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Word Writing Winner

SMC —

Abby Mason Year 10 has won the WORD Secondary Schools Science Writing Competition. Entrants were asked to write a poem on a science theme such as The environment. The stars. Gravitational waves. A great scientist.

The competition was open to all Canterbury secondary school students and judged by poet Helen Heath, author of Are Friends Electric? and Graft, which was shortlisted for the Royal Society of NZ Science Book Prize.
Abby’s poem will be read in front of a live audience during the WORD Christchurch Festival before the session Laurie Winkless: Science and the City, on Saturday 1 September, 4pm at The Piano,156 Armagh St.

Here is Abby’s amazing poem – Newton’s Third Law


when i drove to your house
you said
take me somewhere
you didn’t want to talk about your dad
he wasn’t worth talking about
everything you did, set him off.
There was silence, apart from
the grounding of tires
against the dusty road.

It was hard to see straight,
in the dark, on the coast,
with the moon

distancing itself,

making the waves drowsy.

The only light was tiny balls of gas in the sky
and because I took my hand
off the wheel to hold yours
I didn't see the truck
or the ditch
or the stars,
as we flipped.