Poetry Winners and ICAS results
WriteNow is an annual city wide poetry competition open to secondary school students from years 9 to 13.
Poet, novelist, editor, and this year’s judge, Sue Wootton, said at the commencement of the competition that “I’d be looking for poems that connect me to the poet’s vision of what it means to be alive, here and now, in Ōtepoti/Dunedin.”
Of the place-getters, Sue stated: “Your work was tightly crafted and distilled; your lines carry exactly what they need to bear – no more and no less. Because of this, they do that extra thing I was looking for, use the amazing energy of language to make a poem that rings true, and keeps on getting truer with each reading”.
Both Poppy’s and Megan’s winning entries were created earlier this year as part of their Poetry Anthology Project in English, of which poetry writing was one of the main components (along with reading, research and presenting). Entering a poem into the WriteNow competition was the final optional stage of the project, with stunning results for Megan and Poppy.
Poppy’s poem ‘Dysfunctional Placentae’ won first place in the junior competition, for which she received $100, and Megan’s ‘A Blank Canvas’ was placed second in the junior competition, with a $70 prize.
Both girls also read alongside established poets at Dunedin’s National Poetry Day event on 24 August at the City Library, received book tokens courtesy of the University Book Shop, and will be invited to be interviewed and podcast by Otago Access Radio’s Youth Zone. Additionally, all placed poems will be eligible for publication as a ‘Parking metre Poem’ - a Dunedin UNESCO City of Literature initiative.
‘Dysfunctional Placentae’
by Poppy Haywood
I can shed my face
The way a snake can shed its skin
Layers upon layers upon layers
So many masks even I don’t know where to begin
For now it is just a habit
After years and years and years
To wear so many masks
That no one will ever see my tears
But I wasn’t always this way
It was just something I learnt to do
The way riding a bicycle
Is just something you’re taught to do
Yet I had no teacher
I was completely self-taught
So I had no one to teach me
When to wear a mask and when not
So I made one for every minute
Of my unimportant life
Until I could move between them
Smoother than any knife
And if you cut my body in two
You’d find I have no centre
Instead, in its place, you’d find,
A thousand dysfunctional placentae
Hundreds and hundreds of fleshy casings
Each one with it’s own baby thought
That I kept so deep under my layers
For fear of getting caught
‘A Blank Canvas’
by Megan Macdiarmid
It’s like turpentine
The foul-smelling liquid
That wipes the canvas clean
Resisting smears of memory
Taint the innocence of emptiness
Leaving you to join the dots that don’t connect
And when you can’t quite remember
Why the toaster’s in the fridge
And the worried whispers of family members
Disorient and confuse you
And the home you’ve lived in forever
Has to go
Close your eyes
Let the colours that lurk behind your eyelids
Be the memories you have lost
And fill your canvas
Once more
ICAS Writing Exam 2018
A big congratulations to Ava Reid in Year 9, and Sophie Bradfield, Cindy Chou, Paxton Hall, and Millie O’Neill in Year 10 for gaining Distinction in the ICAS Writing Exam.
Congratulations to the following students for their impressive results in the recent ICAS English Exam:
Nico Alvarez Rey-Virag (Year 9) - High Distinction
Bill Campbell (Year 9) - Distinction
Ava Reid (Year 9) - Distinction
Louisa Franklyn (Year 9) - Distinction
Paxton Hall (Year 10) - Distinction
Jasper Seddon (Year 10) - High Distinction
George Hyink (Year 10) - Distinction
Viviane Dalphin (Year 10) - Distinction
Cindy Chou (Year 10) - Distinction
Megan MacDiarmid (Year 10) - High Distinction
Charis Bell (Year 10) - High Distinction
Rebecca Dalphin (Year 11) - Distinction
Casper McGuire (Year 12) - Distinction
A grade of High Distinction places a student in the top 1% of participants for their year level in New Zealand, and a grade of Distinction places a student in the next 10% of participants for their year level in New Zealand.