Poetry Aotearoa
Poetry Aotearoa
Yearbook
Judged by Tracey Slaughter
Ellie Zhou 50c lemonade
When I was a babe, I tried to drown myself in half a glass of roadside lemonade. I settled amongst crushed pulp, gorged myself on undissolved granules. They crunched, tasted salty like the sea, between my teeth, on my tongue.
I don’t remember much, other than an effervescent feeling of being static. I do know I liked to play with bubbles, tried to collect them from where they clung to my hair and my red school jersey. I had this notion that the more detergent I used, the bigger the timid things grew, and so the bigger my fascination bloomed. I wanted one to shiver into existence so great it could swallow me in in rainbow ripples, and so frequently my afternoons were lemon-scented.
Close your eyes and see me cartwheeling through a soapy green sky.
Mariam Rietveld
Pencil Led
The shadows lengthened upon the land a grey smudge on the face of the earth a smudge of grey a lead pencil line on a paper world a night-time that swallows all. Let’s face it. In the haze we’re all smudged together, right? Fledge of a tūī gleaming with grief in the eye, the f-stop, the flash Look:
There’s always something peripheral. Of the eye, the second, a tiny shard of something smashed. Some child’s cry gone in the ash swirl (whirl) taken up in the hands of the shaking might’ve been erased out of memory’s scroll. It’s hard to even make out who’s left.
Samuela Dsouza
Cut Out
She draws in orange crayon
The girl she wants to be
Cuts out new hair
Colors it green
Cuts out the feet
Where a mermaid tail should be.
She draws out the shape
She sees in the mirror
Erases the edges
Her belly
Her chest
Her arms
Cuts out the faded lines
Shaping with palms.
She colors in Sharpie
The mirror with lines
Smashes the glass
Where you can see her thighs.
She puts in blue contacts
To fill her eyes.
She cuts in smooth ovals
The layer colored with veins
Bleeds a bright scarlet
The boldest paint
So the tiled floor is slick
With her own colors,
And a perfect cut out Lies on the ground. Empty and Correct And without sound.
Ellie Williams Josephine Rose
I thought up Josephine Rose on the first night, Her hair was a tangled mess, Her fingers were undone and hung loose by her side, Her legs were splayed outwards, Reaching for the ground that would take her in open arms,
I thought up Eleanor Foxglove on the second night, Tight lipped and shaky breath, Nervousness stuck to her like a moth to a flame, Her body was a nimble display, Nothing like what you’re taught to see,
I thought up Camilla Poppy on the third night, Her hair was short and frilly, unkempt in its pink bow, Her smile was dimpled and short, Paint splattered on her fingers,
I thought up the field on the fourth night, Filled with flowers of every colour, Every size, Every shape, Like a child’s finger painting,
I thought up the sunken alley-way on the fifth night, Sewer rats with gnarly teeth sang in rows, Their claws rattling against the cobbled stone,
I thought up the house on the sixth night, A duck-egg blue,
One storey, two bedrooms, A Father and a Daughter,
I thought up the ending on the seventh night, A tragic story, Composed of too little words and too many characters, And too many secrets,
I thought up the second ending on the eighth night, The first girl stayed home, The second girl wore her coat, The third girl didn’t grow up so fast,
Alina Li
Well Entertained
I live for choruses screamed by thousands as one, Empty air shouted from hopeless lips
I live for wet fingertips tracing across the rim of a wine glass, Crystal liquid evoking faint song
I live for wispy veils of sunset clouds against a painted sky of ochre, Like dead grey ash drifting in the wind
I live for welcoming warmth of familiar affection, Rough cracks and dry scrapes and pensive friends
I live for sticky red wild berry juice trailing down my fingers, Bitter and unclean erupting on my tongue
I live for vivid summer grass on bare and calloused skin, Harsh bristles digging into small hands and feet and knees
I live for musk of old books grandpa's wardrobe has hidden, Mildew and mould and a wrinkled nose
I live for imagined sparks and quick bright longing, Torn pages in the overfilled bin
I live for the words I dare not speak
I live for the sound I barely hear
I live for the view I hardly see
I live for the touch I cannot bare
I live for the taste I do not savour
I live for the breeze I never feel
I live for the scent I can't remember
I live for the thoughts I won't reveal
So I live for everything, and I live enthralled, And it feels as if sometimes I don't live at all
Jasmine Liu Family tree
I am born enclosed in hexagonal tessellations, This matriarch will put me to work, And I go to sleep with darkness hanging over me because I’ve been wrapped up in my lifetime | 辈子 and promises of the future.
I dream of infinity, And question; if the universe is made up of an infinite amount of turtles stacked on top of each other, going all the way down, then am I not just a long chain of daughters stretching back up the branches of my family tree to Eve?
Bonded through girlhood like clasps on silver charms dangling, Like chimes that catch the wind, Bouncing bamboo melodies off paper leaves,
You’ll find me sheltered in the deepest hollow of its trunk, pretending to be half asleep, Meditative telepathy, in meeting with these lost sisters,
One of them is you, The ball-and-chain, Dragging behind and clanking; Let me weigh
Heavy, our roots grow the same black, Heavy, I made you a mother.
Penny Dai Ceramics
Now I am juxtaposed behind you the silhouette to your glow
Your plate white features, fine ceramics
Lustrous but softly spoken
Your vitality
Raised like a divine being
Melt them let them seep into my pores
So we can mix both into greys
Our shades immiscible
The kaolin rejects my fingertips
Now bone dry with space between And me, a mere peasant
Observing fine porcelain pottery
Milky glass, teeth-like
Translucent, her eyes elsewhere Her eyes, once held by me
Once held by me
Translucent, elsewhere
Devon Johnson
Undone
I’m leaving unfinished poems in the notes app of my phone and in the autumn leaves and the winter mud, In the waving trees and that malevolent breeze
I’m leaving unfinished poems in my footsteps
So I can revel in that irregular, irritating beat
So I can cross the road as a human and not as my words
As the leaves in their flurries will dance to the jazz tones of my segmented humming With its out of tune songs and it’s unhung fairy lights
The wind itself will howl its rage at the cut, Yet it cannot stop me from leaving unfinished The letters and words that tumble from the sky and earn the veneration of all who dare to . . .
Lily Foster Ragdoll
Pick me up, throw me around, rip the hair off my scalp. Break my heart and scatter the pieces, break my will down to dust I don’t care.
Hurt me, punch me, scratch my skin until I am only jagged scars. You can take a blade and carve my body; I crave any touch you give.
Peel the nails off my flesh, and drink my tears like aged wine. Laugh when I scream. But at least you hear me.
Pain and anguish fill my frame as you sip my blood, the scarlet burnished in your eyes, my stare infiltrating yours.
Waiting for a reaction.
I let you dig my own grave for love, I let you break my own body for love, I let you take my own life for love. Give me compensation; like a donation in a tophat.
Your looks, comments, expressions like metal coins: grimy and cold. I crave your attention although it hurts, so, notice me.
Shraiya Goberdhan
The Stars That Guild Us
It’s 2.30 in the morning, And I’m lying here staring up at my ceiling, As my old friend, insomnia, laughs, Taunting me as my eyes burn, Whilst memories play over and over in my head, Reminding me of the mistakes and problems I’ve caused . . .
It’s 5.15 now, And I’m lying on the bathroom floor, With my back against the cold hardness of walls that surround me, A safe yet dangerously cold hug. Whilst droplets of water drip down my shirt, Constantly keeping my mind from drifting, Although it doesn’t stop the dizziness I feel, As my mind displays all those precious memories and dreams I had.
It’s 5.45 now . . . I think, I can’t quite remember, My mind feels fuzzy but oddly calm and quiet, My body shivering with each movement, Sending tiny familiar tingles spiraling through my bones, Laughing as I reminisce about a time not so long ago.
I’m cut off by a vibration, Looking down to see my phone vibrating With message after message. Signing as I recall that night, Spent up late writing that letter.
It’s around 6.30 I think, But time wouldn’t matter anyway, With the messages dying down. I feel bad but this is what needs to happen.
Temptation sets alarms off in my head, As I see a blurry name, One that closely resembles his . . .
My breath shallows as I see a text, One I wished would’ve come earlier, Maybe then it would’ve stopped, What was always bound to happen . . .
Chloe Morrison-Clarke Resonance
she comes into class wearing a turtleneck and a swishy skirt and a smile and she tells me about skin to skin. about feeling the echo of somebody else’s heartbeat passed back and forth between ribs like cathedral bridges, cobblestone I peel down her turtleneck and up her sleeve and ask if skin to skin always leaves bruises?
and my heartbeat only ever reminds me that i am alive, perhaps a little faster when i lay awake and imagine hands smoothing over my hips and across the top of my thighs, remodelling tracing my jaw like a mapmaker, particular dedication to the craft but He makes new landmarks why are there valleys on your neck why are you cast in shadow
I come into class one day as she’s begging for you to come back, apparently you left and her heartbeat only ever reminds her of the caverns that echos frequent i think about telling her how a woman was found, In the middle of a hotel room with a cavern of her own (last week) (in her chest right down the middle unzipped) and missing a lung. just think of it, blood vessels splayed out
across the bathroom tiles (be careful) apparently they looked like little trees. think about telling her how that woman had bruises too, skin to skin blade to skin between ribs cobblestone passing breath back and forth until it stopped
but i keep quiet in the end i hold her hand while she sobs into history textbooks and erases her own i decide just to be grateful i never allowed you close enough to take my breath away
Molly Laurence
3rd Season Not Counting Spinoffs
My grandmothers and I watch Bridgerton together they line up like harpies they shuffle and fluff
They like this new season. they like the glittering cut of Penelope Featherington’s new dress. They say it’s like the one (push forwards) one of them wore to be presented to court.
They say it appears very effective.
My grandmothers’ eyes darting observe the landing of blows a fan swat and each fluttering/shimmering shrug.
They take notes on the winter tan of my forearms, the internal ivory panels of my spine, they drive a jab into my hip and say get to it.
They want to teach me tatting and parlour tricks with satin stitch
I tell them no, I am a feminist and pacify them with Ted Talks of Clementine Ford
but they are trying to persuade me to let the boys in my classics class explain things to me again.
They point to pulsing glute squats on pinterest feeds.
They coo with every successful match.
My grandmothers would like grandchildren. they show me images of ostrich feathers and blue melancholic contentment. They tell me there are easier ways to manage my period.
My grandmothers pinch my cheeks and stroke my hair, hum curly locks. They tug on the heart strings of my ribbed shapewear
perched in my ribs they encircle my heart
Annabelle Lee entwined in the embers
Mama, let me inhale the breath of your bones. It embeds itself into the Batik fabric you draped over my shoulder eight years ago.
you hold my head to the gentle glow to witness the flaxen tides trace delicate inkings along the ether. it graces the auburn tapestry with dirt-ridden ambers, seeps into it alongside the sweat of labourers ploughing arable earth for whites and molten golds. you tell me to ground myself amongst the harvests tainted with the sultriness of rural summer.
embrace the southwesterly wafts enriched with sweet scents of waxy malam. tender resin hued with the shades of fertile soil ebbing, flowing then stagnating in the tethers of the fibres. I shall sit here and absorb the silhouettes, watch them contort into citrus tones orbs and quadrilaterals stamped into the flat organic cotton of the fading, descending day.
you say to feel it bind my skin with seamless threads of burnt orange encased in the richness of caramelised coconut gula gentle, flowing retract from the haste of it all and retreat to the arms of your shawl. dampen my senses to make nyonya paste and slather it over the loams regenerate plains of sweet young jagung, cultivate forestries of roasted peanuts, let it stand still, soak, subvert all that you and i know all we will ever know
Mama, can you hear it too? the echoes of our near native land, the whispers of the trees, the praise song of the rolling hills. come back to me Mama back to where your heart finds its reprieve, feel your skin dappled dazzled, glazed with dew droplets unravelling at the seams of your soul and laying them bare in the laudable, golden light
Rebecca Rombel Rebecca Rombel
Rebecca Rombel is an answered question a one word statement with three commas and five paragraphs
Rebecca Rombel is a brown stain a 5’8” Baba Yaga blistered and bruised with no earlobes and no molars
Maybe she was abandoned by the gods or sent to the wrong address left standing there like a tear in the fabrics of time and space
She dances with the moon and gambles with the stars all whilst her eyes are closed shut tight
Rebecca Rombel is an empty bottle a glass husk with teeth marks and no label
Rebecca Rombel is a wet pillow a wilting sponge of sadness oozing with disappointment and white flowers with no scent
If she walked into the hands of the Almighty and vanished
from the very threads of the universe not a single being would notice because she is Rebecca Rombel and Rebecca Rombel is me
George McKinnon
A Portfolio of Life
1]
Through night air I breathe the sound of the waves as they slice knife strokes through the rocks at my feet, sail over arms pulled wide by moonlight.
Shell shards in my ribs probe, spark and spike an ice between my shoulder blades that punctures and pokes at the small yolks of my lungs.
I look down, at the calm pooling beneath me, every breath, a ripple in its surface. I watch a spoonbill raise his beak to shed the water’s lustre in droplets that bead his breast, rest on the scattering of silk and petals, billow and fold as he falls like the blossom at its close.
I look down at the bone-litter that pricks me as I bend to collect every fragmented feather fold of silk hung limp
ever threaded bead of blue strung every petal unfurled like pearl amongst stone the breath that I carry eased in my palm.
2]
You are the process, the artwork, the empty canvas for your creation that sits, waits for your imagination in the corner of your room.
As you explore the divots in your ribs, the arch in your back, the red under your nails, the blue paint flecked on your trousers.
And the hem of your shirt is soaking wet as you scrub out the olive stains on your hoodie with the same ferocity you use to try, and fail, to scrub out The free verse of your poem. The scrawl that has flowed from your lips, maybe even spilled in torrents.
You strip back paint layers like the peel on the window sill, like the clothes you wear. You scratch and claw beneath to see what hides on your skin below the folds of your body,
a garden, a portfolio with its imperfections and inevitable flaws.
3]
The imbalance on your paper lies like the dark ink of the ocean, moves like the impulse of the storm as it hauls up the bone-litter clutter of its belly, spits it out onto the shore.
Look, look!
Nestled in the palm of your hand! The print of your fingertip, press it onto the page. Let your abundance dance, glide, billow with the blossom of your mind.
Let your paper breathe the lull of the water. Declutter, rest, follow the current home to yourself, rest. Let the water and the wind carry you onwards
Hear it calling, listen as the birds listen to the wind it’s screaming as they fly forth over roiling blue scrawl stretched across sand. The lines, links and arrow quivers of fish tails and fins flung from the bow of the bay.
The arm of the land outstretched.
4]
I have given my name to the sky, my skin to the sea, my love to the moon, my life to her tides.
To be given in return the brush of the wind on my cheek, the kiss of the sea’s beaded blue on my lips, the weight of my body lifted on strong shoulders as the deep harbours me.
Drawn by the moon out to the sky and its mural of amber-laced hue, of sun-swathed rose, woven gold braided in to the sun’s final strands. In, to the edges of a quilt interlaced to rest on my palms, traced through my fingertips. Never a fault in its grace nor mine.
“I have proofread and proofread the beautiful script. There are no errors.” 1
1 P.K. Page, Stargazer
Nathan Mutch
Idk really
The pillars of visual perceptions
Crash down upon Ipswich
Rolling out the yellow carpet
For the next Queen of the Eagle nation
The king of my heart masks his true self
Psychotic delusions are running through my head
If I didn’t write them I’d sooner be dead
Horses and moustaches litter the place
Like a conga stuck in a tirade of elephants
Free association of alzheimer's patients
My body yells what you’re gonna do with your life
This is the twentieth time you’ve walked in the sun
Crowded house of unwanted guests
An orgy of the subconscious
Why are people still in love with love songs
It’s like smoking tar and drumming crack
You can have me anyway
A cowboy like a western
But this is the East
Or is it the South
James Dean went off the deep end
Fended off a life worth living
Little boy up on a lollipop
Riding to the sweet shop
Too alive to give
Too young to live
He who hits the road is more spoiled than a man who works in the mean streets
A female position is a supple reminder of the feet that no money can fix
Gone forever like a drum of leaves
A piano of rocks
Layla Hoskin
Sub-identity
I don’t know my pepeha.
Opening lines fall from Culturally paralysed lips, ko Ngāti Ranginui te iwi, ko Layla toku ingoa, . . . Any deeper, I falter.
A statement that should reflect Who I am, my history, Where I come from, Absent.
I don’t know the actions to my school waiata.
Burning embers ignite Milky skin as I try my best to wiri A shaking hand more emblematic of Embarrassment than livelihood.
I am Māori, Yet whakamā about the smallest Manifestation of My culture.
A poem I once wrote took on new meaning. Simple symbolism intertextually connected With memory
Each line carefully tracing my spine, Words, vines, harakeke weaving through Each brain hemisphere, Plucking at the threads of my whakapapa.
As spoken words dampened The celebratory auditorium
At the alter of my ancestors, Korowai on my back,
I did not feel Māori.
Cursive smiles summon Tangaroa in my tear ducts, Comfort evermore distant than The emotion always bubbling beneath My skin.
Burning cheeks, Māori when it suits me, Māori when they like it, Pakeha when it gets too hard,
Sub-identity.
A tumour in my Glossy, auburn haired, freckled
European exterior, Is benign until that funny feeling
Settles when I hear a karanga.
Three generations cut me loose, Mother, grandfather, great grandfather
Severed from our language Beaten.
I listened as my Poppa denounced his identity. Coloniser still persistent in The Māori psyche 254 years on.
Hatred simmered for This assimilated land We call home. Respect left with sleeping dogs.
But when the dust settled, The only precipitation left were glassy eyes Gone were steaming ears, sour tears. Sorrow built motivation.
When my mokopuna ask me Who they are, I vow they will have Concrete interpretations Never facing my past and present roadblocks.
I still don’t speak Māori.
My lips wrap around Foreign vowels, Oozing, improved pronunciation.
I still haven’t visited my marae.
The thought a hangi, Cooking three generations of shame In the pit of my stomach.
Though incomplete, My soul laid bare, I am ready to grow, I will grow, We must grow.
Isobel Forsey
Primary school disco
Staying and swaying past their bedtimes
With sticky hands and squeaky light-up sneakers
Crowded careless children
Clean faces with untouched ambition
Awkward neon lights streaming
Reflected on wonky grins and in sparkling eyes
Clumsy steps with apple juice cups
Can you feel it? Now it’s coming back
We can steal it if we bridge this gap
Stage quivering with speaker’s bass
Glittery skirts swishing
Hair chalked pink and purple
Warm and sweaty oak floors
Glowsticks snapped and broken
Painting all the small feet dancing
Young minds alite
Well, we rushed it, moving way too fast
That we crushed it, but it’s in the past
Minutes passing like hours
Gold coins weighing down little hands
Friends disappearing then
Emerging with handful of chips and lollies
Pushing a path through the cluttered chaos
Limbs in the air and high-pitched delight
Can you feel my love?
Massey University Press
Private Bag 102904, North Shore Mail Centre, Auckland 0745, New Zealand
Showcasing the winners of the Poetry Aotearoa Yearbook student poetry competition 2024
Compiled to celebrate Phantom Billstickers National Poetry Day 2024
With thanks to Te Whare Wānanga o Waikato the University of Waikato
Text © copyright individual contributors, 2024
All rights reserved. Except as provided by the Copyright Act 1994, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the copyright owners.
