Rachel O'Neill
Rachel O'Neill lives in Paekakariki on the Kapiti Coast, where she writes poetry and fiction and makes art. Her story ‘The Orienteer’ was highly commended in The Long and the Short of It competition, run by Unity Books and Sport in 2011. Her writing appears in several issues of Hue & Cry and Turbine, and her story ‘Calf Club 1989’ was transformed into an audio story by Melbourne-based Paper Radio.
O’Neill comments: ‘If my memory is correct, children's birthday parties in 1980s rural New Zealand were the kind of epic affairs that disturbed the myth that the country is not very populated. It seemed like every man, woman and child came to some of my parties. My mother put eggs on spoons and we ran as fast as we could without dropping them. There was also an unusual game that involved completing an obstacle course involving giant outdoor furniture.
‘In the poem there is an entanglement of child and adult point of view. It mirrors the way we humans can easily be confused by certain transitions, say from a sense of new life to experiencing more complex feelings around what new life might mean.’
