‘I’ll let my balloons go in the wind’, I said to Lynley Edmeades, the course co-ordinator of the Master of Creative Writing programme at the University of Otago in October of 2025. Late 2024, When I saw that the year-long thesis programme was first offered for 2025 I lovingly wrapped it in cellophane – so it remained visual in my mind, but safely put away in my pipe dream cupboard. Pipe dreams are what late nineteenth century opium smokers experienced and are hallucinatory in nature. Such dreams we experience in the eye of our minds, not in reality. But many suggest they can be insightful and take us beyond the mental fences we construct ourselves. This dream of mine crept further back into the cupboard as the year wore on.
Bice Grace Lapin 