As a child, Dame Fiona Kidman loved to listen in on other people’s conversations. That innate curiosity, she believes, laid the foundations for her remarkable career as one of New Zealand’s most distinguished writers.
The Dame at home
At 85, she’s still putting pen to paper. But the literary legend admits her eavesdropping skills aren’t quite what they used to be.
“I’m deaf!” she laughs.
“I have hearing aids but it’s very frustrating because I’m not anywhere near as good at picking up conversations as I used to be.”
Fiona’s speaking to the Weekly from her house on the hill in Hataitai, Wellington, where she’s lived for 51 years. With views across Cook Strait, the airport, Hutt Valley and the mountains beyond. Her home provides an ever-changing vantage point that she can’t imagine being without.
“I love that it’s unchanging in the geographical sense,” she shares.
“But it’s different every time you look out the window.”
The bungalow also features prominently in new documentary The House Within. Which paints an intimate portrait of Fiona’s fascinating and often tumultuous life.
Having penned three memoirs already, Fiona says she wasn’t exactly looking to turn the lens on herself. Yet when approached by filmmaker Joshua Prendeville, her interest was piqued. She’d turned down biographers’ requests in the past to write about her, but this project felt different.
Telling her truth
“I could see the possibilities there might be in presenting a story in which I’m not hiding myself,” she muses.
“I think I’m actually very revealing in the documentary. I hope I show that I’m a real human being – not just a face behind the books.”
Described by the filmmaker as not only a look into Fiona’s life and career. But a love letter to Wellington, the film is hauntingly beautiful. It lifts the lid on the writer’s childhood in Kerikeri and Waipu, revealing how she learned to read and write at age six during a stint in hospital. Before deciding at age 22, while pregnant with her first child, that she would become a professional writer.
“I made a definite decision that this is what I needed to do if I was to live happily in the world,” she says.
Book reviews led to playwriting, before her hugely successful. She released her deeply scandalous first novel, A Breed of Woman, in 1979. The backlash over her portrayal of a woman’s sexuality was so painful that Fiona considered giving up writing entirely.
It would take a year before she would return to her typewriter and thank goodness she did, as she went on to publish another 35 books throughout her prolific career, including poetry, short stories, screenwriting and novels.
Love and loss
But it’s the breathtaking final scenes of the new documentary that are the most moving, in which Fiona reflects on the death of her beloved husband Ian in 2017 after an accident at home. To lose her partner of 58 years was earth-shattering.
“I still miss him, I do,” she admits.
“But Ian and I used to talk about what would the other one do if one of us died, and we both agreed that we wouldn’t just give in or give up. We’d live as well as we could. It’s been eight years since I’ve been on my own and this is the life I’ve been given for now, so I try to make the best of it.”
Family first, always
As mother to Joanna and Giles, and grandmother to six and a great-grandmother to six more, Fiona’s whānau provides enormous support and joy. She sees a family member virtually every day and more often than not a relative will be occupying the spare bedroom for any length of time.
The house on the hill continues to be the family hub and Fiona wouldn’t have it any other way.
“Being a grandmother is the most wonderful thing,” she enthuses.
“I have lovely relationships with them.”
Still writing, still grounded
Fiona, who has recently released a book of poems, The Midnight Plane, is still deeply involved in the Randell Cottage Writers Trust she helped establish more than 20 years ago and is still writing – mainly poetry and short stories. But she believes her craft has changed in recent years.
“It’s more sombre,” she says.
“There are grief notes.”
Another novel at her stage of life is unlikely, she says. Instead, Fiona wants to use her time carefully and to enjoy each day. Whatever else, she remains determined to stay present.
“I don’t believe in writers living in ivory towers,” she shares.
“I don’t believe that if my grandchildren walk up to the path to my door, that I should say, ‘Oh, I’m busy today, I’m writing.’ I’ve never been that sort of writer. I like to be part of the world because what would you write about if you weren’t involved with things?”
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