Tongan-Rotuman awarded Fulbright residency Featured
David Eggleton
24 July, 2017. A poet of Tongan-Rotuman heritage has been awarded a prestigious artist's residency to Hawaii.
Born in Auckland and of mixed European, Tongan, and Rotuman descent, Eggleton spent part his formative years in both Fiji and Auckland, dropping out of school to take up performance music and poetry. he later moved to Dunedin, where he has been based since the 1980s.
David Eggleton, one New Zealand's most pre-eminent poets, has received the 2017 Fulbright-Creative New Zealand Pacific Writer's residency.
He won best poetry book in the Ockham National Book Awards 2016 and the Prime Minister's Award for Literary Excellence in Poetry that same year.
Mr Eggleton said he felt motivated to apply after his mother died, and he is looking forward to working on two main pieces of work - poetry and prose.
"Just writing about Pasifika, in relation to my own family history and that of my maternal side and how we were brought up as a family, first in Fiji and later brought here to Aotearoa New Zealand and just the way that impacted on the shape my life has taken," he said.
"I've been writing for quite a while now and its now time to focus on the root causes of my writing and why I choose to write the way I do."
-RNZI
