Poetry New New Zealand Poetry Zealand YearbookStudent Student Yearbook Poetry Competition Competition Poetry 2020 2020
Poetry New Zealand Yearbook Student Poetry Competition 2020
Judged by Tracey Slaughter
CONTENTS Pippi Jean — First prize (equal), Year 13 Class of 2020 6 Fergus McMullan — Highly commended (equal), Year 11 Uniform 7 Catherine Bullock — Third prize, Year 13 Orthotropics 8 Paniti Gulyani — Second prize, Year 11 What it takes to be a window
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Georgia Wearing — Second prize, Year 13 Bury the lamb 12 Holly Willis — Highly commended, Year 12 Heaters 13 Cadence Chung — First prize, Year 12 Hey girls 14 Moeka Koyama — Third prize (equal), Year 11 Character of music 17 Theles Hakaria — Second prize, Year 12 Tōku whare 18 Lily Joyce — Highly commended, Year 13 How long will my heart bleed
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Pippi Jean — First prize (equal), Year 13 11.11 pm 22 Sarah-Kate Simons — Highly commended (equal), Year 11 Scar tissue 23 Cadence Chung — Third prize, Year 12 We lovers 24
Alia Wentz — Highly commended, Year 13 In between 26 Luke Aldridge — Third prize (equal), Year 11 Tiki tour 28 Lucy Barge — Highly commended (equal), Year 12 Scratchy shuffles 30 Darcy Monteath — First prize, Year 11 World War Two 32
Class of 2020 is stamped on your back. no leavers gear yet but you’re ready already between the shoulder blades— itch notched on a hook — a divot from all that hunched-up Internet digging — yeah, there, that’s where the wings’ll go. just imagine the 12-point bold-font yellow. licking up like fire. cleansing, right? imagine this year hanging in your closet — folded in a box in the attic — collecting mothballs. except your school mascot is a lion instead of a bird. it’ll be roaring. not flying. so okay you get no wings you get teeth locking onto the hood and claws clawing at drawstrings — but colour scheme’s the same. navy. gold. we’ll look like royalty loping down the stairs, hands clean, hair grown out, photogenic as hell. imagine. you’ll bite up into your smile ‘cause hey, this is the year we were gonna get it for sure, we were gonna sleep for longer, believe in a God, harden up — face the real world — and we did. — Pippi Jean, Takapuna Grammar School
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Uniform In this school we all wear blue. We have no uniform, no dress code, So every day they line us up to list our names, but to them it’s all the same: There’s no one there. Who could stand to stay? We’ve all drifted off to thoughts on what to wear, But in this school we all wear blue. We wear the blue of deep seas on rough nights, The blue of a broken robin egg. We wear the blue of shattered dreams, The blue that rests beyond your eyes. At this school we all wear blue. So feign a smile and crack a joke, Look alive, no one cares what you wear, Because at this school we all wear blue on the inside. — Fergus McMullan, St Kevin’s College
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Orthotropics everyone has that one type of video to fall back on late at night procrastinating something to numb your mind for some, it’s moon landing conspiracies for some, it is graphic medical dramas for me, it’s this weird thing called Orthotropics the theory that if you press your tongue onto the roof of your mouth your bone structure changes your teeth won’t become cluttered and your face thus becomes..... more attractive I watch before and after videos and how-tos I promise I’ve tried to find people who tell me that it’s wrong unscientific unethical …….......but I haven’t found any maybe I haven’t tried hard enough I fantasise about the idea of having perfect teeth about my smile I smile so much, it might as well look good I am trapped by the metal bound to my teeth it feels like it’s bound to my mind I used to have panic attacks about the concept of someone shifting the bones in my skull now I have panic attacks because someone is shifting the bones in my skull I am scared that he will move my wrinkly, wrinkly brain 8
I wonder why the brain is so wrinkly because it feels like someone had taken a hair straightener and used it..... to fix my mind to make it soft smooth round oh, to have a bouncy ball for a brain decisions are too complicated complex numbers are incomprehensible — Catherine Bullock, Wellington Girls' College
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What it takes to be a window what it takes to be a window, a speck of frosted glass, somewhere titled between interwoven belts of misty moments crusted with the crumbs of what was enduring the silkiness of what is what it takes to be a window, a speck of frosted glass, somewhere which bleeds bits of crimson clouds, with the evening sketched, upon the breast of fog-cloaked glass what it takes to be a window a speck of frosted glass, somewhere laced with the saffron of yesterday’s dawn and upon fragile shoulders, there rests a string of Northern Stars what it takes to be a window, to change color with the sky, to bear the wounds, chiseled by stars and to slowly bleed twilight what it takes to be a window, to balance the quiver of uncertain shadows, which bear bracelets of raindrops upon slender wrists raindrops of a rain not yet here
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what it takes to be a window, to see what’s going on, yet to overlook it for there’s a patch of clouds framed with shooting stars over invisible eyes what it takes to be a window, to bear the sliced shadows of smoldering seconds, and when seconds smolder, I can inhale the rising stench of unspoken words what it takes to be a window the only legacy of time — Praniti Gulyani, Delhi Public School
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Bury the lamb My whaea’s voice, our bloodline on the winter wind Carried itself to me So I slide myself under the barbed wire fence, bundling up Pale white limbs in deerskin I hold her close to my chest Aware Of the dirt, the death The disease so close to my bare skin Under my nails the dirt stings The hole deepens On a blanket of wildflowers Yellow, red and blue The lamb lies still ‘Okiokinga o inaianei’ Eerie In the quiet fields Rectangular pupils take in the blood spilling Over my top lip, slipping into my mouth Dripping onto the overturned earth There’s a pressure on my throat Like I was buried with her Broken in the arms of Papatūānuku A lamb in her eyes — Georgia Wearing, Solway College
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Heaters Catch my socks on the edges of the grates The ground heaters set into wooden floorboards An efficiency measure comparable to ground trampolines Built in wardrobes And bathroom cabinets The spine roles notch by notch over the bars As I settle my head into the non-existent groove The body too long for the rack I choose which end of it to leave hanging over the edge Arms waiting patiently Alternating rotations I tuck my hands into the sleeves Moving heater to heater Leaping from radiator to portable Attaching myself to pocket warmers Sitting on the shoulders of strangers And shoving blue fingers into their armpits I am cursed forever to hide underneath warm coloured beanies Before falling asleep in the shower You have to tell me not to leave the electric blanket on all night But I will still make the drinks too hot on purpose I pick at the holes in my socks Before craning my neck towards the TV No matter how much you turn up the thermostat I scald my lips on the bars Whenever I climb into the oven — Holly Willis, Wellington Girls’ College 13
Hey girls Hey girls could we dance in the glister of a winter night could we hum along to the hazy beat of jazz? We could be neon we could be starlets eyeliner like slits in our skin holding that little 20s powder compact in the shape of a gun (with a matching bullet-shaped lipstick). God, girls I’d love to glow as green as radium glassware, discarded in the night like a ghost’s banquet, all the dead dames and dandies sipping toxic wine, listening to the click of the Geiger counter getting louder louder louder, girls, there are graves that still hum with radiation, that you can’t stand too close to or your cells will go haywire split, swirl, divide oh girls I’d paint my lips fluorescent green just to poison for 24,000 years longer. Hey ladies if the jazz gets too much then how about we listen to the slow descent into tragedy that Chopin always reminds me of like the blood crusted onto a stale knife with lapis, emerald, ruby on the hilt. We could waltz far too close at the ball cause a scandal come home with
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our petticoats swapped around and smelling like each other, so much so that the swallows would change their paths, mix up their routes confused with the exchange of souls and lace, and love. My girls, I could be the humble gardener with crooked teeth and dirt down my nails you could be the fair dame who never accepts marriage proposals and spends all her time planting violets to coat in coarse sugar make the bitter petals sweet. Girls, we could dance in the dry-throated-heart-thumping mess of waiting backstage before a show, listen to the crowd shout louder than the glaring stars. We could wear huge plastic earrings, so heavy they can only be worn once a year. Girls, let’s tie the ends of our button-down blouses and make them into crop-tops wear sunglasses on our heads, but never let them blind us to our brightness. Hey hey hey girls if flowers bloom on my grave then I hope they have disco lights on their stamens so people never forget the sweat-slicked thumpthumpthump of my past; the statues of the Greeks were once painted and were hideously gaudy, but we forget that things were not always
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just bronze, marble, and plaster. We forget the click from the gravestones, growing louder every day. Ticktickticktick tick, the ground is growing heavy from the weight of such blistering souls it carries. Tickticktickticktick, girls, before it’s too late let us paint ourselves with the brightest pigment and burn our kisses into history books — xoxoxo. — Cadence Chung, Wellington High School
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Character of music
They said, play for us minds elsewhere; browsing through the unanswerable tiptoeing in the yesterdays of today flinch, a forest of memories not to be touched the music, whistled by They said, play louder drunk in the vodka of society like biking down a slope with no breaks wry hands clutched the source of thought a rugby ball waiting to be thrown Here is not where they want to be glass breaks but air not the music whispered by They clapped I said, petals you may hear but the stem is the source water, air of the indestructible music — Moeka Koyama, Motueka High School
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Tōku whare Only from the darkness can light be seen. From the many tentacles of my chiefly ancestors is my genealogy. From this mortal coil come I, standing here, breathing, speaking. I breathe the essence of life. From the depths of my mind comes thought From the hidden confines of my heart comes want, need, aspirations. Come closer to the porch of the house, welcome! The ‘fingers’ hold the rau pōhiri - welcome to the manu rangatira from the tides that crash along the shore. Welcome to the porch of my house, the posts are tōtara, plastic and electrical. The reasons are: If the tōtara is split, it is food for the fire - united we stand, divided we fall. Stay together e hoa mā! Plastic is the tohu of my world, it stands to represent the changing of the time. Electricity is how we reach enlightenment and connectivity - those of you who are attached to social media, this is your pou! In my veins flow the blood of my ancestors, which I refuse to let drip onto the earth - never to die a ngaki! From my own hands are the material things that keep me alive. Ko Theles ahau. By retreating to the past to sieve and sift through the remnants of that era, and to draw them towards this modern world, that enables me to stand in good stead on the face of the earth! I will build my own empire! I will decide my own fate! I will carve my own path! I will set my own fire! Ka piki au i tōku maunga! 18
My world is a marae. A marae which stands on the bluff of success, on the ground of careful thought, and prudent building. The marae-atea of my house, is a ground of tikanga. You are welcome to enter. You will be welcomed onto my marae according to my rules. Some of these rules are ancient, some are modern, some are enlightening, some are yet to be conceived. This is the realm of Tūmatauenga, sparring and jarring, and spitting and hissing, and giving life and energy to mankind. Keeping man on his toes. The old is joined with the new. The rituals of my house, is built on respect towards mankind. I ask, what is the most important thing of this world? He tangata, he tangata, tangata! Turn your gaze to the tara iti of the house, therein is the hearth of the fire, where the skin is warmed and the glow is seen in the eyes of the home people. This is the base of my wairua. It is the embodiment of my dreams. The back post of my house are my parents. They both are the post that support, encourage, tautoko and lead me. Ōku mātua, I bow my head to the lofty mountains that are you two. The centre post belongs to those who injected my natural spirit into me. Nana, here is your darlin’ giving you props! The front post I built my own marae The post of my house are: Parents, spirit and shine! 19
He whaka kapi Let me return to the base of my stance, the waterfall of my thoughts, the spring of my emotions … — Theles Hakaria, Shirley Boys’ High School
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How long will my heart bleed How long will my heart bleed For the touch of a ghost long gone How long will my bones ache For the kiss of a girl never known How long will my mind cry For the broken heart of a running boy How long until joy overcomes And past pains leave Replaced by a love so true That the stars tell my story — Lily Joyce, Christchurch Girls’ High School
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11.11 pm The hometown at nighttime smells like resin and water and the flicking off of light switches, of crickets and motorway noise, of cold that slips about your neck like a wet towel. Winged things scatter in the grass; houses leak onto the street: jigsaw pieces of porches and timber weatherboards painted white. Lamplight, goodnight stories, a clatter of voices like the scraping of a plate. The trees stand solitary. Clouds wring the odd star out of the dark. We’re walking on nothing. We’re the road, unlined. — Pippi Jean, Takapuna Grammar School
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Scar tissue You left a scar in me that day on the side of the mountain that led into heaven the cut healed with broken edges and raised my skin in an inerasable line I fish for another high-necked shirt thinking if I conceal it well enough I will move on but you won’t be forgotten. You insist on being seen with your own scar and claiming you were the one thrown off Mt Olympus as if your wound were the deeper one asking the world which of us paid the higher price as you identify the miniscule nick on your forearm it was always about you, just once I’d like you to apologise and let it be about me. — Sarah-Kate Simons, home-schooled
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We lovers We lovers sit in the space between breaths, we lie in glades unknown, we sing for something we do not understand, yet crave for nonetheless. We lovers, having no bodies, are reduced to a myriad of whispers in dark rooms, to quiet expulsions of air, workings of lungs in forgotten places, drenched with the dark that only light can bring. One million and one sonnets sing for us, we lie in shades and glades and sit under cherry, oak, and willow, we are the ultimate actors, we start each day in a new arrangement of verse To my lover; these words are painted under our teeth and with each bite of life they imprint on its sweet fruit, we dance, we dance; and we have become experts at telling the difference. We have hurt; we have hurt ourselves and others, slicing the cadavers of longing in order to drink the sweet sap of a muse’s pain; the pain of loss and the pain of love, between these, the difference is not so clear
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Find us still; find us still lying under every sun, dancing in every ballroom, drinking every wine, kissing every lover; then retiring to live forever in every sonnet — Cadence Chung, Wellington High School
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In between summer air softens as days shrink away from the cold poplars are giant feathers teetering on the edge of canary yellow bare patches battle against damp freckles on pavement sun traces our outline at relative speed catching and releasing time coming leaving zillions of poked holes in the night sky reveal something brighter beyond no room for anything in between i know you wanted a poem that means something to remind you that we mean something the world means something this universe too but sometimes it’s just paper hands scraping away hurt each breath pulsing with a rhythm of its own spaces in conversation floating through the abyss of our shrinking existence teetering yellow freckled existence strung together existence catching and releasing coming leaving
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we exist in between — Alia Wentz, Woodford House
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Tiki tour A road trip? Nah bro, a Tiki tour. Honestly, the furthest you’ll get on a road here, Is the local dairy. We’re more than State Highway 1. I know, I know, It’s damned hard to believe. That there’s more to us, Than Auckland, Wellington, Picton, Christchurch? Tiki Touring is Cutting against the grain. Getting dragged out of your comfort zone, (Most likely in a 1996 Toyota Estima) And getting a stiff right hook for saying MeoWree, ManJerry, Wangernewi, Or. Any. goddamn. Whak. Word. To experience New Zealand, Is to experience us. Not business men twirling their moustaches. Their Culture is not your funny story. Their Culture is not your bling. 28
Their Culture is not one for the gram. Our Culture is embracing one another, Our Culture is a $5 can of Tomato Sauce. And our culture is Love. So please. Turn left, And although the road, Is anything but. And although the road, Is fanged. And Although the Pothole, Has a bit of road in it. Take our leap, And I promise, Our booth will always be free, The bevvies will always be cold, OMC will always be singing ‘bout that hot, hot sun. And the All Blacks will always have the Bledisloe. To Roadtrip is to see. A Tiki Tour is to experience. Kia Ora. — Luke Aldridge, Northcote College
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Scratchy shuffles how you gonna tap outta this girl? scratchy shuffles like a broken record on the wood wondering if your screws have fallen out focussed faces on high toes bobby-pinned buns and pink eyeshadow maybe I didn’t get the memo? breaking down the last few lessons muscles crying out for help dizzy and more dizzy I can’t live this dance anymore until the spotlights fall but not I lips dry from smiling into the darkness that is an audience or maybe just the judge are they smiling back? and there’s a surge I want to keep tapping to my heart beat lip syncing excitement this is it until the spotlights blacken and so do I life pushing me off the stage punching my bloody nose most days I dance 30
tissues not just for the tears that shouldn’t come — how you gonna tap outta this girl? — Lucy Barge, Mountainview High School
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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
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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
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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
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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 35
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)
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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
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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 compare 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 whisper of a dying man like a drop of poison in a can like the help cry across barren land that no one else can hear but you our something had a consequence
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this was a helpless nothing a selfish nothing but we all held its heat; the nothing of defeat
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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
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starzec the immortal was entirely mortal and died last week. but at least it was his own fault
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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
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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?
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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 — Darcy Monteath, Logan Park High School
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Massey University Press Private Bag 102904, North Shore Mail Centre, Auckland 0745, New Zealand Showcasing the winners of the Poetry New Zealand Yearbook student poetry competition 2020 Compiled to celebrate Phantom Billstickers National Poetry Day 2020 Text Š copyright individual contributors, 2020 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.
