NB Please click on the (blue) title of each poem to read the full text.

Judge's Report

This contest achieved what I'd hoped it would: much fine new poetry will be available to readers in the print anthology and on-line. I thank every entrant for taking the time and trouble to send in poems, and I thank all teachers who helped to get these entries to the Poetry Society. I was impressed with the trouble many entrants went to making their poems attractive on the page, some even providing illustrations of the events, scenes or people that had inspired them. None of you have wasted time entering the contest even if you haven't gained one of the 18 places (and that's all I was permitted to reward, 3.5% of the 505 entries!). All entries were worth reading. I had a long ‘short list' to choose the place getters from. And in the final anthology of contest entries the editor may choose additional poems that are not on the lists below.
What I was looking for were poems that

  • hung together and in which everything worked together one way or another in the poem.
  • were made of lines which flowed smoothly, were easy to speak, which had cadence - some sort of rhythm based on natural phrases so that the poem is not merely jolting-along prose
  • were interesting, maybe held a surprise, and suggested that feeling had gone into the poem
  • gave the readers work to do, didn't spell everything out or go into unnecessary detail
  • might use metaphor but didn't try to make a poem of nothing but metaphors ... unless for special effect.

Each of the top three entries is skillfully written and a pleasure to read for the way the words sound, are used and strike meaning off each other, and the way that the lines and stanzas help and challenge the reader.

First place went to ∞. This is a substantial poem, more than two A4 pages but also substantial in the way it was written and in its handling of ideas. The lines are short, even one word. This and the lay-out of the lines together with a mastery of cadence slows the reading down so that the ideas, feelings, images can be taken in. The poem strikingly puts side by side thoughts about

"... the cold
infinity
we swim
in, ...

... the
spherical wall of
this universe..."

with here-and-now and everyday experiences which contrast so strongly with ideas about something as immense as the cosmos and as distant as stars and galaxies:

"... our
blisters, (mine were
always better
than yours)"

It ends evocatively:

"above us
only
other-worldly
suns
that burrow
into my
retina."

The appearance on the page is literally eye catching. Even these extracts show a poem that can be appreciated and enjoyed also by readers not interested in astronomy because of its qualities and strength as a poem.

[Webmaster's note: the poem layout, as used within the report, is inconsistent with the content management system used by this site. Please go to the Winners' Poems page at http://www.poetrysociety.org.nz/about2007openjuniorpoems to see the poem in its entirety, and in its correct layout.]

Second place went to Conjugating. This is another substantial poem, a whole A4 page, often of quite long lines. Here's a poet thinking about words and the strange ways languages have of organizing how we use words in grammar and usage. The spark to this thinking is the way that Latin, language of the ancient Romans, changes the sounds of the same verb to make different meanings (which is what the ‘conjugation' of the title means).

this morning I wrote out 126 forms
of the verb to love
in Latin
...
and there seems a beautiful pointlessness
of being able to say
amaveram or amavissem,
both meaning I had loved

but perhaps the best is amaris
what a name it would be for a child!
...
'Amaris, you're late'
they would really be saying
you are loved, you are loved, you are loved.

The poem will perhaps inspire its readers to look with new eyes at our own language and its quaint ways of expressing our thoughts and shaping our thoughts. Even though the poem uses the jargon of grammar (tenses, active, passive, subjunctive, moods) the lines always flow well, never stumbling into awkwardness.

Third place went to a poem with no title. This is a much shorter poem but equally well written. It is for its readers something of a surreal poem, a poem where you can't say easily ‘ah, this is what it's about'. The poem seems to begin in the middle of some memory of experience which causes very strong feelings as the speaker thinks about another unnamed person. Many of the lines and images are truly unreal, impossible "...Night pains my walls", but at another level they communicate violent emotion, suffering, and at times a longing for something different. There are vivid lines:

"I remember once upon a midnight.
Sleep knocking in my mind.
Knives tapping at my chest."

The poem begins with what seems to be an instruction and a comment, perhaps to the person being remembered: "Repeat me my painting/I'd colour you different in the night i see now" and ends with lines hinting at a possible future:

"I Havent forgotten.
Just resting my humming mind.
Could I deny the fire flame?

My saving grace."

The writer uses full stops and capitals in unexpected places, constantly reminding us not to take anything in the poem for granted. It's another very mature poem.

[Webmaster's note: the poem layout, as included in the report, is inconsistent with the content management system used by this site. Please go to the Winners' Poems page at http://www.poetrysociety.org.nz/about2007openjuniorpoems to see the poem in its entirety, and in its correct layout.]

Any of these three could have entered successfully the senior Open Contest. And so could the poems which have been highly commended. All of them are good poetry, often thoughtful, some substantial in length.

The Highly Commended entries:

"Looking up from Tartarus" is a historical poem told in the voice of Dido, Queen of Carthage, convincingly and thought-provokingly.

"Recipe" is another poem which mingles the every day and fantasy while portraying a few minutes in an ordinary day.

"stage secrets" very effectively and concisely uses layout to place before the reader what amount to two poems side by side, mingling the stage performance and the thoughts of actresses getting ready.

"Poetry in the garden": the title explains exactly what the poem is about, the poetry of picking beans.

"A Poem About a Poem" also effectively puts two different kinds of poems together as the narrator destroys the poetry pages of a younger self.

"Conspiracy Theories" is a piece of humorous satire about Santa and the elves being a commercial business.

"En Garde " is about a fencing bout (the sport, that is), turning it into scintillating poetry.

"The politics in Belarus" is an enjoyable piece of fantasy about the death of the writer's imagination while it was off on holiday in Malaga.

"Family history" neatly sums up issues in remembering the past and in keeping in touch with both past and present.

"Then, as now", a shorter poem, is also about the past, in this case a return to a remembered place in another country.

"What Snow Feels Like" in four short stanzas sums up the changes in yourself in a new country.

"For the Empty" is about the person who comes to you/in your most secret dreams.

"Seventh night in a row" is another shorter poem that focuses on a dream in which you are falling ... I cannot catch you.

"Translating Laughter" is exactly about what the title promises and ends I was not raised/To walk the streets naked in language, that is, or culture.

"all star" - the first two lines give the mood: "30%off - what a score/ she's glad she's a tightarse".

Other poems which particularly impressed me were "City of 1.2. Million Vanishes from Face of the Earth"; "Water"; "A Central Otago Backdrop"; "Fires catching"; "Lynley's Boots".

All sorts of poems were entered, even a little one in Spanish beginning "No soy mi amiga./Soy enfado./No soy ayuda./Soy rabia."

Some writers realized that you don't have to use standard English: "I was always envy of my friend,/she always wore fancy brand". Some played cleverly with the sound of words: "The ce repeats the sound of/beginning the word./The beginning of silence".

Some poems said it all in a few lines: "Big shiny knight/On a horse, ready/For war, a big/Sword in his huge/Hand".

One entrant wrote a real limerick: "There was a young soldier called Edser/When wanted was always in bed sir/One morning at one/They fired the gun/And Edser, in bed sir, was dead sir!"

To all contestants, thank you for letting me read your poetry. This contest gives me great hope for the future of New Zealand poetry. I hope all of you enter next year's competition.

Bernard Gadd, Auckland, June 2007


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