Darcy won the Yr 11 section of the 2020 NZ Yearbook Student Poetry Competition in August. See the Otago Daily Times article below.

Teenage Poet bags another Top Award - ODT, by John Lewis

Darcy Monteath has a way with words.

The 16-year-old Logan Park High School pupil has just won another major poetry competition - the year 11 category of the 2020 New Zealand Yearbook Student Poetry Competition run by Massey University.

She said her winning poem, World War 2, was inspired by reading Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief, which is about a German girl who is exposed to the horrors of the Nazi regime during World War 2.

"I thought Jews and concentration camps, and all that was going on around that time, that I would do nine poems based on how it affected Britain, Germany and Poland.

"I read a lot about people’s experiences in those countries and how it affected them personally. I tried to characterise and personalise it for each of those countries."

She described her poem as "quite forward and quite direct".

"It’s a little bit sad, but it’s also quite enlightening, I guess."

She was delighted after learning she had won.

"I was quite surprised actually. I just put it in the competition and then forgot about it for a bit. I’m proud of it."

Poetry is becoming more than just a hobby for the young wordsmith. Her name is starting to become synonymous with it.

Last year, she won the junior category of the WriteNow Secondary Schools Poetry Competition, with her poem Overcoming grief in the form of birds.

The judges said her poem was "extraordinary" and "far and away the best of all the poems, junior and senior, in the competition".

Other award winners in the 2020 New Zealand Yearbook Student Poetry Competition were: Mountainview High School pupil Lucy Barge, who was highly commended in the year 12 competition with her poem Scratchy Shuffles; and St Kevin’s College pupil Fergus McMullan, who was also highly commended in the year 11 competition, for his poem Uniform.

World War Two

BRITAIN BEFORE THE WAR

Hat, socks, shoes

check

he clasps the morning paper

with nimble fingers

and a thumb

a cigarette, hot in his hand

a baby on his hip,

and ash on his lip

in Britain’s walls

he sings a sprightly tune

his face as

blithe

as the sky was

blue

as streets were

busy

no more than a breeze

that lingers through their locks

that whispers,

whistles and

cradles the streets

a brief breath of peace

BRITAIN DURING THE WAR

Ash

in her hair

a last lyric of loss

and tears of syrup

dried to her face

wiped away by nothing but

the strike of

wind

across her left cheek

and she yearns of a day

where bombs don't speak

the spit of menace

clasped in her hand

and there she will stand

in the spiny,

sticky

smoke

that strides the streets

and

coats the tongue

of every breathless breath

her silent hymn to death

BRITAIN AFTER THE WAR

A place,

(metaphorically)

If you can even call it a place

rusted smoke

still

licks the sky

and taints the eye

that no longer

remembers

bright

brick

walls

or big

bumbling

Britain

as it once was

all song is gone

as a new theme arises

in the form

of silence

winners can’t be choosers

NAZI GERMANY BEFORE THE WAR

today,

we sit on the porch

like we do

every morning

shroud,

swaddling the sky

mutually,

we choose not to speak today

the sun is small

like a crumb

fallen into your lap

or Munich on a map

we are cradled by the song of bird

or the bell of a biker

or the smell of

dewed grass,

steaming in the liquid cloud

the biker glides to the ground,

a groan,

a giggle

a Guten Morgen!

even hurt can have humour

unless it scars

NAZI GERMANY DURING THE WAR

I used to like

the sound of my own

voice

as it echoed when I

spoke

and rasped when I smoked

now, my echo voice

is only heard as a token

to a louder voice,

more dense

dark

dastardly

deliberate

that knocks the damned

down like

dominos

whilst we wash our brains

to the ring of the voice

(they’re

worthless,

worthless,

worthless)

and to the weak throb of hearts

that feeds our country’s growl

it doesn’t matter if I like

the sound of my own voice

anymore

it isn’t mine anyway

NAZI GERMANY AFTER THE WAR

after

there was nothing

as there usually is in times like these

but this nothing was small.

a small nothing compared to

a big

something

a something had become

something ordinary

and this new nothing made people wary

albeit small,

it was the sort of small

that was bigger than anything else

like the last whisperof a dying man

like a dropof poison in a can

like the help cry across barren land

that no one else can hear but you

our something had a consequence

this was a

helpless nothing

a selfish nothing

but we all held its heat;

the nothing of defeat

POLAND BEFORE THE WAR

starzec (old man)

died, unexpectedly

for all we knew, he was immortal

in some ways, he was still there

where he used to sit,

with a bucket of

powdery potatoes

in the floor-dwelling fog

like flour

next to a house made of firewood

which no longer stood

(I’ll let you guess what happened)

he was always old,

starzec was never anything but

but over rolling plains,

years of seasonal snow,

and frozen rivers,

he was always there,

no matter how many people

would spit at him

spitefully

or growl at his

greying appearance

starzec the immortal

was entirely mortal

and died last week.

but at least it was his own fault

POLAND DURING THE WAR

a sea of us

as big as the ocean

claws as sharp as

tiger teeth

and skin like the flesh of a bird

bodies

upon bodies

uponbodiesuponbodiesuponbodies

our individuality, that’s trekked a thousand yards

is now a worthless, numbing throb

a mesh of hearts

bound by a clumsy stitch

that holds our bodies tight

around a glowing ball of spite

for now, we wait

to steal back a stolen privilege;

bread like bricks

or weapons as blunt

as the tip of a finger

or maybe the privilege of death

is the only privilege they’re willing to give

as if their motive is:

‘the only way to overcome the fear of death

is for one to become as fearful as death’

for the monster in this

is not the end of a life,

rather, the life who ends an entire mankind

or are they blind?

POLAND AFTER THE WAR.

I swim through a blowing gale

up the slope of a hill

and stand under liquid moonlight

as if just years before,

a town wouldn’t be aflame

and ash would shroud the sky for days

like their work was a display

I stand as if

I weren't standing on a million bones

that are crushed into soil

that stretched further than I’d care to imagine

for now,

I stand on a plain old hill

maybe a few daisies

scattering the curve,

or a patch of sludge

from days of rain

unknowingly forgotten.

this is history’s skeleton

Kapa Haka Performance