This year we have a special edition in collaboration with Landing Press, Wellington, and poets from the collection More of Us, who have chosen this year's five words in the video below. All you have to do is write a poem which includes the five words and send it to us before midnight on 23 August, National Poetry Day.
We will award prizes for the
Best Poem and the
Best Poem by Under-16s. The winners will receive copies of
All of Us and
More of Us courtesy of Landing Press (see below) along with a
$50 PaperPlus voucher each. In addition the winning poems will be translated into Spanish and published on the Spanish version of the project
Palabras Prestadas.
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.)
The rules:
– The poem must include the five words.
– The words can be in any order.
– You may change the tense of verbs.
– Maximum length 200 words.
– 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: 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. We have prepared a
lesson plan for teachers.
– Participation means you allow us to reproduce your poem on Given Words.
– The deadline for entry is
midnight on 23 August 2019.
Submit your poem by email
including your full name and town of residence 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
Charles Olsen,
Mikaela Nyman and
Clare Arnot.
Mikaela Nyman is a New Zealand based writer born on the Åland islands in Finland. She writes fiction, non-fiction and poetry and has just finished a PhD in creative writing at the International Institute of Modern Letters in Wellington, New Zealand. Her work has been published in Sports, Minarets, Turbine, SWAMP and the anthology More of Us. An essay on language as belonging is included in Strong Words: The best of the Landfall Essay Competition 2018. Her first poetry collection, När vändkrets läggs mot vändkrets, was published in Finland in 2019. Prompted by grief, it turned into a poetic quest to reclaim her mother tongue, Swedish. She is interested in the fragility of memory, the way language is shaped in the collision of cultures, and what is lost in translation.
Clare Arnot is a graduate of the Whitireia Creative Writing Programme. She is working for a small Wellington-based press while completing a Graduate Diploma in Publishing. She loves any fiction, but has an extra soft spot for poetry.
Charles Olsen (b. Nelson, 1969) has published two collections of poetry, Sr Citizen and Antípodas. In 2017 he was awarded the XIII distinction Poetas de Otros Mundos by the Fondo Poético Internacional, in Spain, in recognition of the high quality of his poetic oeuvre. His poetry films have been featured in Moving Poems, Poetry Film Live, Atticus Review, Blackmail Press and international poetry film festivals. In 2018 he was awarded the III Antonio Machado Poetry Residency in Segovia and Soria and together with the Colombian writer Lilián Pallares he has received a Visual Artists Residency in the Matadero Centre for Contemporary Creation, Madrid, in 2020.
About the prizes:
More of Us
Edited by Adrienne Jansen
Landing Press
Third printing since March 2019.
'Families, language, fear, loss, food and the victories that can come slowly. These are at the heart of this collection of poems by 46 writers who have come to New Zealand as migrants or refugees.' Further info.
|
All of Us
Adrienne Jansen and carina gallegos
Landing Press
Longlisted for the Ockham NZ Book Awards 2019.
'Adrienne Jansen and carina gallegos use poems and short prose to weave together the vibrant, expansive, and sometimes heart-wrenching stories of immigrants and people from a refugee background in New Zealand today.' Further info. |
(The five words are: solitude, pulse, moving, circles and self-acceptance.)
