Tuesday, December 02, 2008


TWO HUNDRED AND FOUR NEW POEMS ABOUT WELLINGTON

Michele Amas of Wellington has won first prize ($1000) in the Wellington Sonnet Competition 2008 with her poem, ‘Wellington Sonnet’. Saradha Koirala, also from Wellington, won second prize ($500) with ‘Courtenay Place’ and third prize ($250) was won by Richard Reeve of Dunedin for his poem ‘Turn On.’

The ten Highly Commended entries ($50 each) were from Daryl McLaren (Otaki); Lorraine Singh (Wellington); Cath Vidler (Sydney); Linzee Inkster (Raumati Beach); Trina Saffioti (Karori); Adrienne Jansen (Titahi Bay); Tim Nees (Wellington); Michael O’Leary (Paekakariki); David Chadwick (Otaki) and Kerry Popplewell (Wellington).

Judge, Harry Ricketts, says he found the 204 entries engagingly varied, some of them showing considerable ingenuity, and that Wellington’s weather featured strongly in many of the poems. He adds that some entrants seemed to think they were asked to produce a kind of advert for Wellington, but he was looking for excellent poems in their own right.

The winning sonnet personifies the city as a moody adolescent. Michele Amas says it was a way of expressing the feeling that ‘one minute it’s so charming you love it to bits and the next it’s testing your endurance.’

John Allen, Chief Executive of New Zealand Post, announced the winners on 1 December 2008. The competition was sponsored by New Zealand Post and organised by the Wellington Writers Walk Committee of the New Zealand Society of Authors. It attracted entries from all over New Zealand and from Fiji and Australia.

Chair of the Wellington Writers Walk Committee, Rosemary Wildblood, said that the competition was great fun for the committee to organise and achieved its objectives of raising the profile of the Wellington Writers Walk and raising support for its ongoing development.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

It was a very special occasion on the 10th floor of NZ Post Headquarters with superb views across the harbour on a calm silver-grey Wellington evening and John Allen as enthusiastic as always about things literary - we saw the East West ferry escorted by kayaks and rowers taking commuters across the harbour. Rosemary and her committee did a splendid job of organising this competition and Michael O'Leary (Earl of Seacliff Press)and who had a highly commended entry, had produced a darling sonnet booklet featuring the winning sonnets. - I got my limited edition booklet signed by as many of the prize winning poets as I could! I think it will be a collectors item... any bids?

Harry Rickets was his usual gracious and modest self, and although he overlooked my sonnet, (mine I now realise was one of the "advertorial style"), it only took a few lines for me to realise how out of contention I was anyway, when I heard the winning sonnet read by Michele Amas - how did she cram so much meaning into 14 lines. Congratulations to Michele and to the runners-up and highly commended entries.

Mary McCallum said...

Lovely comment Maggie and well done, Michele.