Twenty years ago, Peter Finlay spent time at Lake Alice, the psychiatric institution.  Shortly after leaving, he wrote the story of his hospitalization and his re-entry to civilian life. There’s a police beating, medication haze, nefarious inpatient characters, strange thought-processes, and through it all, the calm voice of the writer, fully oriented to time, place and self, who explains what it was like in 1987 to come undone and get put in one of New Zealand’s most infamous psychiatric hospitals.  

The Frozen Funds Trust is supporting the publication of Peter Finlay’s Blue Messiah.  The Trust was established to distribute grants from a fund originating from the interest on patients’ savings whilst in psychiatric hospitals over many years. After returning money to everyone they could find, five million dollars was left.  In 2008, its inaugural year, the Trust  called for projects from the mental health community that would educate the public about “the legacy of institutionalization”. 

In recent years, Peter Finlay has regularly attended the creative writing class at Toi Ora Live Art Trust and is now enrolled in English and writing classes at Auckland University.  Toi Ora is an art centre for painters, printers, musicians, writers, and craftspeople in Grey Lynn, Auckland.  It provides a space for people who use mental health services to make their art.  Peter and Toi Ora approached Frozen Funds, and the result is this compelling publication.  

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