OPEN JUNIOR results – NZPS International Poetry Competition 2024

OPEN JUNIOR JUDGE’S REPORT – CADENCE CHUNG

It was really special to judge the Open Junior section of the NZPS competition this year. It was only a few years ago that I was entering these competitions. I remember sneakily writing poems in class, sharing notes with my friends, and sending them off in a haze of nervous excitement. It all seemed so distant, sending heartfelt poems to a judge you’d only ever see behind a screen. But now that I’m on the other side, I have come to realise how much of a gift it is to be able to read new work, especially from young writers.

Ekphrastic poetry is an interesting form, but one that can be extremely rewarding. I think many poems are ekphrastic in some way—we all end up inspired by the art around us. A broad range of artworks shaped, morphed, and sculpted this year’s poems. Some poets wrote about their own paintings. Others chose paintings from artists I’d never heard of. It was a great joy to read the poems and gaze upon new visual delights. I did a lot of searching on the Google Arts and Culture app! Reading these poets’ work was like walking through a gallery—Hopper, Kandinsky, Van Gogh, and Fragonard all made appearances. A special mention must be made to Van Gogh’s Starry Night, which seemed to be a big favourite amongst these poets.

Each poet focused on different aspects of the art. Some honed in on details, writing rich sensory descriptions. Some took the ideas of the artworks and morphed them lyrically, weaving in personal details and anecdotes. Despite the seemingly limiting ekphrastic form, so many different and important topics were broached—gender roles, colonial legacies, mental health, sexuality, familial relationships. Especially given the often uninclusive canons of historical art, seeing young people question preconceived ideas is both inspiring and stimulating.

Because of this broad range, I didn’t have any specific criteria when choosing poems. I was most drawn to poems that used words in unexpected ways and conjured images that were instantly tangible in my mind. My favourite poems grab me right from the moment I start reading them and take me completely out of my own head. In technical terms, this looks like careful use of language, strong sensory imagery, and a clear sense of form or direction. The poems I selected, through a combination of these aspects, all captured me.

I chose four highly commended entries: ‘Under the scrutiny of sunbeams’, a response to Frederic Edwin Church’s The Arabian Desert, has a commanding sense of voice right from its beginning instruction—‘Take a trip to the core of the desert.’ I especially loved the Eliot-like diction, so rich in one’s mouth (‘you spit your anger and your spite at me’), as well as the striking imagery in lines such as ‘Seafoam dribbles from the creases in your lips.’

‘the sensation of dreams’, one of the many responses to Van Gogh’s Starry Night, is an earnest ode to the world of the unconscious. Formatted as a simple block of text, it reads as a tiny Requiem for the unsettled. It leans into the lofty with lines such as ‘You can float upon gulfstreams / of light, swirling through golden spirals of / pure delight,’ yet brings things into the tangible with the assurance that ‘No one remembers / what you said last week, or what you did the  / other month.’

‘Ribbons,’ responding to Clare Elsaesser’s red ribbon, is a darkly Romantic burst of sensory imagery. It cascades down the page in a ribbon-like spiral, with stunning passages such as ‘you poured it / down my mouth / like paracetamol / orange-flavoured stew / sugar granules / mixed, mixed, mixed / hiding true properties / beneath.’

A prose-like poem, ‘Waitangi,’ stood out with its plainspoken, steadfast voice. It contrasts the historical with the modern, bringing colonial legacies into the present through its biting imagery. A great understanding of craft is shown through lines like ‘I was born on Waitangi Day, in a room with walls the same colour as pumice pulled from deep within Papatūānuku.’ And its bittersweet refrain of ‘Waitangi means crying waters’ creates a simple but effective structure.

The secondary runner-up is ‘Mrs. Richard Brinsley Sheridan,’ after a painting by Thomas Gainsborough. I read this one several times—like a Georgian-era novel, it didn’t capture me shockingly or instantly, but simply sat neatly formed and arranged. I love the combination of pastiche (‘Her hair is styled from observance / not engagement’) and more modern critique (‘Her only asset is her body’). The sentences are short, clipped, coy. The ending also left me with an intriguing question—how did she end all of her letters?

The other runner-up was from the primary/intermediate school section. I found myself very struck by the quality of these very young writers’ work, noting that there is a great deal of overlap between Modernist, minimal poetry and the observations of youths. I chose the poem ‘Art’ from this section—a short, simple poem with beautifully original imagery such as ‘lakes like veins going every direction’ and ‘Origami traffic lights.’

And I’m delighted to announce that the overall winner is ‘Soir Bleu.’ As soon as I read this poem, I recognised that there was something very special about it. It responds to a Hopper painting—and I must admit that I’m a big Hopper fan—which depicts a sad clown at a café. There are so many incredible lines that I couldn’t possibly list them all, but here are a few favourites—‘the mosquito whine / of clumsy jazz,’ ‘the blue bathwater of his eyes,’ ‘Lips pregnant and swollen / with the frown of a contemporary Rigoletto.’ Every delicious phrase is at once unexpected and extremely assured. This is a poet who takes language and turns it on its head, creating brand-new associations and descriptions.

Congratulations to all of these prizewinners, as well as the poets whose works were commended. I chose the commended works for displaying great originality and a clear sense of craft—poems that I came back to again and again to really savour and enjoy.

My job wasn’t easy, as there were so many strong entries. Well done to everyone who submitted. Writing a poem is no easy feat, and you should congratulate yourself for putting your work out there by entering a competition. I can’t wait to see what you all do with your words.