Kia ora, everyone, and to all poets present and those who submitted poems. Thank you for the privilege of reading your work. The poems I chose illuminated an aspect of the land for me. They used precise language, a surprising image, careful placement of lines on the page that worked together with what was being said, some sustained an image or metaphor for the whole poem, and most placed importance in how the lines sounded, the musicality inherent in the poem.

In every one of the poems in the competition there were  lines and images that remain –water glossing among the stars, birds singing in thirds, seagulls that swoop like an Olympic diver, or fast as Lightning McQueen, the harbour an outdoor bathtub, Mt Cargill a beanbag, gulls beckoning through the curvy mountains ,the river like a seal swimming, the bustling town that hides the earth, and a list - coffee grounds, potato peelings – the rhythm of that.

I have a sense of what it is like to live here by reading these poems– the harbour and winds and hills made real by your images, and thoughtful metaphors, the way of seeing honestly what is before you.

I think this is one of the most important things we can do, not just as writers, and that is to look at the world around us with awareness, to slow down and take it in. Because if you know somewhere well enough, you’ll protect it. You’ll be more aware of what the land needs, what creatures need to thrive.

Highly commended

Gargantuan musings Rita Mace-David

Y14 Otago Beach.  Ezra Sharma

Y4 Just a Drain. Piper Hotton

Runner ups

The Harbour    Ruby Clarke

Moeraki boulders Keaton Lyness

To the winning poem. I recalled the Scottish writer A L Kennedy saying, when she judged the Booker Prize, for fiction, she knew in the first paragraphs the winner, for its confidence in language and the strength of its voice. And so it was for me with this poem, in its startling first lines, It could /  lurch/this land

                          Shaken Slopes, by Emily Roy.