Congratulations to Molly Crighton in Year 12 for winning the Senior 2017 WriteNow Poetry Competition for Dunedin secondary school students, judged by Lynley Edmeades.

The judges' comments on Molly's poem were:

This is a beautiful lyric poem, which I was immediately struck by for both its treatment of subject matter and attention to craft, particular its sound and rhythm. It turns a daily traffic jam into something very visceral. I see that Molly has been placed several times before in this competition, and I have no doubt that, with a lyric acuity like this, she will be one to watch in the coming years.

Dr Shef Rogers, Head of the Department of English and Linguistics at the University of Otago even read Molly's poem aloud at his departmental morning tea.

Headlights
We travel parallel to a queue of cars—
That sting-bright shine of a string of pearls
Around anonymity’s urban neck.
Waiting tastes like suet
And rush hour a fatty feast
For clogged one-ways
And no-exits like the fence at a football game.
In between each bracket of streetlight the stars open and close
As though they are some bioluminescent tropical flower
Releasing headlight spores
To scatter white hot and sting-bright
On the bone-stark road below.

Molly Crighton