Annabel Wilson
Writer and teacher Annabel Wilson lives in Swannanoa, North Canterbury. Her poetry has been widely published and her plays have been performed at UNESCO Cities of Literature Short Play Festival, Festival of Colour, BATS theatre, Te Pou and recorded for RNZ. Annabel’s first book, Aspiring Daybook, won the NZ Mountain Book and Film Festival Best Fiction award (2018) and was long-listed for the Ockham Book Awards (2019). Annabel is also a recipient of the R.A.K Mason Fellowship at NZ Pacific Studio, the AAWP Emerging Writers’ Prize and a residency at Robert Lord Writers’ Cottage. She has recently completed her PhD in Creative Writing through Massey University. https://www.annabelwilson.net/
Genre:
- Adult Fiction
- Flash Fiction
- Poetry
- Plays
- Review Writing
Skills:
- Academic Writing
- Editing
- Long-Term Placement (schools, universities)
- Playwriting
- Poetry Readings
- Reviews
Branch:
Canterbury
Location:
Swannanoa
Publications:
Aspiring Daybook
In Aspiring Daybook, poet Annabel Wilson tells of a year in the life of Elsie Winslow, who has just returned from Europe to Wānaka to take care of her terminally ill brother and finds herself thinking about love in ways she didn’t expect.
Like the mountains that surround her and the lake that greets her every morning with a different face, Elsie’s story is a fractured, sedimentary and reflective thing, exploring the hidden darkness inside the beauty that is everywhere.
Elsie’s story is told in the form of a diary packed with poems, snapshots, conversations and letters. The result is an immersive, genre-bending book that shines with a particular light only found in the deep South.
On your side, twilight bathes paddocks Steinlager-green all the way to those wedding cake Hawkduns, the white crown in the distance. The human need to see shapes in things: a rock that looks like a wing. We carry on, not speaking. We carry on not speaking. You know I want to ask you something.
No Science To Goodbye - theatrical poem
Elsie is a tempestuous young expat who returns to Wanaka from Berlin to look after her terminally ill brother, Sam. She runs into her former lover Frank who is now a glaciologist – a coolly logical and rational scientist. The ensuing complications push them to the torn edges of love, loss, risk.
The Southern Alps are as rugged and complex and as painfully beautiful as the relationships that form and melt under their gaze.
Written by Annabel Wilson
Directed by KJ Smith
Soundscape by Cory Champion
For RNZ - Recording director Adam Macaulay Sound engineer Darryl Stack
https://www.rnz.co.nz/collections/drama-online/no-science-to-goodbye-a-theatrical-poem-by-annabel-wilson