We are delighted to announce the winners of the 2026 Poetry Aotearoa Yearbook Student Poetry Competition in celebration of National Poetry Day.
Editor Tracey Slaughter had a difficult time with the final decisions. In her email to us she wrote: ‘To all who entered—yet again your voices have blown my mind and exploded my heart, & filled me top to toe with hope for poetry here in Aotearoa. You ARE poetry’s future & the thrilling thing is, reading all your work, I can hear poets blazing with fierce determination to go on fighting for this form, & to use it to make your voices heard on live social issues which are urgent to us. You were fearless & vulnerable & funny & tender & wise & charged with political bite, & I loved feeling the sheer force of emotion that poured through all of these poems. You all knew what you were writing for, & you wrote big, redblooded, hard-hitting human poems that really left me in AWE at your talents, & your bravery. It was intensely tough to narrow down the field to find the final winners but here they are . . .’
Year 11
First prize: Isla Kalderimis, ‘a shadow that moves when i blink’
‘i am/ spinning/ in cold morning light./ sun sunk between/ my shoulders;/ this has always felt a bit like breaking./ dark eyes & a darker soul,/ but winter lives in my skin,/ smiles at me./ we have made/ peace’
Judge’s comments: this piece conducts a dazzling dance with fractured page space, using it to evoke conflicted embodiment, its jagged shifting lines emitting electricity
Second prize: Claire An, 'STAY'
‘You ask the universe for a sign/ while your own heartbeat/ has been repeating the same answer/ since the day you were born./ Stay./ Stay. / Stay./ The body can lift a car/ when love becomes heavier than fear.’
Judge’s comments: this poem struck instantly with its intensely searching tone, voiced with grace, urgency and stunning control
Third prize: Jolie Ye, 'regurgitation'
‘mama, the bowl of rice you pass me is glazed in carnelian./ you must have gripped it tight. your nails are blood-tipped crescents,/ you have ripped with your bare hands/ you split the skin of the map, the wounds of the border,/ you tore the sky and a mechanical womb spat you out’
Judge’s comments: the rhythmic intensity of this piece stood out, its deeply felt entreaty beating through vivid colourful imagery
Highly commended: Ava Christos-Pow, 'My name is used like a world people understand' and 'It's my birthday today'; Ava Knoesen, 'Sounds of stillness'; Audrey Worsley, 'The Last Generation'; Bella Malcolm, 'my bedroom door'; Camila Barnes, 'Chrysalis'; Ivy la Grouw, 'You Kids These Days'; Jessica Chenery, 'Stitched'; Lily Van Dam, 'Wildfire'; Molly Majoribanks, 'I want to shatter my glass lungs'; Finn Collier, 'How's the Weather Up There?'; Mila Sutch, 'School Doesn't Care'.
Year 12
First prize: Joshua Kalan, 'You Won't Anymore'
‘I like when you drive to the market/ sniffing out orange blossom jalebis/ and selecting only the sweetest ones for when I’m hungry/ but I’m scared when I tell you the truth,/ you won’t do it anymore’
Judge’s comments: this poem stood out for its plain-spoken capacity to reach the heart and crack it in two; it’s voiced with a simplicity and tenderness that generates a devastating sense of loss to come
Second prize: Jessica McIntosh, 'Fairly Irrelevant to Modern Society?'
‘We are resting whales./ vertically lying/ in the infinite space/ between now/ and the car ride home./ Propped above,/ like god on a podium,/ by the aerated mattress/ and our slight,/ unkillable touch,’
Judge’s comments: I loved the close-range sensory presence of this piece, its intimacy & tension, capturing the moment palpably, controlled in focus & voice
Third prize: Madison Michelle Heta, 'If anyone else watched them,'
‘And that’s the thing/ there was no earthquake,/ no slammed doors,/ no burning bridge to point at and say/ ‘there, that’s where it ended’/ Just two people/ still gentle with each other/ in a way that confused the child-version of me/ who thought kindness meant keeping someone forever’
Judge’s comments: there was such perceptive depth & maturity resonating in this piece, navigating 'the quiet truth' of parental separation with gently voiced sadness & heart-wrenching understatement
Highly commended: Lina Robinson, 'In his life my father killed a lot of cats'; Naomi Roberts, 'Leave Something for Him to Destroy'; Sabrina Li, 'A Thing For Rice'; Lauren Li, 'Mum?'; Zac Wakelin, '"Trans"'; Heidi Smith, 'It’s you, always you'; Nimue Cabigas, 'Mending'; Miranda Yuan, 'The devil came to me' & 'Aotearoa (Who am I to Sing your Song)'; Jessica Hurrell, 'Blue Ringed Octopus'; Janna Al-Ani, 'Are you strong enough?'
Year 13
First prize: Johnson Wang, 'Untitled with Static Orchard'
‘I was issued as a receipt/ for salt, moths and one red train./ The clerk wrote *maybe* where sex should be./ The clerk wrote **OPEN HERE** over the chest./ Under no fixed season./ Under no reliable mother tongue./ I began as a roomful of cut fruit and sirens.’
Judge’s comments: in a hugely competitive category jam-packed with potential winners, this poet just knocked me down with their raw talent – this is a poem packed with surreal explosivity, dazzling word dynamics & killer imagery. Just WOW: there's a mindblowing talent on fire here.
Second prize: Xavier Tapsell, 'Bury the lamb'
‘Crying is for funerals only—/ black suit, wet eyes,/ engine already running./ talking about the dark?/ That’s for girls,/ For soft boys,/ For those who never learned the code.’
Judge’s comments: each of the entries from this poet were also utterly dazzling, but this one hit me hardest in its razor-edgecontrol of tone and high-impact imagery, confronting the dissociative pressure
of masculinist legacy with incredible force
Third prize: Sabrina Liu, 'soil-lickers'
‘my grandmother was not meant to tame vowels/ nor wrangle the slippery eel of grammar—/ she was meant to knead the dumpling dough to completion/ steaming baozi on circular tables to meet hungry eyes/ at new year gatherings where hongbao stuffed candied hands/ each child with a name she could understand’
Judge’s comments: all entries from this writer were also incredibly strong. This one impressed me with its sophisticated lyric tone & instant ignition in vivid sensory imagery, line after striking line lifting luminous & moving connections into play.
All three of these winners, as well as the poets in the highly commended have stunning careers stretching ahead of them!
Highly commended: Evyleen Ram, 'Autopilot' and 'Cartography of a Scar'; Mariam Rietveld, 'Doomscrolling', 'Attendance' and 'notes on girlhood'; Eve Hughes, 'Dirt' and 'Physics'; Ellie Zhou, 'Skipping in the backyard'; Dorothy Baricuatro, 'The anatomy of Eve'; Angus Davidson, 'The gap in the frame', 'Where nothing turns off' and 'Clean enough'; Willa Burnett, 'Tally'; Scarlett Meldrum, 'Laundromat'; Samuela Noel Dsouza, 'Tide'; Pearl Winkworth, 'New World Residue' and 'Ophelia’s Diary'; Genevieve Fox, 'The Shape of a Name' and 'The Exam Hall'; Maya Pradhan, 'Steps to eating an orange' and 'Beneath a Blue Burkha'
Congratulations once again to these budding poets and to all who entered; we received many incredible entries. We can’t wait to see what the amazing ākonga of Aotearoa produce next year!
Thank you, as always, to Te Whare Wānanga o Waikato the University of Waikato for their support.
Read the winning poems in full here.
