We are very pleased to announce that Isla Hindin is the winner of the inaugural Buchanan-King Emerging Author Award.

The success and popularity of the English department's informal writing competition has prompted us to establish a permanent cup, which has been donated to the school, and which Isla will receive at this year's Senior Prizegiving.

A gifted poet, Isla regularly enters writing competitions here and elsewhere and her writings have already appeared in the Re-Draft writing anthologies for the last two years running and the online literary journal fingers commas toes. She plans to pursue creative writing at Victoria University Wellington after her undergraduate degrees in Science and Arts.

This year, Isla submitted three poems and the judges were impressed with her verbal acuity, her depth of thought, and her unique personal voice. Her poems, which appear below, are highly accessible and touch on themes of identity and coming of age, as well as the perils of navigating traditional teenage spaces such as isolation and finding connection in unexpected places.

Ka pai tō mahi, Isla, and we look forward to seeing more of your poetry in print in future years!

The Weapon

For you, it is a weapon that's there when you need it.

You can pull it out in cut-throat conversation, the other

whimpering under the shining blade, begging for your mercy.

But you wear the knife in your sheath when the blonde boys

come around, shark teeth hanging from their necks,

laughing loudly like they do.

These boys don't know the knife exists, don't know that

you quietly sharpen the blade before bed when there's no

one around to impress with effortless charm.

But I cannot put the knife down. I was not gifted a sheath

at birth like the other girls, it did not grow and stretch

with me as my thighs did.

What I'm trying to say is, she will hold my hand in

public until the blonde boys come around. She will drop

it when they get too close, when their eyes squint and

heads turn. They see my knife as weakness,

think I choose to carry it. What they don't know

is that a few years ago, I wished I didn't have a knife at all.

I wished I could like the blonde boys like the other girls do.

Now, I'm glad I cannot put this knife down. I'm happy to

carry it if it means she is with me, carrying her's too.

$93 Concert

It was the kind of night where I put on my favourite outfit,

look in the mirror and think I look okay; I could look better

and maybe it shouldn't be so tight. The kind of night where I think

no one cares about my body. This poem isn't about my body, for once.

The venue was busy like I knew it'd be, busy with older men

who look at me like they do a twenty dollar note. Twenty dollars really isn't

that much, but they'd still be stoked to find it on the ground.

He stands behind me in the crowd and, as the music starts, people start moving.

I heard him say earlier to a friend that he's a university student,

that he studies geology and psychology. (I think that that

doesn't seem like something I'd enjoy.)

His phone accidentally hits me in the head, he accidentally pulls my hair.

I barely notice these things until he touches me from behind. I feel his hands

tighten around my waist, feel one of them grab my ass. He says in my ear,

“I’m so sorry, I didn't mean to pull your hair or hit you with my phone.”

It is the kind of touch that my brain reacts to before my body does.

I scream loudly inside my head, but I tell him “It’s fine, really, don't worry.”

Still, he does not let me go. It happens five more times.

It is the kind of touch that leaves me sick to my stomach for days,

the kind of touch I wish wasn't my first touch. It makes me

want to burn my favourite clothes, scrub myself clean, forget his face,

stop feeling his hands on me.

It is the kind of thing I thought was bound to happen, and maybe it was

my fault because I never told him to stop. I know that worse happens to

girls who look like me, and to girls who look like everyone else. Still, it was

the kind of touch I wish I hadn't paid $93 to receive — without my permission.

Razor-sharp-regret

Each night, I carve her name on my body.

(Shame, ache, grief; call her whatever you want.)

Up my legs that I think are a weird shape,

down my arms that used to look smaller.

Around my eyes that barely work anymore.

I begin missing the unmistakable sting of it all,

yearning for the razor-sharp-regret.

(It is not something I wish to speak about in a casual way.

And still, I cannot face myself. The creator, as it were.)

It's not even something I think about unless it explodes out of me

like the fireworks I heard on the night I cried myself to sleep.

And maybe that's irony, or maybe it's the pain twisting inside me

like a knife, bursting back out again like a broken faucet.

Are you tired of asking me if I'm okay? Is there a point

where it's not worth asking anymore? Am I at that point yet?

Is it worth it when the hole I dig myself gets deeper every time

I fall down? What if it was you that gave me the shovel?

(Do you like me better when I feel helpless?)

Please, I still don't know where to put down all this guilt I carry.

It's so heavy, and shame leaves purple bruises that don't heal.

(Can you carry it for me? Please? At least for a little while?)