Winning poems 2023
Congratulations to our 2023 winners! If You're a Poet, We Want to Know it! 2023 Volume 11 – Ink/Waituhi
Child Category
First place – Child category
Ink Poem
Ink meaning honour,
respect and a mark of pride.
Enduring the extreme pain,
in your skin to represent your
country and your Ainga.
Being proud of where you're from,
Suffering the agony for your people,
Knowing every day, hour and second
Samoan power is flowing through your veins.
6.8.5 to the death.
TJ Davidson
Second place – Child category
Soldier's Ink
A Soldier's writing to his wife
With an inkpot and a pen.
He knocks the ink,
It slowly spills
and his cursive disappears.
It leaks over the table ledge
Like the blood spill yet to come.
Rose Kearney
Third place – Child category
Greek Strength
The ink injected in my body,
The pulse speeding down my arm,
Greek strength flowing through my veins,
Greek mythology in my heart.
Chase Tomuri
Honourable Mention – Child category
Horse Poem
The horse galloped down the golden, sandy beach,
Bathed in the purple orange light of the sunset.
His inky black mane flew in the still air like a torn flag.
Blowing in the wind.
The horse reared up and the sun struck his muscular inky-black body.
He looked like a blot of ink on an oil painted sunset canvas.
Ivy Barmes
Honourable Mention – Child category
INK
Blue ink shining bright, what a delight
Writing Nona a letter, what could be better
I pick up the paper and it’s thin like a wafer
My pen flows like a feather, sending letter off to warmer weather
Isaac Harvey
Teen category
First place – Teen category
Stained
I stain pages with a purpose, or none at all.
Be extra careful for your letters may fall.
The black can be poison or in this case beauty.
To mark down wisdom is my duty.
I do not age, I do not fade.
However, the colour might be different shades.
I'm made from an array of things, don't ask my why.
Beetroot, blackberry, ash or dye.
I do all of the above and much, much more.
Still plenty and heaps left to explore.
Madison Riley-Hathaway
Second place – Teen category
To Write of Love Beyond Words
They hand me a pen.
"Tell me a love story," they say.
The pen quivers in my hand,
All love I know is but a reflection of His.
The heir to Heaven crowned with thorns,
His love extends further than ink-printed pages.
It redefines definitions,
Rewrites a lost soul’s story.
Leaves my hands stained with ink,
How can such love be put into words?
Krystal Devereux
Third place – Teen category
Dear Ex
Roses are red,
Violets are blue.
Ink is toxic,
And so are you.
Ellie Devereux
Honourable Mention – Teen category
Printed in Ink
It started as charcoal or soot
And shifted to bright and bold
A world of opportunities underfoot
An array of colours to be sold.
A nib, sharp like a dagger
Different colours like red, black and blue
A page covered with an ink splatter
Once the colour is on the page it's stuck like glue.
Zara Quinn
Honourable Mention – Teen category
The Human Mind has no Limitation
This ink is mightier than the sword and has no limitation they say.
Whatever you draw stains not only the paper, but your mind as well.
Now, think of your mind as a swirling cloud of ink. That ink can take any shape, any form.
But, ink stains anything it touches, including your mind.
Your mind is more than just the sword, or the ink.
Your mind is the ability to wield that sword and control the ink that fills your mind.
The human mind has no limitations, outside or inside.
It is just a fact if you can wield it properly, in time...
Enzo Simmons
Adult category
First place – Adult category
Come and See
The arc of uncapped felt tips, her
knees mapped in fushia, precise
specks of glitter. Spilt. Look up
to her face in delight, her dancing fingers.
A heart is drawn by outreached arms.
We are indelible. We are pigment
of harakeke seed and beech, crying
more, more please.
Clare Havell-Shufflebotham
Second place – Adult category
Awa Tapu, Paraparaumu
Our world begins with water and the first sip belongs to the mountains. When I was a child, we bathed in the rivers of this land.
When I was a child, we buried my mother’s father beneath the dirt.
Awa Tapu, tell me about the long migration, yours, and I will walk with you towards the ocean.
Awa Tapu, who planted the willows that weep so close to your body? The world could end with a river mouth that meets the concrete sips of a city.
Awa Tapu, I tasted ink while drinking your water.
Harley Bell
Third place – Adult category
Lunchbox Letters 1993
peanut butter on seed bread
folded note, words written, unsaid
sad syllables penned "from your grumpy Dad"
my insides are heavy, more than just sad
blue biro ink on lined note paper
cheeks burn and I ache. You wouldn't know. I'm a faker
hide it away under half eaten cake
that was gifted in tupperware by neighbours who bake
close my lunchbox, let's go play
put aside this burden for another day
Sarah Mitchell
Honourable Mention – Adult category
Did you see the sunset?
Someone spilled the colours out
and ushered in a goldfish scribe to illuminate the sky
To quill his tail and brush it through
the old, old inks of insect, earth, and alchemy
A swirl of his tail leaves gilded scales on the pool of the dark horizon
He dives, suddenly all greys wick light and pigment flows,
scattering luminous pinks and lemon and ochre, saffron, smalt, and cinnabar
Clouds inked on the vellum light of the oldest manuscript of all,
our ancient sky of azurite.
Jen Erceg
Honourable Mention – Adult category
A journey across pages
Crammed into boxes on immovable tracks.
Rigid, staccato, in blue or black.
Into the wider roads and highways it goes,
Unfolding in swirls, curls, highs and lows.
An Antarctic wilderness beckons ahead.
Expansive, unfettered, unadorned.
A swirl in a corner, a cat over there,
A firework burning in the midnight air.
Vicki Wolfe