Write to your wartime ancestors

POST IT OUT THERE: Wellington artist Connah Podmore is the 2015 Anzac Bridge Fellow based at the New Zealand Pacific Studio at Mt Bruce. Her project is to use Wairarapa people's postcards to ancestors or other people involved in war, for an art installation at Pukaha Mt Bruce on Anzac Day.

A fine arts masters graduate is inviting Wairarapa people to write postcards to ancestors or other people involved in World War I, to be used as an Anzac Day art installation.

Connah Podmore, of Wellington, is the 2015 Anzac Bridge Fellow, who will be based at the New Zealand Pacific Studio at Mt Bruce, near the Anzac Bridge at Kaiparoro.

Podmore was handing out postcards and talking about her three-week project Writing to History at Sunday's Wai Word event in Carterton on Sunday.

"It's a postcard to someone or something," she said.

She had previously done a presentation at Masterton Library and got some "really beautiful" cards back.

"One man wrote a poem off the top of his head."

She said a boy penned a letter to a wartime donkey, which started: "Dear random donkey, what was it like at war?"

"It was stunning. He was talking about animals going to war, which wasn't their choice."

The collected postcards will make up a display at Pukaha Mt Bruce, combined with video work and audio of some of the sentiments on the cards.

She will read from selected cards at the Anzac Day service at the bridge.

Her own postcard is to the designer and engineer of the bridge, Alfred Falkner, who lost his son at Gallipoli.

Trust House sponsors the fellowship, with support from the Friends of the Anzac Memorial Bridge Kaiparoro.

There will be further presentations about the project and a chance to write postcards at Eketahuna Library on Friday at 11am, or at the studio at Mt Bruce on Saturday at 11am.

-Letter to "A donkey that went to war":

Dear random donkey, what was it like at war? Did you get shut away in big stuffy pens which smelled? I know you won't see this, but the next time I see a donkey, I will ask them. Kind regards, A.