One of the pleasures of judging this year's Adult Open competition was that the first placed poem declared itself very early in the reading process. It was then a matter of seeing whether it held its own against a wide range of poems of (as it turned out) almost equal quality.

In the end, ‘Hurry' kept its appeal and the lively urgency that makes its title so apt. The author's conflation of public and private concerns, with a healthy preference for the private, combines with a delightful selection of shamelessly Romantic images - "agave", "salamander", "troubadour", "sitars", and "sirocco" - to weave heady magic. The use of parallel structure to develop a poem was a popular formal device among this year's entries but no one else handled it as well as this.

Like many other poems, too, second placed 'birthday boy' deals with painful circumstances in life. Unlike others, who did not seem to know how far to go too far, this poem uses a subtle control of language to represent complex emotions. The consistent lower-case orthography is just right for such tentative realisations.

‘My sister's San Diego garden', the third placed poem, represents another frequent approach of many of the submitted poems in that it completes a narrative and reflects upon it. The poet succeeds once again, however, with a particularly firm grasp of sound - the essence of poetry - rather than by distracted focus on anecdote.

All the Highly Commended poems are worthy of this distinction and several of them pushed very strongly for third place at least. ‘The Salmon' is superb in giving us two long, narrow worlds, surging with energy. In a very moving poem on several levels, the bitter experience of ‘My Mother 2007' is leavened in part by its subject's hard earned, stoical humour. ‘After Reading Donald Hall' is one of the few really successful literary poems submitted, largely because it moves out from its reference into wider, better known things. Generally speaking, I found I preferred poems reflective of actual lived experience, instead of read or viewed observation. The participants in ‘The Americans: a film noir' and ‘In Chapter Ten' have just the right, light touch of humour to see the world and themselves from outside. ‘Preservation Inlet' and its companion ‘Magnet Bay' (Commended) are precise in their geographies.

Among the other Commended poems, arranged in no particular order, I admire the accurate wording of ‘Lost Sons' and appreciate ‘A Poem For Hone Above the Buller River', which effectively recalls a voice we are all going to miss. If other poems are distinguished by their use of sound, ‘sparrows' appeals with the immediacy of its tactile qualities. ‘15 Points Further to the Stray Tomcat' demonstrates how a poem can find its own best form, in this case without strain, whereas ‘A Life' is a fine example of a poem achieving exactly what it sets out to do. Both ‘Actors' and ‘Photograph of Daphne 1912-24' could do with further work on at least one stanza each but belong in the Commended category for their overall strengths.

Future entrants in competitions of this kind will do well to read carefully through the poems I have discussed here. The most impressive among them clearly indicate an awareness of the spoken nature of the language they use. It is always wise to read a poem aloud to at least one listener before confirming its final shape. In this way, flaws hidden on the page, especially in print, become obvious.

Tony Beyer, June 2008

Winners:

First Robin Fry, Lower Hutt - ‘Hurry'

Second Frankie McMillan, Christchurch - ‘birthday boy'

Third Elizabeth Robertson, Christchurch - ‘My sister's San Diego garden'

Highly Commended Poems:

Jenny Clay, Waitakere - ‘My Mother 2007'

Bernadette Hall, Christchurch - ‘The Americans: a film noir'

Joanna Preston, Christchurch - ‘The Salmon'

Sandra Simpson, Tauranga - ‘In Chapter Ten'

Pat White, Masterton - ‘After Reading Donald Hall'

Karen Zelas, Christchurch - ‘Preservation Inlet'

Commended Poems:

Waiata Dawn Davies, Oamaru - ‘Actors'

Raschel-Miette Eesa-Danes, Gisborne - ‘15 Points Further to the Stray Tomcat'

Rangi Faith, Rangiora - ‘A Poem For Hone Above The Buller River'

Janet Newman, Levin - ‘Photograph of Daphne 1912-24'

Kelly Pope, Christchurch - ‘sparrows'

Barry L Smith, Hamilton - ‘Lost Sons'

Kiri Piahana Wong, Albany - ‘A Life'

Karen Zelas, Christchurch - ‘Magnet Bay'

 

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