Medical Education and Research (JIPMER). When he took up the opportunity for a two-year Research Fellowship at the Otago Medical School, the six of us, my parents and us four children, journeyed across to the South Island, New Zealand. The ‘South Island’ distinction was important to us because as residents of a vast country made of a single land mass, understanding that a country could be a collection of land masses was the first of many firsts.

Landing in Dunedin on 3 January 1968 was a unique experience. It was the height of summer, we were told, and so we dressed accordingly in light cottons. The plane landed at Momona Airport. As we stepped out, sleet hit us. I experienced cold for the first time but didn’t recognise it as cold until someone mentioned that it was cold day. However, I saw green unfolding hills and the lush light that came from the sky and land.

My return to Dunedin in 2021 brought back this memory although I was travelling by car and entered Dunedin via the Kilmog. This part of the travel was so familiar. The Kilmog was grey with fog. But the trees had grown and I couldn’t see as far I remembered being able to see about 25 years ago.

The warm welcome on arrival at the cottage made up for the slightly uncomfortable temperature. When I walked into the living room, I saw the desk at which Robert Lord had sat and looked up to see his half-hidden face suppressing laughter, my hair stood on end. I decided then that I would sit at the desk below him under his smiling eyes and make my time here a worthwhile one for me.

I had come with three ‘projects’ in my mind. First, to write poems, which I hoped would form a second collection for publication. My first collection will be published in June 2022. The second idea was to explore making dance to a suite of poems I had written as part of my MA Thesis in 2017 at the International Institute of Modern Letters, Victoria University, Wellington titled Stoned by ecstasy, which I refer to as ‘dance poems’. These poems are a nod to my first love, dance, and the many years I was enveloped by it. While I had always written poems, I had no idea that I would come back to it seriously and voraciously. The third, was to undertake research about migrants to Dunedin and in particular Indian migrants to Otago to explore the cultural impact they had or didn’t have in their new communities.

I also wanted to connect with some dear friends I had made during my growing up years at Otago University, as a librarian, mother, dancer and just being a Dunedinite. Yes, I consider Dunedin my New Zealand home even though I have lived for almost 25 years in Wellington.

Before I tell you about what I spent my time on during my residency, a question my friends frequently asked when I told them why I was back in Dunedin. I missed Dunedin and returning to the city, I became aware of the more manageable pace of life, a level of generosity from people that was gracious yet controlled, and the city had a sense of being itself. It was not in competition with any other. I loved/love this aspect. I also realised that I missed the autumn colours, though my residency was when the season was just entering summer. I remembered how while walking through the town belt in autumn the gold-bronze light shone bright to let winter enter. I was always elated during this season. In this sense Wellington is more ‘New Zealand’, the bush that surrounds where I live remains evergreen, more reminiscent of native bush. I visited the houses we lived in in Dunedin and remembered my father in particular, who is no longer with us. Some hilarious experiences learning to drive on hilly streets came rushing back including my first experience of driving on black ice.

I had wonderful visits with my friends during my stay at the cottage and it was like I had never been apart. Fabulous. Just as joyful was meeting up with two contacts, suggested by the Residency – the super-charged and most generous Nicky Page and the gracious and learned Nicola Cummins who has given me a key to understand James Joyce (if I attempt this again). Through Nicky Page, I met a young Indian poet currently undertaking a PhD in the English Department at Otago University. This unexpected introduction and subsequent meeting with Rushi Vyas was one of my many highlights. It was so wonderful to discuss Indian poets, diaspora in the USA and UK. It’s not a discussion I can have with other New Zealand poets easily. However, this meeting only fuelled my desire to learn more about the cultural voice of Indians in New Zealand – not just the food and the dance, but in terms of literature and the arts in general.

The other unexpected gifts were my meetings with Sue Wootton, Michelle Elvy, Majella Cullinane, Vanda Symon and Ruth Arnison. I had intended to catch up with as many writers as possible.

While each of them lifted my spirit in their own way, the most unexpected event occurred as a result of a somewhat longer than anticipated lunch conversation with Majella. I wanted to thank Majella for assessing my manuscript to be published. During our conversation I casually dropped in that a character had wandered into my consciousness about 15 years ago and that I couldn’t get her out in the form of a poem or an essay. Majella suggested I talk to my character directly and make this a daily writing practice. I was electrified by this suggestion. So, the next day, early in the morning I opened a new page, and began scratching with my pencil. At the end of my residency time, I had written almost 10,000 words. I had begun to write something akin to fiction. This was not, even remotely, an expected outcome of my stay at the cottage.

To redeem myself, I did write one poem. I also contacted the Hocken Library and have begun to start my research process. I will definitely need to return to Dunedin.

I think Robert would have been happy when I gathered a huge bunch of blowsy bright pink, yellow and white roses from the next-door students’ garden and placed them in a bowl on the writing table. These bushes were laden and bowing in the rain and I felt I had to relieve them of their weight. The yellow ones had a delicious fragrance, which helped me write, I thought.

All the while, I noticed the white and red kākā beak plants outside the front window were well spent and bearing seed heads. I collected seed heads and planted some of them in a pot in Wellington recently. I’m hoping they will be a success.

The cottage was an experience in time travel. I will remember most fondly the charming courtyard at the back with the chopped-off plane tree busily sending out re-growths, the purple hosta flower heads and the ever-shedding large tree, which brought dunnocks, sparrows, the odd finch and of course the blackbirds. Think I might have heard the pīwakawaka (fantail).

Back in Wellington, I am surrounded by kāka, tūī and tauhou (waxeye) and the green-purple bush. I no longer have as much time to write as I did during that wonderful month in Dunedin. I continue to work on my ‘fiction’ and am looking forward to starting on my poems. For now, I have put aside the idea of making dance/movement to Stoned by ecstasy – its time hasn’t come yet. But my time in Dunedin and the cottage was priceless.