Winning poems 2024
Congratulations to our 2024 winners! If You're a Poet, We Want to Know it! 2024 Volume 12-Reflection/Pūmahara
Child Category
1st Place - Children’s Category
Blue Penguin
I look in the water and see my reflection looking down,
I smell the salty air,
I see the waves crash on the sand,
The beach is where I play,
The beach is where I dance.
I am the blue penguin.
Bonnie McColl
2nd Place - Children’s Category
Thinking about Autumn
It looks like a fire that is falling from the sky
It tastes like the last morsels of toasted marshmallows.
The leaves veins stick out and they feel like the ribs of the human body.
I can smell the sweet honey sent of the fallen leaves. It sounds like the leaves are talking as the cool autumn wind blows.
Natalie Teahan
3rd Place - Children’s Category
Reflection
Tū manawaroa
Titiro whakamua
Kia angitū
Be resilient
Look back and reflect
To be successful
Cruz Te-Pania Downes
Honourable Mention – Child category
The Frog
Once there was a frog sitting on a log.
In the mist of the forest.
By the pond with his wand.
Oh he wished he could see his reflection.
But the water was flowing in a different direction.
Scarlett Beauchamp
Honourable Mention – Child category
Reflection of Time
When I was five I was almost six and Jacinda spoke to New Zealand.
When I was six I learnt how to mix and the Queen was on the 50 cent coin.
When I was seven I really liked heaven and Transmission Gully had opened.
Now I am eight, not five, six or seven.
I am eight and I will stay eight forever, not nine, ten or eleven.
I am 8!
Ezra Ellis
Honourable Mention - Children’s Category
In the Mirror I See
In the mirror I see someone who loves to craft.
In the mirror I see someone that likes to draw.
In the mirror I see someone that loves to read.
In the mirror I see someone who likes to play games.
In the mirror I see someone who loves to paint.
In the mirror I see someone who likes to wonder and wish all day long.
In the mirror I see someone who carries hopes and dreams.
Amy Scott
Honourable Mention – Children’s Category
Imagination
Thoughtful Pensive
Believe feel aware
Water, mirror, shining surface
Wondered, remembered, discovered
Sobering, sombre
Idea
Eva Shlimon
Teen category
1st Place - Teens’ Category
Reflection
I stand at the water bank,
Remembering how Holland sank.
When the dams broke,
And my homeland got a good soak
There where the reflections have shoes of wood.
There where great windmills stood.
Coen Engles
2nd Place – Teens’ Category
Mist
When i see myself, it doesn't look right. I think maybe it's a trick of the light.
But every time, it looks the same, boring, uninteresting, just so plain.
So i stare at me, again and again, trying to remember why i was so grey.
I used to be so bright, filled with colours! Having fun, playing with others.
I realise i don't have to be so plain. I cover myself in colours and start to feel myself again
Elena Wolfe-Thickins
3rd Place - Teens’ Category
Reflection of lives
Reflections within
Past lives flashing before me
Ponder my mistakes
Lucy Atkins
Honourable Mention – Teens’ Category
Night rain
When I look out the window,
as the rain’s streaming down.
I catch a glimpse of myself,
a refection in the raindrops
I see not a smile on my face, but a frown.
As I stare through the window at the dark blue grey night and see the stars up above shining bright
I think to myself, it’ll all be alright
Jasmine Fay
Honourable Mention – Teens’ Category
Reflection
Look in the river
Do you see your reflection
Is that not you friend?
Felix Patterson
Adult category
1st Place – Adults’ Category
“Who the hell are you?”
Feeling blessed I was alive, I half fell out of bed
Shuffling past my mirror, I slowly turned my head.
“Who the hell are you?” A stranger I could see
An old and wrinkled face replaced the younger one of me.
I knew that life was fleeting, but surely this can’t be
My shapely ‘bod’ and girly looks were now a memory.
Kay Hutchins
2nd Place – Adults’ Category
Birdsong in a time of silence
I become fragile, Huia, as every mother must
approach their own season of dark, alone.
Huia, try to remember the song
that carries us so close to choir.
Even if your feathers only nest among memory,
I must try to translate, inevitable and hope.
In other words, Huia, how can my treasured body offer blessings to bones without speaking
over the silence between us.
Huia, how do I ask for help?
Harley Bell
3rd Place – Adults’ Category
Reflections on Logic
If you follow the rules for a proof
you only get QEDs -
never a shoreline with rocks
never an offshore breeze.
There's no swing in the strait and narrow
laughter's against the rules
Rigour's more messy than mangoes
and conclusions are only for fools.
Mary Cresswell
Honourable Mention – Adults’ Category
The kōhanga reo generation is here
In the stillness of the mirrored lake,
Memories like whispers awake.
Pūmahara, where past and present meet,
A young wahine stands, fierce and strong,
Fighting for te reo, where she belongs.
E kore e ngaro, her ancestors' cry,
In every word, their spirits fly.
Ko te reo te mauri o te mana Māori,
A truth she carries, her heart’s story.
The kōhanga reo generation is here, in the light.
Sophie Beca
Honourable Mention – Adults’ Category
Reflection
I lost count of how many footsteps
down to the bay.
Crystal water tickling
the toes of my
shiny blue gumboots.
Sandy turrets trembling in the ebbing tide.
The bell I knew so well
threw its chime
down the flimsy grass clad cliff
"Tea time!"
Helen Youngman