Kia ora koutou. I’d like to thank National Poetry Day organiser Michelle Elvy for the opportunity to judge this year’s competition. I’d also like to thank everyone who entered. It is no small thing to put your work out in the world. I’ve been doing it for over two decades now and it’s never easy, so thanks again for participating. A strong pool of entries from Otago and Southland, the shortlist, winners, highly commended and commended were poems that I read and re-read several times. I was struck again and again by the originality of the imagery, the attention to detail and line endings, the use of metaphor and form to personally respond to a landscape and/or a life event.

So, without further ado…I’ll read the shortlist for the adult entries alphabetically by title and then announce the winners: starting with commended, highly commended, 3rd , 2nd and 1st prize. I’ll also say a few words and then invite the poets present to read.

Adult SHORT LIST – alphabetical by title

Harbour - Holly Fletcher  

Home - Oshadha Perera 

Leaving - Jane Coombs 

Sunstrike, Moana - Eric Trump   

The Moon Rose - Oshadha Perera 

Tracing Edges at Waitete  

Waipiata Waiting - Lisa Keene                         

Walking in Winter - Bridget Auchmuty  

Commended (in no particular order)

Sunstrike Moana by Eric Trump

Some lovely imagery, especially the use of simile: “shadows like panthers,” and action verbs, “plunging swallows.” The sense of movement and sound in the “glassy cries of children.’ A poem that also asks the question about how we and others perceive things.

Harbour by Holly Fletcher

Slightly different in form with its use of long lines and slashes. Casual, intimate and conversational in tone, it drew me in. Gorgeous use of personification: I stepped out onto the front steps and watched the sun disappear/the hills blushed at such a brilliant departure.

Tracing Edges at Waitete by Harvey Aughton

“Dust from lights steal the evening”, “a galaxy of swallows”. The repetition of s with sand and sea and sweep. The imagery itself swept this reader along like the movement of water and time the poem seeks to express.

Highly Commended (in no particular order)

Home by Oshadha Perera merges observations about the present with really lovely lines: “the sky turning into tangerine and apricot, silhouettes of stars and birds flying home” with a memory from the past and the concept of belonging.

Walking in Winter by Bridget Auchmuty

Some striking imagery and a vitality in the poem, particularly in its use of verbs: “dark smoke lifts from chimneys,” “the bridge trembles from the river underneath.” Attention to sound and nature: “a thrush sings up, spring hauling the first light with threads of song.”

3rd Prize: Waipiata Waiting by Lisa Keene

With its use of sight, sight and smell to create imagery: “the dog stretched,” …and “the tussocks a golden ocean in the wind,” … “the sound of magpies call,” and the smell of the rain,” this poem captures what it is to be mesmerised by the landscape. 

2nd Prize: The Moon Rose by Oshadha Perera

It is difficult to pull off a poem about the moon without descending into cliché, but The Moon Rose resists this temptation with clear precise language that has a gentle naiveté about its tone. A poet who knows how to use line-endings to maximise the effect and meaning of a poem is often rare these days: “Florists fought with astronomers/with words and hands (and other things)/, to see the rose through the telescope that floated in the space/because they wanted to see more, /and more/and more. The Moon Rose moves from a report about a distinctive moon to a personal tribute to the speaker’s grandmother. Touching and redolent. 

1st Prize: Leaving by Jane Coombs 

From its gorgeous arresting opening line: “Not easy on a windy day, clouds like cuttlefish swim,” I found myself returning to this poem again and again. It merges striking language and an evocation of landscape: “twisty willows shed useless loads, poplars lean, cedars tremble,” while simultaneously creating momentum with its use of the couplet form. Ultimately, the poem expresses the subtle but persistent feeling of displacement – there is something QUOTE about the “soft spine of the Hawkduns” and the question – “why has a land not my own taken such hold” that I, as an immigrant to Aotearoa, very much identified with. Beautifully understated, poignant and memorable.