Winners

1st: Maria Ji, Auckland - 'My Friend Nick'

1st & 2nd Runner-up, Secondary: Rebecca Hawkes, Ashburton - 'Vows' and 'Helena'

1st & 2nd Runner-up, Primary/Intermediate: Isabella Taylor, USA - 'Ephemera: Bubbles' and 'Spider Web'

(Click on the titles to read the winning poems.) 

Highly Commended: Alexandra Morris, Hastings.

Commended: Juliet McLachlan, Christchurch; Lin Wang, USA;, Lucy Diver, Auckland; Monique Hodgkinson, Wellington; Rebecca Hawkes, Ashburton; Rosa Ellis-Cook, Arrowtown; Taylor Annabell, Auckland.

Judge's Report (Judge: Adrienne Jansen)

I read nearly 400 poems in this section of the 2011 NZ Poetry Society's Competition. Every poem was worth reading. There were many poems where I wanted to sit down and have a conversation with the writer - maybe about the subject of the poem, maybe about the writing of it. That's a great thing about poetry - it sets up small conversations in the head, it creates pictures, and small moments of delight, or sadness, or laughter, or simply pleasure at the words. Everyone who entered a poem in this competition can be pleased that they created a small moment like that. There were poems about everything - war, sunset, cats, music, grandparents, spiders, the weather, relationships (lots of those) - and in particular, there were poems about the Pike River Mine disaster and the Christchurch earthquake. It's hard to write well about these big events, and I'm impressed that you took it on. I'll say something more about that later.

There were a lot of poems where the whole poem didn't quite work but it had something very good in it. Sometimes it was a particular line, sometimes it was a rhythmical musical quality, sometimes it was very original, sometimes the idea was very good even if it didn't quite make it into words. But to get one great thing in a poem is a real achievement, and if I could have that conversation with many of you, I would say ‘This is the best thing in your poem. Use that as a starting point and write a new poem from that.'

A poem by its nature is concise. A lot of poems just needed to be cut down. They had more words than they needed, and sometimes they repeated words accidentally. Some poems would have been stronger if the last line had been left off. Sometimes we use too many words, or add a line that isn't needed, because we think the reader won't get it. But readers are smart. They get it. And we don't want to spell everything out. That can take the sense of discovery, or small mystery, out of a poem. On the other hand, there were poems with really great last lines. Quite a few poems made it into my short list just because of the last line. So last lines are both important, and a challenge.

There were poems about fantastical things and poems about battles, but some of the best poems were about things that you knew well - skiing, snowboarding, a family cat, a school camp. And some of the best poems were very simple. Good poems don't just happen. Although we might sometimes write a poem which comes almost fully-formed, that's very rare. Most good poems are the result of a lot of rethinking, honing, rewriting to find just the right word, the right rhythm, the right image.

There were very many good poems in the Secondary group. It was difficult to choose between the first three poems. In the end I chose ‘My friend Nick' as the overall winner. I think this is a very accomplished poem. It's a short poem shaped around the central image of Venn diagrams. It's clever without being at all self-conscious. It appears straightforward, in its clear direct language, but it says important things about relationships in an imaginative way. It feels complete, and has that sense of being very well-worked. It's a poem to go back to and read time after time.

The two runner-up (Secondary) poems, 'vows' and 'Helena' share many qualities. They both have a sense of the drama and poignancy of life, and both have excellent endings. 'Helena' begins in a conversational tone, but combines that with a lyrical voice and great choice of words and images, as 'vows' does also. Both have that same sense of completeness, of being well-worked. All these three poems offered me a gift - a moment of insight - and that's poetry at its best.

All of the other Commended or Highly commended poems show real strengths. ‘Brother' is a great poem of sibling relationships, with its very good ending, "If I grow up/will you/ grow down and meet me?". ‘since September' is a fine example of how one can write about earthquakes or other major events by making them personal and detailed , without sentimentality. 'poem for a lamppost' uses images very eloquently. There is the grittiness of ‘this bathroom...'and plain stripped-down style of 'Return to School Camp in Year 13' which work very well for both these poems. All of these poems have that sense of music that is so much a part of poetry, a sense of rhythm of the language. And the writers have paid attention to how the poem appears on the page - where the lines break, what to punctuate, what not to punctuate.

The two runner-up poems in the Primary/Intermediate section, 'Ephemera: Bubbles' and 'Spiders' stood out for their sense of accomplishment. They both took an idea and unravelled it, thoughtfully and delightfully. There was that sense of music in the language, words very well chosen, and a sense of completeness.

It was very difficult to choose a small number of Commended poems. There were so many poems that had something good in them. In the end I chose poems that had that sense of completeness about them. 'Tilly' is a delightful picture of a cat, and 'A kid called the war back' made great use of words and strong visual images.

People in Chile have a saying that there is a poet hidden under every stone. This competition has turned over a lot of stones and uncovered a lot of poets! Congratulations to all of you who entered, and I hope you do it again next year.

 

My Friend Nick

 

My friend Nick is a lover of Venn diagrams.

If he could, he would tell me that many of my interests

and hers lie in the same delightful area of correlation

and things shared, where the two circles

hesitantly overlap.

 

Under different circumstances, he would say,

a less turbulent relationship was completely

within the bounds of imagination since

both she and I had working hearts

that were more or less in the right place.

 

Maria Ji, St Cuthbert's College, Auckland

Overall Winner

 

Vows

 

+

the only difference between fairytales and being

alone is that in all the stories,

there are no empty radio stations, real queens

cannot fill their lives with static.

+

it is the Night Before and already you belong to him.

you dream of walking down the aisle with your arms

curled about your ribs, protecting

the shallow black mangrove pools inside;

+

in order to become a queen you break the shells of

oysters, you sacrifice the bodies of bees, you spill

the last of your peregrine breath

into the pillow.

you learn to fry bacon the way he likes it.

+

when the day comes it is longer than you expected;

+

the shadows longer than you expected.

 

Rebecca Hawkes, Ashburton

Rangi Ruru Girls' School

Runner-up, Secondary

 

Helena

 

you've always known, honey,

that there are so many kinds of awful men

 

and yet you're surprised anyway.

[seventeen hours, a bath and two

showers later and you can still smell him on you. a secret.]

tear streaked, fall down six flights of stairs, up

twelve. silk, ripped

silk. peel back tissue-paper selves, and you become small again.

 

my daughter, and something has been taken

away; spread, held up to the light and

discarded. you are beauty that shadows the sun, you are cut

out of the fabric of the world and it's so

hard to believe you're not real until I look at you

side on.

there is too much future for this,

you have too many futures

I do not want the sun, do not want

the briefness of your lips, I want

you

 

home. safe, un-

 

harmed.  the sky will shelter you.

 

[you are asleep when I come in. I make sure I am too quiet

to wake you.]

 

Rebecca Hawkes, Asburton

Rangi Ruru Girls' School

Runner-up, Secondary

 

Ephemera: Bubbles

 

A blow of life

filling

your

being

with

knowledge and air

Filling you round as

a perfect moon,

in a

perfect place

You

Soar

Climbing the spiraled staircase to infinite possibilities

and

mirroring the imperfect world

in a crisp

photograph

A plump finger will reach up and tap you oh so gently on the shoulder

And you fall in the droplets of your creation

Fall down

down

to the ground

You will remember how you never touched the sky

[or were even close]

As you shattered into a thousand pieces

 

Isabella Taylor, USA

Runner-up, Primary/Intermediate

 

Spider Web

 

I did not see you

Invisible

Death

Wearing only

Water strung like pearls

Your luring architecture mastered over centuries

A geometric maze

I sit and wonder how many innocent lives you have taken

So proudly displayed upon your

Mandala patterned streets

Various coloured lights of

Blue, red and yellow blushing gold

In the dusky light of dawn

As you take my soul

Memory by memory

Thought by thought

 

Isabella Taylor, USA

Runner-up, Primary/Intermediate

 

 

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