Bernadette Hall – 1996

For Bernadette Hall, the Burns Fellowship (1996) was a 'major boost' to her writing career and at fifty, she considered herself lucky to be considered eligible. One significant collection resulting from her Fellowship was Still Talking, a record of the conversation she continued to have with her mother, who had died in late 1995. On display is Hall's notebook of that year, with reference to her poem 'Duck', which appears in Still Talking. A barely recognisable Joanna Paul, Hall's mentor and friend, is pictured in the photograph taken at Seacliff; the latter the subject of 'Shaddai', another poem in this volume that evokes both love and loss.

Bernadette Hall, Still Talking. Wellington: Victoria University Press, 1997; ___, Diary, September 1996; ___, Photograph of Seacliff and Joanna Paul, 1996. Private Collection.