OPEN results – NZPS International Poetry Competition 2025
OPEN JUDGE’S REPORT – Lee Murray
What a delight it has been to read all the wonderful entries in the adult Open section of this year’s competition. With our submission period occurring in the midst of widespread social and political unrest, environmental disasters, war, and technological change, Te Rōpū Toikupu o Aotearoa received just short of 600 poems, the engagement highlighting the ongoing importance of poetry as a means of expressing both personal and universal concerns, of helping us to make sense of the world.
autumn windfall / aflutter / in my inbox
Thematically, the poems received ran the full gamut of emotion. Grief and loss. Betrayal. Nostalgia. Regret. Shame. There were hints of humour and a good dose of our classic Kiwi stoicism. Many entries in particular resounded with women’s rage, perhaps in response to our government’s budget announcement curtailing pay equity settlements. Poets tackled all the usual subjects from death and dementia, colonisation, generational trauma, climate change, and hurts of every kind. There was joy, too, in the spring of a faithful companion, or in those halcyon watercolour moments shared with family and friends. Aotearoa poets revealed the importance of context, the branches of their poems laden with dark purple kōnini berries, their rhythm informed by the chatter of birds and the crash of waves on the beach. I was taken on road trips to forgotten towns, and invited on neighbourhood walks with the dog, over unmown lawns and through shaded ngahere. Certain poems carried me back to my own childhood: a kite day, an encounter at the bus stop, long summers spent digging pipis out of the sand with my siblings. International poets brought new perspectives and new horizons, as well as some fresh vocabulary.
at the 7-Eleven / all the flavours / gulls fighting over a cone
The poetry forms on offer were as varied as the themes, with sestinas, pantoums, sonnets, and haibun appearing alongside the careful abandon of free verse. Things that tend to alienate me as a reader are dense word-salad poems that force me to work hard to fathom their intent. These have something of an ‘emperor’s-new-clothes’ aspect to them, making me feel excluded from an important secret. I also struggle with certain rhyming forms, those parading ugly-stepsister rhymes that are clumsy, contrived, or clichéd. Happily, examples of these were rare among the submitted poems. In fact, with very few exceptions, the poems submitted all embodied that intangible ‘something’, a kernel of connection or recognition, or even whimsy, that moves the reader in some way. That spirit might have been delivered in the poem’s theme, its structure or denouement, in its imagery or, on occasion, in the perfect placement of just the right word.
on wilting poesies / a dewdrop / dazzles
In the end, choosing the winners from this cornucopia of riches was an agony. I read and re-read the poems, and each time, I discovered new angles, new interpretations, new favourites. Each time, I was sure this poem would be the one. Or possibly this one. No wait…this one. I’ll admit, some poems changed columns more than once. Ultimately, the poems that rose to the top struck me anew on each subsequent reading. Of course, my choices are subjective, since every reader brings their own experience to a poem, their own unique collection of prejudices and preferences. Another judge would likely have chosen a different selection. As a lover of horror and dark fiction, I am particularly drawn to dark, intimate themes told in beautiful, harrowing imagery—concise poems that resonate with their intimacy yet also offer a deeper universal truth. Poems that ponder those big life questions that niggle at us all. My favourites are listed below. My heartfelt congratulations go out to the winners.
That said, I would like to thank all the poets who were brave enough to share their verses with me. It has been my privilege to read your poems and sit a moment with your beautiful words. Special thanks to our competition coordinator, Kim Martins, for her diligence and tenacity in the face of such a monumental task, and to Te Rōpū Toikupu o Aotearoa for inviting me to judge this year’s competition. It has been my very great honour.
Lee Murray
FIRST PLACE
five cents – Loredana Podolska-Kint, Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland
five cents
There are rabbits here
I cannot see
journal in arm
did he write of me?
he smells of nil by mouth
hand a child’s in mine
the next cubicle loudens
as I ask about self-harm
on my tongue, suggestions
when they visit, he’s fine
Comment: Such a devastatingly beautiful short poem dealing with the slippery ‘rabbit’ of mental illness and self-harm in children. The imagery here is understated and elusive, captured in the neologism of ‘loudens’, the undefinable smell of nil by mouth, which spoke to me of the difficult cat-and-mouse game of getting help for our children, especially when they are unable to tell us what they need, or where those who could offer insight aren’t always heard. Simple language is wielded with expert skill, with guilt and helplessness flickering throughout the poem like fluorescent lights in a hospital corridor. The paradox of the last clause, ‘he’s fine’, making it very clear to readers that he, most certainly, is not. Heartbreaking and topical, this poem is hard to ignore.
SECOND PLACE
Geese – Shirley Eng, Ōtautahi Christchurch
Geese
A wedge of geese shoots over us.
One is shuffled back. Another flies figurehead.
My Aunt, once a nun, claimed a dart of birds
portends woe, since they are souls absconding.
And so. The Pope died, despite candles weeping
down to stumps and prayers falling back to senders.
Faith makes us feel we are making sense
of life, though the universe goes in its own direction.
On auntie’s death bed, her drug-sleep-talk
revealed her soul limbering-up, ready to lead
from the prow of a gang of winged sinners.
Comment: A narrator, a protagonist, a prophecy, and a call to adventure: “Geese” is an entire world delivered in just 11 sparse lines. It tells the story of Auntie, a former nun, as she draws her final breaths, strangely lucid in her ‘sleep-drug-talk’. Anchored in time by the mention of the Pope’s recent death, the juxtaposition of reverence and irreverence, of formal and familiar, sadness and hope, is expertly delivered in this tightly crafted eulogy to a beloved character. I particularly liked the way the poet braided the repeating metaphors of journeys and religion throughout to create a layered, evocative narrative where the march of life continues despite the personal tragedy. There is a quiet poignancy here, and yet I wanted to cheer for Auntie as she leads off her sinful cohort on brave new adventures. I have the feeling she will soar.
THIRD PLACE
The Lamb – SK Simons, Tauranga
The Lamb
when i was little,
i saw a farmer hold a lamb like a baby
while he cut its throat
when he was gone, we leaned over
the fence to look at it—
tiny hooves, twisted back leg,
velvet muzzle
i looked at the blood
so scarlet
spotted in the dirt, turning
brown
in the summer dust and wondered
what for?
you’re born to a cold blush of sunrise,
the first frost on a paddock
and you die, your mouth
still full of milk
the farmer
comes in and says sorry to us kids, explains
that the lamb had come out wrong
and there’s something so viscerally religious
about a man apologizing
for what had to be done with blood
on his hands
i dreamed
that in three days the lamb
came back to life and ran
through the back paddock—
full lungs, strong feet,
eyes heavy with stars.
Comment: A loss-of-innocence poem that startles with brutality and beauty as the protagonist recalls their first shocking experience with death, invoking those big life questions for the first time. ‘What for?’ The pastoral idyll is shattered in four words: ‘he cut its throat’. When I first read it, I fell in love with the Aotearoa farm context that is conjured so vividly in this poem; we can almost smell the ‘milk’, feel that ‘velvet muzzle’, see the blood ‘turning brown’ as it seeps into the ‘summer dust’. Yet on a second reading, I realised the poem could be set anywhere frost settles in the morning despite the heat of summer, and it was my own experience projected onto the poem which made me think it was set locally. The poet’s voice could be anyone, anywhere, while still being authentic and distinct, the twist coming not in the inevitable death of the crippled lamb but in the adult’s unexpected apology. We are convinced the child-turned-adult still questions why, to what purpose, that which ‘had to be done’. I loved the clever use of formatting, with the hanging phrases in the fourth stanza mimicking the seep of blood, and the final reimagined outcome (a couplet delivered in italics) leaving us with a full-lunged and starry-eyed surge of hope.
***
HIGHLY COMMENDED (in no particular order)
Foucault’s Pendulum – Annabel Wilson, Swannanoa, Canterbury
Cleaning Phase – Annabel Wilson, Swannanoa, Canterbury
Aoraki – Marjory Woodfield, Merivale, Ōtautahi Christchurch
Our Beautiful Dead – Jillian Sullivan, Oturehua, Central Otago
Pause – Elaine King, Hobsonville, Te Uru o Tāmaki Makaurau West Auckland
Snow Scene in the Garden of a Daimyo – Norman Franke, Kirikiriroa Hamilton
A Discovery from Cape Adare – Rangi Faith, Rangiora, Canterbury
***
COMMENDED (in no particular order)
The Museum – Mran-Maree, Long Gully, Victoria, Australia
Broken Threads – Sheils Hailstone, Ōtautahi Christchurch
Ammunition – Cat Moxham, Te Papa-i-Oea Palmerston North
Requiem – Gillian Ward, Kapiti
The Those-Women Club – Ime Corkery, Kirikiriroa Hamilton
Night Swimming – Sandra Lock, Waihōpai Invercargill, Southland
Inheritance – Georgia Agnew, Belfast, Ōtautahi Christchurch
Painting with Russell Clark – Rangi Faith, Rangiora, Canterbury
Dead People Don’t Want Lasagne – Jilly O’Brien, Ōtepoti Dunedin
Penelope Waits for Odysseus to Return to Ithaca – Callum Ingram, Rolleston, Ōtautahi Christchurch