We are delighted to announce the winners of the 2023 Poetry Aotearoa Yearbook Student Poetry Competition in celebration of Phantom Billstickers National Poetry Day.
Year 11
First Prize
Anushka Dissanayake: Just a teen
‘a teacher once told me i was bright,/ that night i dismembered the running grooves/ of the heavy thing inside my head,/ combusted the papers marked red/ 100s with singed edges/ into the waste’
Judge’s comments: Lyric intensity in voice & image, travelling shifting scenes of teen experience to moving effect.
Second Prize
Maia Hills: Typa Vibe
‘It's like when you're learning 'bout Maori incarceration rates and the class all turns to you, typa vibe….It's like how the media makes Maori parades look like a gang riot, typa vibe.’
Judge’s comments: Beat-driven voice, rippling with attitude, taking on racist ‘typa vibes’ with head-on attack.
Third Prize
Oliver Marsh: Bridges
‘An arterial mat,/ Spread out on a map,/ Blue tendrils of water/ Snake out from the mountain/ Pulled by gravity/, Following,/ Flowing,/ Under bridges.’
Judge’s comments: Beautifully focused ‘arterial’ line-breaking, with a strong eye for concrete image-precision.
Highly Commended: Tayla Francis, ‘untitled’; Joanne Kim, ‘Let us poets’; Genesta Hamm, ‘If you say I am free, then who am I to disagree’; Lisa Murata, ‘eyes wide or you might miss it’; Isabelle Nash, ‘Requiem for the Boy’
Year 12
First Prize
Charles Ross: Hikaroroa
‘bright citrus slices of light/ that create bold shadows on my wall because my friend’s father sold the curtains’
Judge’s comments: Strong, open, involving voice with relaxed, graceful tone & fresh contemporary feel, drawing the reader into a clearly lit scene.
Second Prize
Sascha Letica: Auckland Baby & You is Just Another Word:
‘You’re holding my school shirt against the bullet wound in my spine and telling me I can walk again’
Judge’s comments: A poet who is breathing gasoline, the voice is so charged, & the attack so fiery! I can’t wait to see the flame she spits out in the future.
Third Prize
Siti Nur Aina Binit Mohd Nazlee: No one will ever want to sleep with: love her but I’m sure I’ll like her
‘She is metal on your tongue and blood on your lips…/She is pig-tails at the end of the world. She’s a skirt and a gun.’
Judge’s comments: Striking energetic aura achieved by tight line control & sensory observation.
Highly commended:
Ivy Feng, ‘bruised’; Kathleen Mitchell, ‘Plums’; Adeeba Shaik, ‘reviving an industrialised heart’; Hannah Naidoo, ‘My culture’; Layla Hoskin, ‘Mature’
Year 13
First Prize
Tunmise Adebowale: A Little Grace
‘mornings are/ best spent holding wives by their waist,/ dying slow deaths,/ juicing life with our teeth/ at the breakfast table.’
Judge’s comments: All entries by this poet were strong, showcasing an electric gaze, a vibrant original tone & eye, with stunning line control & real hypnotic pull in imagery.
Second Prize
Emma Philips: NZ 673 to Dunedin: One Way
‘The clouds remind me of white fat lumps on a sheep's heart that I snicked off with small scissors in the gruesome quiet of a lab’
Judge’s comments: Striking physicality in central metaphor, & razor-sharp use of form, startles the reader & shows a vivid poet’s eye. Again, all pieces were strong!
Third Prize
Ruby Appleby: Coming of age
‘we are glittery pink keychains. We/ are chipped nail polish on intertwined fingers./ we are mini skirts & baby tees & goosebumps./ we are night drives, feeling alive & shout-singing/ to What’s My Age Again?’
Judge’s comments: Uses a form which lists & leaps for a rapid & vivid relay of imagery, sparkling with living energy.
Highly Commended: Jade Wilson, ‘Boy Racer’; Sydney Brandolino, ‘shallow end’; Sarah Smith, ‘An extended metaphor of the circulatory system’; River Mein, ‘railway lines, shattered lives’; Oshadha Perera, ‘Teardrops’; Oriana Ewens, ‘Ready, Set, Girl’
Thanks to Phantom Billstickers National Poetry Day and Te Whare Wānanga o Waikato the University of Waikato for their support.
Read the winning poems here.