A poet and an associate professor in the School of English, Film, Theatre, and Media Studies, Anna was eighteen years old last time she was at Katherine Mansfield’s villa as a tourist. “At the time, I could have sworn I heard someone tapping away on a typewriter, even though I found out that no one was actually there.”
Anna plans to work on a new collection of pastoral poetry during her time at the villa, where Katherine Mansfield lived and wrote during the latter part of her life.
“My second collection of poetry was The Pastoral Kitchen, published in 2001. I would like to start again with the pastoral, but I imagine this new collection taking it into some more surprising and darker places, travelling along metaphysical paths as well as the brambled and boggy paths of the real world.
“The Menton fellowship will provide perspective for thinking about New Zealand in relation to elsewhere, and for thinking about place both metaphorically and very literally.” Anna has published seven collections of poetry, most recently I, Clodia (2014).