Poet and novelist share prize

By MARGIE THOMSON

The sought-after Sargeson Fellowships have this year gone to poet Riemke Ensing and novelist Denis Baker, who will each take their turn living and working full time in the airy quiet of the Sargeson Centre flat.

At 62, Riemke's publishing career has spanned 30 years and produced nine volumes of poetry, including her most recent collection, Talking Pictures - Selected Poems.

Now, it's time to spread her wings and move into prose with a "portrait of her mother" who died five years ago.

Ensing and her family immigrated from the Netherlands in 1951, and she sometimes explores this experience in her work.

"My mother's life in the Netherlands and later as a migrant in New Zealand, bears witness to her amazing strength of character, intelligence, perseverance and resilience and it is this that I want to capture in prose," she says.

Baker is so far best known as a writer of short stories. He has published one collection, Floating Lines, and had others broadcast on National Radio.

Now aged 35, his first novel, On A Distant Island, will be published later this year.

He will use the fellowship to finish some short stories and begin work on a new novel.

His personal story illustrates perfectly the value of the Sargeson Fellowship, which has been sponsored by law firm Buddle Findlay since 1997.

Torn between his identification as a writer and his need to earn money, he took on full-time work, only to realise that he was doing less writing. So he gave up his job to write full time.

"Now the novel is finished, my savings are gone and I teach just enough to pay the bills. I'm flat broke, but am writing well and have never been happier," he says.

Ensing also has had to balance her writing with her career as a tutor at the University of Auckland. Only now, in retirement, is she able to write full time.

It's been a fruitful retirement, as the university has appointed her an Honorary Research Fellow in English.