You can read the winning poem After visiting the IC ward by Pat White and also Hiki te hoe by Aine Whelan-Kopa, which received a Special Mention, along with the judge's comments here and the poems from the Under-16s category here.
❆ ❆ ❆
Te Karoro
draped in dusk
in the kākahu of Hine-nui-te-pō
e rere ana te karoro
ia pō, ia pō
ka mahuta te marama
me ngā whetū
he tohu mā te iwi
koinei te wā ngū
but this young karoro
knows not where to go
so surrenders to Tāwhiri
te atua o te hau
and so the wind swirls
restless and without sight
as the breath of Tāwhirimātea
wrestles the moonlight
ki runga, ki raro
ki te matau, ki te mauī
the wind jostles the young karoro
no longer so carefree
but then comes a sound
or a knowing, perhaps
that the karoro alone
no longer it flaps
because there right beside it
below it, around it
are those who have loved us
still here, still in orbit
above the glittering city
below the risen moon
kept company by our tūpuna
their lament a stirring tune
there flies the karoro
comforted by those passed on
their protection over each of us
still lingers though they’re gone
time passes by
kua hīkina te pō
dreams fade away
and yet the karoro still soars
and now, bathed in dawn
farewelled by the morning star
e rere ana te karoro
ia rā, ia rā
Rachel Farrington
Te Whanganui-a-Tara
Te Whanganui-a-Tara
❆ ❆ ❆
in the sky burns a garden/ahi
‘He who loses his language loses his world.’ Iain Chrichton Smith/Iain Mac a’Ghobhainn
Really the loss began when Motoitoi married Dallas
and her daughters married Pākehā men
and then when my grandfather’s parents,
the son and daughter of two sisters, married,
sealing the rift.
In every memory, fear. An ache in every chop of the axe.
In every cry karoro trail through a breaking sky, grief.
Yet there’s fire. Ahi. Sparks that breathe in smouldering ash.
The music of stars. The breath of tūpuna. Hau.
Tūpuna made dumb when my grandfather pulled away
from his grandmother when meeting her
for the first time, at a railway station.
He remembered the iron monster steam train
and was scared of how old and dark
his grandmother, how strange the black shawl
she wore over her head. Black iron. Black smoke.
Black shawl. Pō. Dusk. An ashen sky
raises unseen stars. Someone chops wood into kindling
— a tradition as old as the ancestors, those who refuse
to speak to me because of my grandfather
with his Māori nose and freckled skin I loved — his hands,
his face, his short, brown roundness, his shiny
acorn-coloured head often topped with a homberg,
the kind of hat favoured by Frank Sinatra
and American gangsters.
Kay McKenzie Cooke
Ōtepoti, Dunedin
Ōtepoti, Dunedin
❆ ❆ ❆
Te Rapu
Ka kitea te Karoro i runga i nga kapua
e tioro ana ia ki te ao.
E hīkina ake ana te Karoro e ngā hau,
ka kapa iho ia, ka hiki anō.
E rapu ana ia he aha?
He rite tonu ia ki tātou katoa
e rapu mutanga kore ana ia i ōna tūpuna.
Awhea ka haere mai te pō,
ka taukapo ngā whetu i te rangi.
The Search
The black-backed gull may be seen above the clouds,
shrieking at the world.
The black-backed gull is lifted up by the winds,
He falls, he rises again.
What is he searching for?
It is the same as us all,
He searches endlessly for his ancestors.
When night comes,
The stars twinkle in the sky.
John Christeller
Te Papaioea
Te Papaioea
❆ ❆ ❆
Sea breeze
Dusk.
Think
of the climbing moon while the
sun slides to slumber,
the dark
that tip-toes towards you.
The black-backed gull
the hills sprinting towards him, while he
swoops in rushes of cold air, swirling
eddies in the sea of the sky with the stars
ruffling his feathers. He raises a crying
call to the moon
whose dim light gives a path
for him to fly.
I come
from the rolling green of Scotland, the brutal
winter of Europe, the singing
kererū of Aotearoa.
My ancestors’ breath tastes
of the sunrise atop the moors
in those green hills, it
turns to steam in the icy wind in Poland, it
carries the salt from the beach in Hokitika.
Amelia Fairlie
Christchurch
Christchurch
❆ ❆ ❆
Marathon
At low tide, kaimoana exposed atop
layers of ancestors, dogs flare across
the beach, dune to wave. No little blues here.
The fat things of this island have worn thin.
Give up, give up, a black-backed gull screeches
as I scratch kororā in heavy sand.
You haven’t the breath to raise this story.
Scavenge and predate, feast upon the living.
Forget the pungent work going down
in the crawlspace where dreams breed and hatch.
Catch the bus direct to the finish line.
But Kapiti, dusk whale, against her backdrop
of roses, resists summation. Little fires
for tears. If dark be tears which wish well,
come chicks, vivid in the space beneath.
Come the raft, returned before the storm.
Gillian Roach
Auckland
Auckland
❆ ❆ ❆
Corrosion
Concrete grows on my lungs
engulfs my obliterated lust
like moss
my dweller albatross
will no longer raise sail
from the cracks
no karoro will emerge
from my ribcage
with a breath of fire
world has changed, I am told,
get used to the dusk
it will only get darker
I crawl to the cliffs
at the mouth of the ocean
to inhale seaspray
where remote fragrance
of my tūpuna
still lingers
Edna Heled
Auckland
Auckland
❆ ❆ ❆
The time of lockdown
Cherry blossom in the warm sunshine
Tui sings spring melody loudly
Mask lady wanders around
Empty streets
Black–backed gulls play with ocean waves
Enjoy the silence of the world
Dusk come and go
Cars park in dust
The tantalizing aroma of roast permeate the air
Ghost moon hangs on the dark sky
Reminisce our ancestors’ lives
Nature and tranquility like now
Children bustle with laughers from afar
The sound of keyboards become the rhythm of family life
Daily news flood in my eyes and ears
I raise my arms to embrace hope
Take a breath
Spread the legs
I stay safe and well
Amid the nationwide lockdown
Michelle Zhao
Lower Hutt
Lower Hutt
❆ ❆ ❆
The Yellow Lilo
Who’d raise up tamped-down memories
– delinquent faces, the changing sheds,
foreign ancestor-parents –
if they kept strong-arming you
back to the black sinkhole,
dumping you in
so when I’m brittle
I remember the brother who,
alone, years before cell phones,
Kathmandu jackets
or the Ruapehu Alpine Rescue Organisation,
plummeted down a scree slope
one clear January day.
Dusk brought the killer chill.
* * *
Come New Year, fishing-mad Dad would caravan us
to the same Birdling’s Flat outcrop
overlooking the deceptively
languid lake
I’ll fish the freezer full of red cod
if it costs me my last breath
A plastic bag each, billowing hard
behind us like drag parachutes,
brother’n’me would take off to crunch the shifting tide mark
wheeling like feeding-frenzy pigeons
scouring for stone jewels: glistening agate,
jasper or petrified wood.
The time we came upon a black-backed gull
challenging a twice-its-size skua
to a dogfish carcass,
I knew he’d champion Gully.
It needn’t have been one of the huddled nesters
we startled on a cliff clamber
and it was him,
hollering and wind-milling
at the stupid sun-snoozing yellow lilo,
haring along the lake shore
beating me, just, to the tidal breach
Anita Arlov
Tamaki Makaurau, Auckland
Tamaki Makaurau, Auckland
❆ ❆ ❆
Ngā Korowai o aroha
Manaakitanga ki te karoro
Ki nga āhuatanga o te pō
Te hau o tō tātou tūpuna
Ka hiki i te ahoroa
ki te tino meto rawa atu i te karoro
Me kaua e korehāhā i rātou e!
At dusk, the night fully unwound
the breath of our ancestors calmed
the apex of the moon raising
the black-backed gull facing extinction
They should will never be eradicated!
Trevor Landers
Taranaki
Taranaki
❆ ❆ ❆
Fold
I fold upon myself
like an origami bird
attempting to alter the shape
of my existence
fretting over finding a more
me-sized fit
determined to discover the source of my breath.
My roots don’t feel like roots at all
but barbs in a feather
more comfortable with floating
than being weighted to the land.
Like the Karoro that circle overhead
warning of the coming rain.
They cry and land on lamp posts in the city
familiar
but not belonging to this space.
That feels like my shape:
bold and conspicuous, more annoying than not
born here but not of here
my scream sounds the same as all the rest.
Still, I squark my best.
I wait to watch the new day
unfold itself from the ocean’s edge
and raise my wings
to catch the first sun rays
knowing my ancestors saw the same star.
And maybe they felt just as far away
as I do from myself sometimes
or as the past feels from us.
As far away as the Karoro feels from the ancient Poukai
or the morning light feels
from the dusk.
Sophie Procter
Auckland
Auckland
❆ ❆ ❆
Whakapapa
At life’s pō, te hau is everything
until it is no thing:
one with our tūpuna,
tamariki of Raki and Papa;
one with the ever-changingness
that transcends our prayers.
The rumblings of Rūaumoko
turn us to life
raised from ashes
like karoro crashing pipi on rocks;
rocks that have lived under the sea
and towered above,
rocks that draw us
to our tūpuna and moko.
David Griffin
Invercargill
Invercargill
❆ ❆ ❆
Contact Tracing
The breath of ocean
as cold as grave dirt.
Dusk holds winter coast.
Ancestors have nothing to say.
Your troubles aren’t theirs.
The karoro looks at you pass by,
raises a heavy wing, departs.
Lights snap on in sequence
above ghost streets.
Victor Billot
Dunedin
Dunedin
❆ ❆ ❆
Ceci N'est Pas Un Oiseau
Cometh the family with fish and chips,
cometh the black-backed gull.
It's pass the parcel at Plimmerton Beach,
but karoro's not invited. See him
poised on the picnic's edge,
hopes cruelly raised by the chip
that a child seems to lob his way,
invisible arc of nothing through air.
Don't hold your breath, karoro:
save it for dusk, when your wings elide
with the sky, and your flight,
like your ancestors', might best
be seen by a Binney equipped
with Hotere's infra-red eye.
Mark Edgecombe
Tawa
Tawa
❆ ❆ ❆
A Letter to my Lover
Your tūpuna would be so proud
Listen quietly and you can hear
Tītokowaru himself applauding
And no, your body isn’t much of a temple right now
More a von Tempsky battle –
Yet every day you triumph
It’s true, undefeated is in your blood.
At dusk we hīkoi to your Taranaki cliffs
Jagged as Maui’s magic jawbone
Karoro greets us there, hovering at eyeline
Where soft volcanic soil presses itself against the sky
You raise your ribcage with a single breath
Ushering in Tāwhiri-mātea
As you whisper to yourself
To te manu
To all before you
‘I am here. I am well.’
* * *
Now, a Letter to Myself
Same war, different battle, you know?
If you’re proud of her then you’re proud of you
Your own ancestors would look up
From their paddyfield labours
And smile
Kwong Chong himself would be pleased to see you
Not far north
Of where he first built those market gardens
Where through many-a-celery and even-more-a-cauli
Your family grew.
The black-backed gulls giggle like happy kids
The cows trudge over for a curious look
And your ribcage rises, once,
Your mind eddies in the updraughts
Then settles
You are there, too. You are well.
Gabriel Field
Ōpunake - South Taranaki
Ōpunake - South Taranaki
❆ ❆ ❆
Estrella (Catullus 101)
Weigh anchor — for two kids crossing the lake in a dinghy to catch skinks. Years back.
They’ve yanked the starter, sparked the two-stroke motor, steered (through the waves)
away from the row of tents by the beach. Unmoor. Tai hoa. Take a breath. Try to speak
into this karoro-dusk. Since some Deus ex machina has conspired to steal your grasp
from my shoulder, so that you and I may no longer talk as you leant forwards
into the words in that way you had, ka kite, friend, taken / not given. Now (at least now)
these objects of our history float
to the surface, rearrange in this elegy — take these gifts, raise the glass: whisky
tears. Let me salute your return to our tūpuna. Hau. Estrella, mute ashes, water
damage — The passage. Push the boat out. Put it there, partner. Haere ra.
Notes:
This poem is based on Gaius Valerius Catullus’ poem 101 — At his brother’s grave. The words “ taken / not given. Now (at least now) these objects of our history” are quoted from Mike Lala’s Say Goodbye to the Shores.
Annabel Wilson
Lyttelton
Lyttelton
❆ ❆ ❆
I tēnei pō
I tēnei pō
I don’t know what scares me the most
Gulf Stream collapse
methane burning, or
having no food
I tēnei pō
I have listened to the
hau of my whānau
and they seem so peaceful, sleeping
By dawn
I hear the karoro cry outside
and I wonder
Will we be good ancestors?
Will we raise the kids so they can
exist in a violent, unforgiving world,
which
is
knocking
at
our
door?
Aotearoa
The day brings no relief with its pretence of normality
By day
I watch the Keeling Curve inch and soar
I watch the kaitiaki protect as best they can
I watch the karoro scavenge and squawk
With its brutal stare, white head and confident strut
It will be the last manu to succumb I think
Kate Hodgetts
Pōneke/Wellington
Pōneke/Wellington
❆ ❆ ❆
The swimming dusk returns,
Moon locks
Sleepers into a singular
Dream, tides are
Like the echoing breath
Of ancestors
Drowning towards heaven.
The black backed
Gull will raise its
Young, wings will sing
Two different songs
About procreation on a
Burning earth, needles
Have been turned
Upside down, who
Will guide the
Eco systems delicate
Thread through disparate
Eyes as dreamers are
Led through the
Wreckage of an ark.
Sun's ghost circles
Gull's offspring.
Barry Coleridge
Hull, England
Hull, England
❆ ❆ ❆
Old ‘Gulls’ throwing
Stones in a new
Zealand field.
‘E kō you,
wing in wind with
a black breath,
Smeared on
placard lips!’
‘Karoro don’t you
know it’s already
dusk;
A, Ancestor already sold
all your tūpuna
into the night.’
‘Karoro can’t you –read this:
–ain’t Aotearoa &,
–we ain’t partners in bed &
–you ain’t Hine-nui The Voice
–your pō or dispossessed SOUL
–is raised-rubbish tipped
–In our new Zealand!’
‘Hau! Hau! Hau!
Here comes Foucault!
It’s the Law!
Te Karoro
you’re in for a present, day
Originary Blue
Father Christmas!’
‘E kō! Karoro Haukuru, it,
was already yesterday when
we settled for ghost chips
–get! your ihu
matāo out of our
fish and chip papers’
nā, ko, your no/kau mātua[s].
Note:
Kō / Girl, a term of endearment according to Te Aka Maōri Dictionary. But is an insult in my Grandmother's dialect when applied by a parent to a daughter which is the intended use in this poem.
Tokorima Johnny Taihuringa (Mx)
Kapiti Coast, Waikanae
Kapiti Coast, Waikanae
❆ ❆ ❆
Awe
I sit
Calm and mellow
Gazing at the star-lit pō.
‘Karoro’
My mother whispers
Love and pride intertwined in every syllable
‘This is where I was raised’
…
She told me about her tūpuna
Some parts new, some I knew
In broken chirps and notes
Pauses in place of miracles
Halfness of words
Interrupted by her own loss
Blankness
I could see Desperate
Struggling to search
A self beating when they never came
When she couldn’t find them
An exhaustion
physical labour could never substitute
I gaze up at her
Twilight fading into her sleek black feathers
Speckling with snow
I think I understand
Her disjointed hau
Of her two distinct worlds
I sit
Epiphanised
In the pō
Of a new dawn.
Ning Qian
Auckland
Auckland
❆ ❆ ❆
A Greymouth Dinner Party
His death was a mere 8 weeks raw
When I learned the loneliness of grief,
The cruelty of others
At a Greymouth dinner party.
There, too many glasses
Were raised to consider the bad taste of suicide jokes
Or of pot-shots at the vulnerable,
Those who hung onto life though every breath hurt.
At the funeral, I had thought of my ancestors:
A grandfather who had been distant,
A great-grandmother who had played bowls,
Turning them to show me their weight,
The way they would roll, nudge up to the kitty.
Their deaths had been proper. Expected.
Elderly mourners, stories of a life long-lived.
But life had thrown me a curve ball.
At the funeral, my mother had been cold and distant.
Now, I sat still at the table, slowly dusk-shadowed.
Outside, a black-backed gull hunched.
Eyes intent on her brown-mottled baby
Pecking a salty sanded shell. Chips of greenstone.
It knew the fragility of life. Of grief. Despair.
I clutched my pounamu pendant. Once his, from me.
Now mine again. Outside, the sea sighed. Salty. Ceaseless
Lynda Scott Araya
Kurow, North Otago
Kurow, North Otago
❆ ❆ ❆
Te Karoro Karoro
Black-backed gulls skitter across sand.
They eye up your hot chips even as
the hungry beach swallows your sugar feet.
You are up to your ankles in ancestors.
One by one you fling deep-fries
up and up, again and again.
Their eyes are pinholes and the sky
is alive with the breath of wings.
You raise one chip high above your head.
Who among you is the bravest?
The one with the bung foot butts in,
snaps it up. You crush the empty bag.
Stuff it in your pocket. Watch the colony
settle, steal glances. The tide is coming in.
Dusk feathers and they move away
in waves as you lean into the easterly.
Note:
Te Karoro Karoro is the Māori place name for the New Brighton spit area in Ōtautahi Christchurch. Te Karoro Karoro references the place where 'the seagulls' chatter'.
Jenna Heller
Christchurch
Christchurch
❆ ❆ ❆
One of the few snippets I remember
From Father Luke's Fifth Form English
Was his upbeat rendition of Glover's Magpies
Their go-to karaoke number
Projected forth on his rasping Rothman's breath.
What would his West European mouth
Make of the strident black-backed gull
Soaring on the storm-memories of ancestors
Lamenting the scudding dusk
And the dearth of food-scraps on the beach below?
And when will another Glover
With an ear for gullspeak
Grace the logosphere
Raise the spirit
And make fifteen-year-olds smile?
Bernard Harris
Palmerston North
Palmerston North
❆ ❆ ❆
An enthusiasm of forest
The right way to live / like our distant ancestors
is to adapt to the transience of nature
on these heating Pacific Ocean mornings
of burning red pearl cloud on dusks distant shore
and drizzle that drifts like smoke, is smoke
through the lens, a window full of sky
with a memory of karoro millions circling the horizon
roaming all over the luxuriant coast,
the enthusiastic forest, tuatara
nodding in agreement in the flourishing language of the land
as it raises its voice through the mycorrhizal hyphae
the furious microbial silence
children of lava and wind, of seminal magma
tangled by umbilical threads
on a temple of altars, at Piroa/Brynderwyn
where Kawharu turned
to overlook the oceanic echo chamber
the breath of nine billion voices
the fleeting prayers of humanity
Piet Nieuwland
Whangarei
Whangarei
❆ ❆ ❆
Yes, I’m the chosen one
You were plucked out of the dusk
of your bastard mother’s breath
and given to us, we chose you,
dear, and we will raise you, you
are such a good girl, see how
you feather our nest, you are
special, you know, in this lawful light
and look here, these are your
ancestors now, we give them to you
from us, your parents, look,
your grandfather, how like you he is,
see him ride, we’ll give you a pony,
we’ll never clip your wings, we see
no wings, you’re special, see you fly,
dear, across the paddocks so like
your sister, there is nothing wrong,
no reason for those whisperings
at your back, no black-backed gull
in this nest of cuckoo, we love you,
we chose you, you’re special.
Gail Ingram
Ōtautahi/Christchurch
Ōtautahi/Christchurch
❆ ❆ ❆
Kotahi Ki Taku Wairua
I walk this breadth of shifting sand
Feel invisible wind, this whispering hau,
The breath of tīpuna
Eddies of past and present
Watching restless waters, gazing at
Te Karoro, feel myself in flight
Knowing the dusk is curving into night
Mai te pō ki ahau
Rises to meet the darkening whakaarahi
Kua hiki ake ahau ki runga
Ake I taku ao
Filled with the endless cantilenas
Of the sea
Kei te mohio au
Nothing that happens is in vain
Kei te noho ahau I tenei wa
Lee Thomson
Dunedin
Dunedin
❆ ❆ ❆
We march our evening route around New Zeaburbia
Brought to you by New Zealand's favourite Construction Corporates
Your stomps are faster and breaths sharper, quick huffs of excitementv because I've brought your purple octopus kite along.
You pull the cord taut, whilst I raise the kite...and wait.
The expectant, gaudy, googly-eyed kite hangs there from my hand
while its tentacle streamers flail flaccidly.v By happenstance this is Wellington's annual windless day.
The harbour in dusk reflects the city as an otherwise perfect mirror
smudged with blue wax crayon.
‘That penguin has found the wind" pronounced he, pointing at a soaring bird
‘Penguins can't fly. That's a karoro’ reckoned I, ‘a gull.’ I am indubitable.
‘If penguins fly underwater they can do flying in the sky even easier’ he hypothesized.
I refrain from rectifying him. I yearn to be erroneous on the matter;
I hope that penguins have finally defied their ancestors to obtain aerial liberty.
‘Starfish think penguins can fly’
He looks dubiously at me whilst I furtively suppress my mirth
‘It's a matter of perspective’ I offer sagely.
But what do I know?
I'm trying to fly a kite without wind.
Stuart Mudd (feat. Jasper Mudd, 4)
Wellington
Wellington
❆ ❆ ❆
reaching dew point
too many moments pass
over like foggy breath on a six a.m. window.
each morning I sit on the carpet
with a cup of coffee and wait for the black-
backed gull to fondle the tip of my spine.
I am always waiting for something holy to take my waiting away.
how many prayers must I pray before the black-
backed gull sees me on the carpet, waiting
for dusk like a feline waits for hunter’s moon.
when I was small I could chase my ancestors
for hours. I could raise them from the dead
pile of leaves with a fingernail.
when I was small I could climb trees from root to crown
and know exactly how close to the sky or far from the soil I was.
now I drink coffee and write poems about the time
I can’t get back and some black-
backed gull I want to call Lucifer but won’t in case they hear me.
I won’t in case they hurt me.
instead, I drink coffee and write poems about the prayers
I can’t remember how to pray, too many moments
pass away like foggy breath on a six a.m. window.
still, I keep breathing.
Amy Marguerite
Ngaio, Wellington
Ngaio, Wellington
❆ ❆ ❆
Karoro
The breath of ancestors
Brings dusk to an endless night
There are no stars there
They raise their wings
And hold us up
And we soar
In the sky
Demi Chang
Howick, Auckland
Howick, Auckland
❆ ❆ ❆
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