Today, on the blog, I am excited to have Iona Winter. She is a very talented Dunedin poet and writer. She received a NZSA Mentorship and the 2016 Headland Frontier Prize, she has performed at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, and was shortlisted for the Bath Novella-in-Flash Award.
What is an early book / author that inspired you to write?
As a child I was into books of all kinds, especially ones with a strong female character, as a way of escaping. Then putting words on paper, leaving the stories in my head, or telling stories out loud, became a regular pastime. I was a pretty vocal kid, and was often ticked off for ‘telling long-winded fibs’. Maybe this was the beginning of my journey with creative writing/storytelling!
I gravitated towards writing poetry as I edged into adolescence. Being very influenced by emotions (as most of us are in our teens) I wrote a lot, probably as a kind of therapy. Hone Tuwhare, Patricia Grace, Sam Hunt, James K Baxter and Witi Ihimaera are writers who’ve had a profound effect on me (and still do).
I compiled my first poetry manuscript when I was about 19, and remember photocopying several, stapling them, handwriting cover letters, parcelling them up, and posting them to publishers. Rejection-city that was, and I think (retrospectively) it was pretty bruising at the time. After that wee foray into the literary world, I meandered into academic writing for a couple of decades.
What are you reading now?
At the moment I’ve got a few books on the go (as per usual, in different locations around my flat).
Hone Tuwhare: Deep River-Talk, Mary Oliver: A Thousand Mornings, Christina Baker Kline: Orphan Train, Flow magazine, and The Revive Café Cookbook 6.
Lined up next are: Tina Makereti: The Imaginary Lives of James Pōneke, and Carson McCullers: The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, and probably another random book to be discovered in the library I work at. It’s a dream job working amongst books, and discovering newbies, or old classics to be re-read. A good book for me is one I can return to and discover new layers.
What is your daily writing schedule like?
I’m best in the mornings, and have two days where I’m not working or have other ‘life’ things on. I had a brain injury in 2017, which slowed me dramatically, and while I’m greatly improved can no longer write like I did before.
These days I have lists, of things that need to be done now, or later. Like this interview, or submissions to journals, having a deadline is very useful. But every day I am thinking about writing, and on my phone or in a notebook there are screeds of ideas, phrases, sentences or dialogue that have come to me (in various shapes and forms) during the day.
About once a month I go through said screeds, and compile them in a running document, either for poetry or prose to be expanded upon (or not). I’m pretty ruthless about what is eliminated from the lists these days.
What are you most proud of?
I’m most proud of getting then the wind came published last year. To get a publisher on board with a hybrid collection of poetry, flash fiction and short stories wasn’t easy. Roger Steele (Steele Roberts Aotearoa) was taken with my style of writing and picked the manuscript up. He and his team have created a beautiful taonga, and they even used a photo I’d taken, for the cover, which I was pretty chuffed with too.
What do you hope people get out of reading your work?
My hope is that people will connect with something deep in themselves. I guess, because I write about difficult topics most of the time, connecting with readers is vital. Not only to share my work, but also to raise conscious awareness of these issues which often remain silent or hidden in our communities.
I see it as a way to stimulate discussion too. I write, for the most part, to have the work read aloud, because I traverse the spaces between poetry, prose, and written and spoken word. I come from two strong oral storytelling traditions (Māori and Celtic) and figure this is also an element of my writing, plus it’s another wonderful way to connect with others.
If you could tell your younger writing self anything, what would it be?
Don’t worry about those rejections, they’re great compost for whatever you’re writing next. Keep going, trust your intuition, share your work with others, don’t be afraid to take risks, and stay true to yourself. Being trendy or fashionable only lasts a season.
Bio:
Iona Winter (Waitaha/Pākehā) lives in Ōtepoti Dunedin. Published and anthologised in Aotearoa and internationally, she writes in hybrid forms that explore the spaces between poetry and prose. ‘then the wind came’, her debut collection of poetry, flash fiction and short stories, was published in 2018 (Steele Roberts Aotearoa). She is currently working on a poetry manuscript, and a collaborative project with sonic and visual artists.
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