Students get poetry in motion

One of NZ’s most loved poets will judge the country’s best young writing talent in this year’s expanded New Zealand Post National Schools Poetry Awards.

Jenny Bornholdt, a former Poet Laureate and winner of the 2002 Katherine Mansfield Memorial Fellowship, will judge the Best Poem in the Awards, which has been expanded this year to include year 11 students, as well as year 12 and 13.

Entry forms and a creative writing teaching resource are on their way to every secondary school in NZ.

Aspiring young poets and lyric writers are encouraged to submit works for two categories – Best Poem and Best Lyric.

Entries close on 15th June and the winners will be announced on 28th August.

Jason Kerrison, well known as the singer/songwriter of multiple NZ Music Award winning band Opshop, will judge the Best Lyric category. He will adapt the winning lyric into a song and record it with Loop Recordings.

Both judges say they are looking for a poem that “lifts” off the page through its freshness and interesting use of language.

The category winners will each receive a cash prize of $500 and their schools will receive a $500 book grant for their libraries.

The Best Poem winner will also receive a weekend for two at NZ Post Writers and Readers Week, part of the NZ International Arts Festival in Wellington next March.

Five runners-up in each category get a cash prize of $100.

This year for the first time students can enter the awards on-line at www.nzpost.co.nz/poetryawards

The awards are run by Victoria University’s International Institute of Modern Letters, and sponsored by NZ Post.

Bill Manhire, poet and director of Victoria University’s International Institute of Modern Letters, which runs the awards, says poetry is about opportunity, and exploring possibility.

“None of the great poets did what they were told. Ezra Pound said famously that poets were the antennae of the race. And it’s true: In poems, words are somehow more alert.

“I’m hoping that some of the poems this year will use words to give us a glimpse of where we might be going as a society and, of course, of the way our hearts just go on beating.”

The awards will again be held in conjunction with the NZ Post National Schools Writing Festival. Also run by the International Institute of Modern Letters, the festival offers a unique opportunity for emerging young writers, poets and dramatists from around NZ to come together for a weekend of workshops and seminars under the tutelage of established NZ writers.