FIONA FARRELL is a novelist and poet from Otanerito on Banks Peninsula. She is currently living in Ireland as one of the inaugural recipients of the Rathcoola Residency for Australian and New Zealand writers and artists.

Farrell comments: ‘The eel in NZ has some of the same mythic quality accorded to the snake elsewhere. For NZ children it is the sinister creature of deep pools. Researching material for a brochure about Te Waihora/Lake Ellesmere near Christchurch, I became aware of the extraordinary life led by eels, especially the largest long finned females, and as I become older, the lives of old female creatures take on a greater power.’

 

Poem: Eel