OPEN results – NZPS International Poetry Competition 2024

OPEN JUDGE’S REPORT – JANET NEWMAN

This is the second year I’ve had the pleasure of reading the entries in the adult Open section–last year as anthology co-editor and this year as judge. One of the most notable aspects is the consistently large number of entries––this year, more than 600––demonstrating how vital poetry is and how this competition, in particular, appeals to many poets from Aotearoa New Zealand, and elsewhere.

Perhaps what attracts poets is the large number of placegetters and the publication of poems in the annual anthology. A poem only feels finished once it is published. Until then, there is the urge to revise and edit. The anthology provides a stage where poems enter the world and a home where they can be found and revisited––compelling reasons to vie for a place in it.

It was difficult to choose from my shortlist the small number of poems that could be awarded places. There were many I would have liked to have included and I hope they will make their way into the anthology. The poems that work are those that create a world of their own in a consistent and original voice. Themes amongst the placegetters represent the entries overall and range from the personal to the political. They include art, history, colonisation, pollution, the natural world, gender stereotypes, drug addiction, mental and physical health, love and loss, language, technology, and homesickness. Everything that we would expect to find in poetry everywhere. Yet, there are always the questions: how do you write about domestic violence or species endangerment? Which words do you use? The poets listed below have found ways to evoke events and emotions that can seem unwritable. I admire the imaginative ways they have achieved this within the lyric form.

Judging is a subjective process, and it has been fascinating to discover which poems I am drawn to. I have enjoyed looking up unfamiliar words, historical events and works of art, and thinking about them in the light of the poems. Thematically, I have been attracted to the global, the obscure, the untopical. And to the familiar, the local, those things unique to Aotearoa New Zealand. Some poems stood out for being subversive or experimenting with form and language; I admire these poems for their bravado and daring. Mostly, I was drawn to the original, the voice uniquely the poet’s, whether the theme was gender politics or a bad day at the office.

In particular, I appreciated poems that dealt in specifics rather than generalisations. Those big, nonspecific words such as ‘soul,’ ‘peace,’ ‘spirit,’ ‘divine,’ and ‘praise’ seldom earned their place in a poem. Endings that were didactic or too ‘on the nose’ alienated me, whereas those that conjured a perceptive moment lingered or left me thinking, ‘That’s curious.’

The three winning poems traverse the variety of forms and themes represented in this year’s entries. They are well-crafted poems that succeed at showing their particular viewpoints through the use of consistent and authentic voices.

Third place:

‘Dear high microplastic concentration on the ocean floor’ is written in the form of an ode. Using the second person pronoun ‘you,’ it addresses plastic particles with low biodegradation rates that collect in the ocean and adversely affect marine life. While odes typically glorify their subject, this poem is ironic in conferring laudable human emotions to harmful, inanimate pollutants. The final sentences powerfully evoke the proliferation and menace of these contaminants by conjuring their existence inside the bodies of the smallest and largest marine animals where they are unseen yet ‘alive.’

Second place:

‘A Rainbow Being Analysed During the Time of DSMIII, While Reading Orlando to Stay Sane’ is a complex study of powerlessness and resilience through the exposition of an interview by a psychiatrist of a transgender woman. It is written from the point of view of the woman who comprehends that her gender choice is diagnosed as a mental disorder. By interweaving the tropes of the rainbow and Virginia Woolf’s novel, the poem asserts the sardonic perspective of the protagonist. Its 32 fast-paced lines are packed with word play. Dialogue strewed with the speaker’s thoughts cleverly subverts authoritative wisdom, such as the understated yet telling: ‘“I’ll see you again soon.” Will you, I wondered, ever see me?’

First place:

‘Les Demoiselles d’Avignon’ is an ekphrastic poem with a twist. Beginning with the imperative, ‘Paint me like / one of your Spanish girls /,’ it describes in imaginative, sexualized language, Picasso’s cubist painting of five nude female Spanish prostitutes. The poem’s unusual form––uneven line lengths, a geometrically shaped first stanza and phrases separated by forward slashes––mimics the painting’s abandonment of traditional artistic form and representation. Using inventive language and comparing the figures with Ethel Cain (b.1998), it brings the 1907 painting into the contemporary moment, switching the notion of the image of the prostitutes as solely for the pleasure of the male gaze with that of self-possessed women. Passionate and pacy, momentum builds until the final fervent lines repeat the start in a breathtaking call to be similarly seen:

                                    ‘Oh please,

                                    Paint me like one of your Spanish girls.’

Janet Newman