Given Words 2025

This year, international poetry film makers responded to our Call for Word Films and we have selected five (from Germany, Canada, the United States, Austrailia and Ireland) for this, the tenth edition of Given Words. In order of appearance in the presentation video, the word films are by: Ebba Jahn, Tom Konyves, Cindy Stockton Moore, Ian Gibbins and Colm Scully. You can find out more about each filmmaker below the video.

We invite you to write a poem which includes the five words and send it to us before midnight on 22 August, National Poetry Day. Please see the full rules below.

We will award prizes for the Best Poem and the Best Poem by Under-16s. The winners will receive books courtesy of The Cuba Press and Massey University Press (see below).

And the five words are…

(If for some reason you cannot see or hear the words in
the video you will find them at the bottom of this post.)

We are very grateful to all the people who responded to the Call for Word Films. We could only choose five for the competition, but you can find some of the other entries on the Given Words Instagram. Some have made new word films specifically for Given Words while others sent in fragments of existing works, where we can see how individual words colour our perception of the images presented. You can find out more about each of the five selected filmmakers below (in order of appearance in the video) and there are links to their websites where you can find examples of their poetry film work.

Ebba Jahn graduated from the Film and TV Academy Berlin (DFFB) and has worked as a 16 mm documentary filmmaker and cinematographer. 2018 her focus shifted to the creation of short video collages with original sound and improvised music, own and found footage, artworks, photos and poetic texts. Since the experimental award winning 67 min. music video collage 'IDEA - Miniatures by Improvisers' made 2021/2022, several longer Video Editions in cooperation with musicians followed. 2024 she published her first book in German: COLLAGE Ü. Web

Tom Konyves is a Canadian writer, poet, videopoet and videopoetry theorist. In 1978, he coined the term videopoetry to describe his first interdisciplinary work, Sympathies of War, and is considered to be 'one of the original pioneers of the form'. In 2008, he began research in the field of videopoetry, publishing the groundbreaking 'Videopoetry: A Manifesto' in 2011 to define the hybrid genre, assign constraints and categories to differentiate its various manifestations and specificities. YouTube | Insta | FB | Web

Cindy Stockton Moore is a Philadelphia based artist who creates site-responsive multimedia work that engages the history, environment and poetic narrative of a landscape–with an emphasis on materiality and process involving natural pigments and aqueous media. Her experimental, often collaborative, videos have been screened in festivals and exhibitions nationwide and abroad. Web

Ian Gibbins is a poet, video artist and electronic musician living in South Australia. His poetry has been widely published in Australia and overseas, and includes four books, two of which are collaborations with visual artists. His award-winning poetry videos, video art and soundscapes have been exhibited to acclaim at festivals, installations, galleries and public art displays around the world. Until he retired in 2014, Ian was an internationally recognised neuroscientist and Professor of Anatomy at Flinders University, South Australia, having originally trained as a zoologist. FB | Insta | Vimeo | Bandcamp | Web

Colm Scully is a former Chemical Engineer turned Poet and Poetryfilm maker from Cork, Ireland. He is a judge on The Drumshanbo Written Word Weekend Poetry Film Competition and the Ó Bhéal International Poetry Film Competition. His films have been shown internationally and he won the Deanna Tulley Multimedia Prize 2022. His poems have been published in PoetryIreland Review, Cyphers, Crannóg and Orbis. FB | Web

THE RULES:

• The theme is up to you.
• The words can be in any order.
• You may change the tense of verbs and change nouns between plural and singular. (For example, hold can be a noun or a verb, and so can change to the plural holds and the verb held or holding, but cannot be used as the noun holding.) If you are in doubt about any word you can send us an email.
• Maximum length 200 words.
• If you intend to use AI in any way in the preparation of your poem please read the following supplementary rules first: Use of AI in Given Words. NOTE FOR TEACHERS: You can decide whether or not the use of AI is appropriate for your students.
• Entry is free and open to all NZ citizens and residents.
• Only one poem per person.
• Poems by under-16s must also include the age of the poet. We would prefer parents or teachers to send the poem on the child's behalf.
• FOR TEACHERS: We have prepared a lesson plan for teachers. You are very welcome to get your classes to participate, but please help us out by only sending in a selection of up to 10 of the best poems from your students.
• Participation means you allow us to reproduce your poem on Given Words.
• The deadline for entry is midnight on 22 August 2025.

Submit your poem by email including your full name and town of residence + age if under 16 to: nzgivenwords@gmail.com

To receive updates about the competition please subscribe to our newsletter here. We only send emails related with this competition and you can easily opt out at any time.

Winning poems will be selected by Sophia Wilson, Pat White and Charles Olsen.

Sophia Wilson grew up on unceded Anaiwan land in Australia and is now based in southern Aotearoa New Zealand. An arts graduate and former mental health worker, she is the author of Sea Skins, a poetry collection published in 2023 by flying island books.

Pat White is a poet, essayist, memoirist and artist. His writing often directly reflects his interest in rural life and the natural environment. His first collection of poetry, Signposts, was published in 1977, and he has since published a range of collections that draw on his experience living in different places around New Zealand, from the bottom of the South Island to the far north of New Zealand.

Charles Olsen is an artist, poet and filmmaker based in Spain. His third poetry collection, La rebeldía del sol ('Rebellious Sun') is published by Olifante Ediciones de Poesía. In April 2025 he was a special guest of Cadence Video Poetry in Seattle where his poetry film Wandering Houses—co-directed with Colombian poet Lilián Pallares—was premiered. His videopoem Vanitas based on an ekphrastic poem by Mary Jo Salter was featured in Filmetry 2025. You can watch Vanitas on the Filmetry Archive.

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About the prizes

The winner of Best Poem will receive Tackling the hens by Mary McCallum, courtesy of The Cuba Press, and The Lobster's Tale by Chris Price and Bruce Foster, courtesy of Massey University Press.

The winner of Best Poem by Under-16s will receive Iris and Me by Philippa Werry, courtesy of The Cuba Press, and Sylvia and the Birds by Johanna Emeney and Sarah Laing, courtesy of Massey University Press.

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(The five words are: pair, endure, lightfast, hold and justice.)

Coming soon – Given Words 2025

Watch this space for the 10th edition of Given Words! This year the words will be presented in Word Films made by international poetry filmmakers who responded to our Call for Word films.

On 1 August 2025, we will publish here the five words which you have to weave into a poem by 22 August, Phantom Billstickers National Poetry Day.

We will be awarding a prize for the Best Poem and a prize for the Best Poem by Under-16s. The winners will receive prizes courtesy of The Cuba Press and Massey University Press. In addition the winning poems will be translated into Spanish and published in the journal of island literatures, Trasdemar.

If you want to be the first to know what we are doing please subscribe to our newsletter here. We only send emails related with this competition and you can easily opt out at any time.

You can also follow us on Instagram @givenwords

For further enquiries you can contact us at nzgivenwords@gmail.com

In the meantime you can hear the winners from 2023 read their poems' on NZ Poetry Shelf and read the poems from last year in the previous posts.

Given Poems 2024 – Winning Poems

Ngā mihi ki a koutou for writing your poems for this edition of Given Words. We received 250 poems and have chosen 54 to publish here on Given Words. The winning poems have been selected by Sophia Wilson, Pat White and Charles Olsen. (You can read about us here.)

Charles Olsen comments on the poems on behalf of the judges: Sometimes the five words are so naturally absorbed into a poem that I have to read it a few times before I find them all. This didn’t happen with the mouthful ‘phantasmagoria’, although lines like ‘phantasmagoria fast-forwarded’, ‘a fantasy a fever dream / phantasmagoria’, ‘the phantasmagoria of man turned sepia’ and ‘the flavour of this curated phantasmagoria’, using alliteration, and the play of sounds, came closest. It was lovely to hear from one teacher who invited younger students to come up with their own meanings before they looked up the word in the dictionary. They said: the name of a cocktail, an ancient dance, a spell, a type of bird, among many more. Who’s to say these aren’t all true in the phantasmagoria of meaning?

As I write up my impressions on each poem I look forward to comparing notes later with the other two judges and I’m grateful to Sophia Wilson and Pat White for their thoughtful insights. As always, I recommend you first go on your own journey through our selection of poems and then come back here afterwards to compare impressions… although we try not to give too much away!

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There was a wonderful sense of mystery in The Rocket, evoking a future without humans. Sophia highlights its ‘innovative weaving of dreamlike imagery’, where ‘sinister hints of apocalypse and environmental collapse contrast with the resilience of the natural world.’ I ask myself if it is the rocket that is thinking, feeling, that delineates, calibrates, ponders, or perhaps it could be the exploring tendrils. Sophia also highlights the ‘nostalgia and surprise conjured by the ending’.

Putting the reader into the mind of another was also a feature of How bees see us. Pat points to the ‘careful language and restraint’ as the poem focusses on ‘the otherworldliness of the remarkable insects that pollinate our lives in more ways than one.’ Sophia is struck by ‘the progression of images: “these children of the sun / their bodies of fire and ash / on diaphanous wings” are juxtaposed with we (humans) as “barrier[s] of fog and fume”, “marauding blobs of light” and “bull’s-eye blotches” between them and their “darling blooms”.'

I particularly enjoy how the five words are used in such a natural understated way in Wishbones. Although about birds, the word feather is used in an idiom, and ‘A phantasmagoria of wishbones’ to which ‘a lonely song calls’, is a wonderful way to evoke the ancestors of the birds. The poem’s treatment of the different parties with similar language: ‘Thriving locals’ and ‘New neighbours’ invites us to reflect on our individual impact.

Of What were we? Pat comments ‘they have nailed the five words seamlessly’ and the ‘poet knows about using words to surprise’. He highlights the ‘sound and rhythm’ which would be great recited in a spoken word or slam performance, and ‘the sudden twist at the end works a treat’.

We could continue discussing details in all the poems—the charming humble garden of Home Horticulture, the playful humour of a conversation between Watson and Holmes in gothic, the subtle images in Laundry where, as Pat says ‘the humdrum is blown wide-open to confront loneliness’, or having been a rower myself as a teenager, I loved the images in The Release, that have an otherworldliness, the subtlety of the water’s voice…

In the end it was the poet’s voice in Nana that stood out for us. As Sophia says, the opening lines beautifully capture the attention: ‘Nana I come to these mountains / to make noises like the Kunekune / or to build a shrine of deliverance’. Pat comments how it ‘seduces by the intimacy of the conversation’ and describes it as ‘an impressive piece of work using a form and language that need careful attention for it not to become sentimental or unstructured’. As with the poem What were we?, when read aloud, the spaces, pauses, and musicality of the poem, really come alive.

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We received a record 148 poems in the Under-16s category this year! It is not always easy to compare poems by younger writers and those closer to 16, however Pat comments that ‘very young poets are just as capable of writing a telling image as those who are older and possess a more extensive vocabulary.’ We hope you’ve enjoyed the challenge and encourage you all to keep exploring the possibilities of language and poetry.

We particularly liked the imagination in Liminal Archive, with its ‘halls of phantasmagoria’ where memories are recorded; archives ‘you can hear’. Sophia says it is ‘a thoughtful poem that “whispers of things, / lost to the wild ocean of time”.’ The doubling up of adjectives in the fourth stanza suggests the complexity of describing each individual experience: ‘biting sting’ and ‘barking shouts’. Pat commented that ‘the poet takes us into a labyrinth of what ifs…’, and is led to ask, ‘what if the neat packages in which we place our history and our hopes for the future are mirages?’

in a faraway land creates a poetic space for imagination and playful alliteration where time clasps at feathers. Curiously it is also one of the few poems to use the past tense of the word eat.

In a similar vein, the poem Phantasmagoria creates a fantasy world with its dreamlike vision of ‘smoke whispering to the trees’ Much like the acrostic poems inspired by the meaning of the word phantasmagoria, this doesn’t try to explain what it is but rather uses the word as a springboard to create the fantasy space.

Pat describes The bush as ‘a conservative verse, except the twist at the end throws the contents wide open. Without saying so the poet asks, what is happening to our world?’ I found it playful and expressive and was left wondering what is going on ‘Unseen, / Outside of time’.

Among poems by younger poets we particularly enjoyed My Grandad is a Wizard, Pat describing it as ‘an imaginative delight’ where the contents ‘at no stage over-reach their task’. Each of the five words is treated in an original way, adding something creative to the story and playing with the idea of phantasmagoria.

In the end we were drawn to the originality and creativity of the poem Gallery Exhibition No. 73.16. with its three rooms (echoing perhaps the different rooms in the video-presentation of the word made by Malcolm Doidge). Sophia describes it as ‘a rich and evocative poetic dream sequence with surprising images and shifts.’ In Pat’s words the poem ‘takes on a form and expands our appreciation of the gallery contents by the way the poet views the exhibition,’ and he notes, it ‘doesn’t tell us what to think about what is going on.’ We are inside a dream space where meaning fades in and out of focus. Sophia comments how ‘the last stanza poignantly conveys climate urgency: “only time can tell us / the duration it will take / for dreamless dust to prevail”.’

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After all our reading and deliberations over 10 days or so, we come to the moment where I look up the names of the poets. There are always lots of surprises. We are delighted to announce the winning poets. The winner of Best Poem is Jason Lingard for his poem Nana and the winner of Best Poem by Under-16s is Miranda Yuan for her poem Gallery Exhibition No. 73.16. This edition we would also like to award a Special Mention to Bhaarati Sharma for her poem My Grandad is a Wizard. The winners receive books courtesy of The Cuba Press and Massey University Press. Congratulations to all on behalf of Given Words, The Cuba Press and Massey University Press.

Below are the winning poems and Special Mention. We also invite you to read our selection of the rest of the poems from adults here and from under-16s here. All entries had to include the following five words: feather, whisper, time, eat, and phantasmagoria.

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Nana

Nana sometimes I come to these mountains
to make noises like the Kunekune
or to build a shrine of deliverance—
                                                      I sit and eat with alpine spirits
                                                      and tell the manu
                                                      things I can’t think about.

At night the rangiora leaves are like little moons
                                                      lighting the way    whispering
                                                      Do you still feel me in your bones?
                               I do
                                      and yes    the adult me still grabs
                                      the leaves of the rimu trees
                                      to feel if they are masculine    or feminine
                                      because as a child    you told me    females are softer
                                      and that made sense    at the time
but in the future    it will not.
So    I lie down on the forest floor
and play dead                letting the huhu and wētā caress me
                                      under a phantasmagoria of stars
                          the ground is feminine—
                          Papatūānuku holding me    because    you’re gone.

So I’m hiding    semi-obscured
                          slivers of flesh poking through ponga ferns
                          stuffing feathers in my ears
—but still    I hear you whisper your favourite song:
                                       It’s so funny, how we don’t talk anymore.

Your words fading    I wave to your wairua    walking backwards
                          softly    on rocks of green teenage flesh
                          mimicking every move the wind makes—
                          in a silken effort
                                                         to disappear.

Jason Lingard
Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington

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Gallery Exhibition No. 73.16

phantasmagoria:
a sequence of dreams

one: the feather room
how many plucked birds
does one need
to fill a space with feathers aflight?
still, does any of that matter?
when face to face with jade and pearl
suspended on almost invisible
strings of gossamer.
colours harsh, soft to touch,
downy, never down,
never touching the ground.
but don’t you ever forget
the chords are still there.

two: the lunch room
neon lights fizzle from on to off
off to on—
cues to the silent dancers.
splitting smiles on, inhibitions off.
bring in the whispers of sweet nothings
plated with sweet everythings.
it’s time to eat
gloss and glitter.
the roast pig at the centre
speaks of the heat in the oven.
he is met with disregard,
my condolences.

three: the sand room
after passing an oasis,
the desert always feels drier—
endless expanses
drenched in gold
worth less than a single cent.
only time can tell us
the duration it will take
for dreamless dust to prevail,
the number of epiphanies it will take
to come to terms with the
permanent haze.

phantasmagoria:
to begin and to end

Miranda Yuan, aged 14
Ōtautahi Christchurch

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My Grandad is a Wizard

Grandad lives in a mushroom.
He has a phantasmagoria
of spider jars with dreams and candy
that makes you sick,
a charm that whispers,
a book of secrets made from feathers…
and the scariest of them all
is a haunted doll that eats unicorn horns.

He has a brush that can take you anywhere
any time,
a pirate’s ring filled with mermaid’s hair,
and dragon teeth.

I love my Grandad
and his phantasmagoria!

Bhaarati Sharma, aged 9
Ōtautahi Christchurch

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About the Poets

Jason Lingard is a writer and designer from Pōneke Wellington. He is currently completing the Poetry Work at the Institute for Modern Letters. He is also working on a collection of poetry, and a non-fiction book about fashion and pop music. He has recently had work published with Circular, Void, Rat World, Tarot Journal, and Bad Apple.

Miranda Yuan goes to Burnside High School in Ōtautahi Christchurch and is an aspiring writer who likes experimenting with poetry and prose. She has attended Write On School for Young Writers since she was 11 because she can share her work with like-minded people and get constructive feedback. She is also a competitive rower and a choir kid.

Bhaarati Sharma is 9 years old and lives in Ōtautahi Christchurch with her family and her cat, Trixie. Bhaarati’s poem was inspired by her love of the Harry Potter books and movies. Sadly, she never got to meet her grandads as they lived in Fiji. Doodling and drawing flowers and butterflies is one of Bhaarati’s favourite things to do. She enjoys being with friends, learning about other cultures and meeting new people. Bhaarati can speak Hindi and a little bit of French. In the future, Bhaarati will be a cook or an artist or maybe both.

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Continue reading our selection of poems from adults here and from under-16s here.