Given Poems – National Poetry Day 2024 – Adults

Here is our selection of the entries for Best Poem for the Given Words competition for National Poetry Day. They all had to include the following five words: feather, whisper, time, eat, and phantasmagoria.

You can read the winning poem Nana by Jason Lingard along with the judge's comments here and the poems from the Under-16s category here.

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what were we?

call it a supercut
a speedrun a zoetrope
a fantasy a fever dream
phantasmagoria
call it a checkbox
a courtesy a formality
a milestone a watershed
a feather in your cap
a seminar an epitaph
something for the résumé
a slideshow a side quest
call it nothing
a way to pass the time
shrug and shrug and shrug
feign nonchalance
nothing to write home about
call it heresy
a whopper a whisper
flick on the gaslight
make a big show of it
go all melpomene and thalia
spitefully expressive
call it a big time blunder
a misread a mistake
reframe every memory
in dreary sullen sepia
make me eat my words
get intimate with hindsight
and regret regret regret
but please
don’t ever call it a
situationship

Ben O’Connell
Ōtautahi Christchurch

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The Rocket

The rocket sits an age on its pad
time measured by ivy sprawl
and the whisper of atomic decay
birdsong reclaims the morning
from the day of too much light
when the phantasmagoria of man turned sepia
a glacial drip of mineral rain
eats tiny holes in the vanes
while the rocket awakens to thought
budding tendrils in search of shape
thinking perhaps it is a feather
and not attached to the earth at all
until it feels clamps
dials and switches
gaskets and ceramics
reaching along roots
it delineates a footprint
discerning direction and altitude
calibrating poles and magnetism
azimuth and perihelion
solar drift
it ponders a while over lost voices
all that has been stolen
it imagines skimming pebbles
across an empty sea
each a grooved white stone
of undeciphered whorls
till a last throw skips across the water
one, two, three, four....
and it launches

Stuart Airey
Hamilton

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How bees see us
(after watching a video on Youtube)

a swarm of clouded bubbles
a vacillating sequence
of whispers
hum of the dead
unintelligible syllables
a phantasmagoria—we are not
as consequential or substantial
as we think

we are just—
a barrier of fog and fume between
them and the nectar they want
to eat, suck and lap
with multifunctional hairy tongues,
and the pollen they tuck into pockets
ferry on leg feathers
as they save the world
with each flower fertilised

they labour without introspection,
this honey-making, bee-breeding machine,
these children of the sun
their bodies of fire and ash on
diaphanous wings
while we are marauding blobs of light
shifting through time
a mosaic without the red
sunblock yellowed—we block their sun
bull's-eye blotches between them
and their darling blooms
they do not sting us lightly

when no bees remain to see us
we will have only four more years.

Heather McQuillan
Ōtautahi Christchurch

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gothic

‘for goodness sake
she's turned your head,
and where, dear Holmes,
is your salutary logic now?
This time she's done it!’,
and Holmes without the slightest turn
of head from evening window
answered, ‘You may be right,
dear Watson, but there's
something ineffable here,
like a whisper on the moors
at night, perhaps you didn't
hear, a feather falling
from the moon, yes, of course
a goose overhead flying
against cloud, but it's the
subtle fall of it, out of such
distance into our thoughts,
am I to refuse a woman with
blood in the corner of her eyes, and
lips curled like the curving of
a sword along its edge to the
pressing point? Watson, her
face eats at me…’ and he turned
to find the Chinese lantern Watson
lit was turning on candle heat
its shadow phantasmagoria,
the crooked postman &
cock-eyed policeman
chasing the bantam
behind a cart with
the butcher drunken
at the reigns, revolving
swifter as the candle
flared, and Watson
chuckled to himself loud
enough for Holmes to hear,
‘Turned your head like
a Chinese lantern, with nothing
more than a five word spell,
the road to hell paved indeed
with such intentions…’

Peter Le Baige
Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland

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Wishbones

These islands heaved
with pulsing birdsong.
Thriving locals warbled up the dawn
trilling lofty names, calling
in the canopy, the undergrowth, the wet.

New neighbours landed
to call, to plant, to thrive, to name
to hunt, to eat, to feather
their caps. Brought comforts
that injured, blunders that laid waste.

These days, there is
lonely song, a whisper of
that former roaring swell
calling to a phantasmagoria
of wishbones.

Will our little fingers snap
to action, carve out green
corridors where singers perch, sip, feast?
Or will we name it a daydream
an idea in quill calligraphy?

Our call. If we clutch
earnest, honest work with
keenest hands, in time
the last word may yet be
a plumed, throaty chorus.

Lee Fraser
Ōtautahi Christchurch

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Laundry

Spin-cycled, then tumble-dried,
feverishly rising and falling.

A phantasmagoria of negatives,
colours washed from every frame.

Even my tears pack their bags,
these desiccating nights.

Numbers drip from the clock,
I eat time like icing:

sticky-fingered,
starved for attention,

ultimately unsatisfied
(I wanted the cake too).

Marooned between pummelled pillows
and inhospitable regrets;

wake whispering to my sheets
through a mouthful of feathers.

Strip the bed, but lose the impetus
to take the task any further.

I can’t think of anything lonelier
than my wet laundry, lying,

in a basket that once held his too.

Bee Trudgeon
Cannons Creek, Porirua

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Speak to me no more of war

If you should ask me of war
I’ll put on my hat, my coat
and walk down to the park.
I no longer belong to the unnatural world.

On the bridge over the eternal stream
watching the cattail knock and whisper.
The geese spread their wings and rise.
I pluck a feather from the flowing water

pin it into my hat. There are many wars
that have pulled us into fragile peace.
Time is a moving memory cog of conflict.
The news a phantasmagoria of blood collage.

I leave the park, enter a busy street.
A café with a sign in red lettering
leers ALL YOU CAN EAT $20.
As if we can devour all our fear.

Lincoln Jaques
Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland

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Liar, Liar

you tell me ghosts whisper to you
you pretend you’re haunted
but I see your clear eyes
and I know soon the real kēhua
will come to eat your lies
and leave you gasping for light.
they are like feathers, drifting
on the cold air that sidles
through half-ajar doors and cracked
windows, but when they sink
their teeth into your pretty soul
you’ll be sorry.
take a moment, take your words back
before they etch in stone
immutable like a prophecy
waiting for time to play out,
for the future to come roaring in
a phantasmagoria of blood
surging over us like a wave but
only you will be screaming.

Sherryl Clark
Whangārei

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Home horticulture

Couch, dock, groundsel, mallow. The whole
weedy phantasmagoria, with daffodils
too sparsely planted out to make a show.
Feathers, fur, a desiccated carapace. The

hollows that the dog gouged in the lawn.
Clumps of dacron easily survive the winter,
while the toy rots, face down, seam open to
the weather. The apricot tree buds pink,

a promise we will eat in time. Then, behind
it all, the blue grape hyacinths, still hardy
and still here. I prised apart the woody
corms to plant them, the motherlode heavy

in the hands like concrete. The one who
put them in the ground before had poured a
path, raised a washing line not far from
here. Wise head, kind hands for newlyweds.

He was so competent, and loved them so.
Couch, dock, groundsel, mallow. I whisper to
the hyacinths, hello.

Megan Clayton
Ōtautahi Christchurch

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Landscape with the Fall of Icarus

A collection of found feathers and crushed coffee cups
  Used pens
    Broken headphones and 1B5 exercise books filled with pencil scrawl
      The detritus of a life spread on a bedroom floor
        Air thick with the phantasmagoria of the girl who could’ve been
          Like numbers left in the memory of an old Casio calculator
            Not adding up to anything
              Packets of two minute noodles never to be eaten
                Origami cranes that can’t fly
                  In time, there will only be three cardboard boxes left, neatly labelled,

But now, out in the harbour unnoticed, aftermath washes over twisted wax wings
All that is heard is the whisper of wind on the ocean.

Emma Philips
Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland

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The Release

I eat
Whispers
Of you
In the dark
A watery phantasmagoria
The timing of a stroke

You
Are a dictionary of feathers
Turning oars horizontal
Towards
the next pull

At first blush
My ribs stretch
To trace the dew
Of a single scull

Rachel Gomez
Carterton

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The Farm

My tūrangawaewae,
a phantasmagoria of broken dreams.
Let’s eat again,
Roast mutton. Spuds.
Pudding too, of course.

Time has ticked off,
the for-sale signs have gone up.
Family have fractured.
Water is thicker than blood, apparently.
The for-sale signs come down again.

My tūrangawaewae,
Let’s eat again,
Lamb chops, spuds and peas, this time.

I hear the whispers.
The small-town gossip,
The feathers hitting the ground with a boom.
Let’s eat again,
Lamb shanks, carrots and mash.

Who wants you now?
My tūrangawaewae,
My phantasmagoria of broken dreams.

Put it into pines they say,
Subdivide it.
Slice it up and hack at it like Te Ika-a-Maui.
Those brothers didn’t like each other either.

How did it come to this?
My tūrangawaewae.
My phantasmagoria of broken dreams.
Let’s eat again.
Roast pork this time, she’s lost her sheep.

I see grandad looking down.
Where’s that fat wool cheque now?
Who’s going to carve that Sunday roast?
Sharpen the knife and pass the gravy.

Nicola Douglass
Napier

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The dog

I used to write poems to get me out of my own head // To get away from a bed I couldn’t physically pull myself out of // Anything // Away from that pakaru town before it closed in like bad lungs, before its tarry skin seduced me into submission // I would write to make the days fold in on themselves; writing poems and sleeping were the same in that sense.

Now, though, I've come to find I've long since plucked all the feathers from my dreams // They sit in front of me bald // They whisper to me, begging for me to eat them again.

I used to feel everything // I would cry in technicolour // Emotions would flood through me like phantasmagoria fast-forwarded // Life was some wicked version of eternal sunshine in stop-motion, looped.

Now, I have no appetite // I barely write // Time moves as if it’s suspended - lost in space // It's that lukewarm feeling in your gut when you realise everything is really nothing // This is growing up I guess // That’s what they all said // Is this growing up? // This means I'm happy, right? // Or am I just tired? // I'm happy, I think?

The dog needs a walk.

Gabriel Field
Arakamu, South Taranaki

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Apparition on Bamboozle Avenue

Flash of light in a shop window
Shadow on a far wall.

Kokopelli feather head
Now adorned in horn
Dreadlocked behind protruding leafless vines.

Whisper and it/he/she/they/we/you (poof)
Become smoke and mirrors
Marco the Magnificent.

Saturday night break-dancer
Salsa, rumba, samba
Swing my phantasmagoria auditor of time
Eavesdropper of the deaf.

Old misdemeanor-maker
Consultant to NASA . . .
Not sure if what you need is a capsule full of lithium
Lithium batteries,
Or esteemed awe at unprecedented levels of joy.

Rain priest swindler
Prance through turquoise waters of my desert tidal zone
While biofluorescent anemones
Eat lunch with sister Gaia.

Elizabeth Farris
Waikanae

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Dynamo Man

hears time conducted in whispers through
cardboard boxes he power-lifts onto trucks,
the clink of piano keys shifting on the way to
someone’s retirement or marriage home, he drives

under the lightbulbs of other people’s houses,
the blur of this transformer inducting lives
magnetically, a phantasmagoria of strain
in his triceps, or in the night hours of home

the forty-wink flash when you see the bones
of the old man to come, he eats
all the daylight hours like feathers, every wiry muscle
taut in an incapacitated, unregulated tick tick
economy set on wearing him out.

Gail Ingram
Ōtautahi Christchurch

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If I could go into the garden

I would lay a blanket on the grass.
Go slow I know it’s not an easy thing to do
to let the vast phantasmagoria
of daily dread dissolve

but if I could
I might draw my finger in the sky
around the feather ferns where I lie
breathing low to the earth. Be still.

I’d draw around the praying mantis swaying
on the pinking leaf or I might carefully trace
the tiny flowers that scatter underneath.
Then looking up I’d count the greens.

Take your time. ‘You need to get your eye in’
my father would have said.
And then you start to see—the wild,
the soft, the grey, the dangerous stuff of serpents

breathing in the grieving dark of looming trees
breathing out the bright lime leaves below.
Close your eyes.
Don’t eat, don’t talk, just listen. Count the birds.

I’d hear the teenage tui practising
two gardens down the hill the rattle of the punga
at the back a far off mower not too loud.
The whisper of an invisible bee.

I’d smell the empty empty air.
If I could go into the garden.

Maggie McGregor
Sandringham, Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland

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The air tastes

of forgotten things / phantasmagoria blooms / & in the corner colours grow / in reverse wide-mouthed / what is this place we have entered? / a theatre full / of feathers forsaken / speaking in a language only they understand / they are voracious / they eat the stillness / the emptiness that moves through the air / you think it is out / of character somehow / the day falls into night / the ordinary becomes the strange / an endless loop but time cracks / in a space where the world isn’t / quite real / the theatre coughs
a caged snake / whispers

it’s /            

illusory               

Kim Martins,
Kerikeri

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Time elongates the space between you and me

That evening we first met
you whispered into my ear
'Don't worry. You look better in it.'

Your birthday.
You made me eat chips
dipped in caramel sundae
from the McDonalds drive through.

Wild black sand beach.
And you on one knee
and a seagull feather
between your fingers.

Was I to know then
you were handing me
Icarus's discarded wing?

Time
elongates
the space between

me and you

you and I:

when we were 'us.'

I make my home amidst
these spectral visitations
in this hallway phantasmagoria
wishing for a resurrection.

Vanilla Black
Ōtautahi Christchurch

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Closing Time

thirty past midnight, and it’s a halfway sort
of leaving
drawn out, now stalling at the table’s edge
defying time—to force this place to shed me
like a feather
to see this round out
to its end

and there will be a wake
(I have to say it)
there’ll be a wake
(for all these late nights on the town)
a stubborn swirling
in the dregs—phantasmagoria—
last whisper of a spirit
still seeking to be downed

but age has emptied me
of that old hunger
lost chances have collapsed
into the lines around my eyes
restless, those years have left me
with the lesson:
how to eat a stranger’s passing glance
and be full.

Shaun Stockley
Waiouru

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alternative truth

Naïve whispers of dawn,
Green and warm,
Kiss the dew-drip playgrounds,
in my gilded memories.

Yellowed hours unfurl,
Viridescent moments, a feast.
I savor and eat,
Long remembered
sugar-dusted days.

Nostalgic half-digested truths,
Boast-plump tales,
Softened and kneaded,
rise in retelling.
Keep the kind
And sweet, and palatable.

And, bury the rest.

A pirate's black bounty.
Stained, and hard,
Gleaming, and guilty.

Ignorance is, this...
And that, too.
Baking and eating,
My own cannibal cake.

And, Time’s feather pen,
My hand in his,
Miswrites and misremembers,
Villainous reds as warm golds.
And misspells, salty blues
as soft greens.

And, the flavour of this
Curated phantasmagoria,
Lingers, sweet and sour.
This bittersweet,
Half-remembered edge,
Of the taste of me.

James Riley
Wairarapa

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Time came for you. It took and took.
First it snatched your hair
                   so black it was famous round here.

Then, remember?
You could not eat.
That lumbering hunger of yours, that dumb giant that smashed through
buildings of salt n’ vinegar chip sandwiches.
It took that shiny thing that made you want,
                                      back to its nest. 

Before you left, I had this dream.
Phantasmagoria even.
Yeah I know—
if you’d heard me say a word like that you’d of given me a dead leg.

But,
In the dream you were holding a black feather as long as your forearm.
You raised it up high. I knew then—time would take its prize.

Your Mum said I could say goodbye, but only if I wanted? She wasn’t really asking.
The hallway to your room felt like I’d breached a crypt. You were the cold jewel inside. Your ginormous hands so neat by your sides.

A laugh leaked out of me—being in your room again with your kid curtains still up. But then I was howling—just a dog outside the Pak n’ Save.

I sat down on your bed, one last time, heard myself whisper,

my mate

Claris Harvey
Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland

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                                             technē

                                phantasmagoria
                            holograms
                        whisper sweet
                    nothings and

            eat into time
        expanding
    cavities of
the cloud

feather fibre
    optics
        bristle
            desire for

                    more and
                        m o r e  and
                            m  o  r  e  and
                                m   o   r   e
               
                                                bytes

Cindy Zeiher
Ōtautahi Christchurch

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stereotypy

many feathers fall fast off one thousand pigeons
landing on our institution’s red rusted roof.
you patients, inside these yellow walls,
think their scrabbling sounds like the whisper of a rainstorm
if the rain were pebbles.
you are not soothed.

our dear, eccentric occupational therapist
stoops under wing-hail,
taking her time collecting each grey feather.
she will use them later; her hands regularly
transmogrify detritus.

the woman who drives that beat-up silver peoplemover
has been identified by staff
as thrower of daily seed handfuls
to the scrum, or even
whole slices of bread;
creating chaotic feasts.

you all discover
that pigeons eat
with apocalyptic fervor.

you ask us:
—so in the end will it be birds?
—congregating, overtaking?
—what will sustain them with no thrown seed?
—no bloated white slices disintegrating between grass blades?
—if there are corpses left behind?
—what then?

these are not tolerated questions. do not
imagine the apocalypse. do not
picture a corpse. do not
allow phantasmagoria
to pervade your fractured minds.
be still now.
stop wondering.

keep your heads down;
we know you can hear them,
but under no circumstances are you to look.
we said: do not look up
at those flocking pigeons.

Hebe Kearney
Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland

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dəˈmen(t)SH(ē)ə (Dementia)

Thoughts like feathers are sometimes too heavy to carry,
In the moult of the mind.
Or just too thinned and stretched,
Tangled like dusted webs.
Set afloat on a confused sea.

A phantasmagoria where,
Time is the sun rising downwards,
Earth spinning backwards.
The incoming tide ebbing,
Outgoing tide flowing.

Life eats at you,
And you remember the extinguishing of sunsets,
But not the horizons,
You remember the Milky Way,
But not that it is filled with stars.
You remember the silver lining of clouds,
But not the storm that passed.
You remember your salt encrusted skin,
But not the wrath of the waves.
You remember the whisper of leaves,
But not that it is autumn.

Thoughts perishing,
From the decay in your mind.

Thoughts slip out like flying fish,
Alone and adrift.

In the moult of the mind,
You drop your multi-coloured feathers
And take flight to a broken horizon.

Tamsin Worsley
Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland

❆ ❆ ❆

Writing on a wall

There should’ve been more—
ripened harvests, river washed, are golden ready,
hardened bricks piled.
There’s still conflict, lands to conquer, deals to make.
Why didn’t you wait? For feasts and dancing? For triumphs.
The world, my king, my son was yours.

But now,
three coffins, a stone sarcophagus,
my anguished whispers.
I’ve brought your board games, flint knives, your own stillborn children,
An ivory bracelet, some papyrus.
Freshly washed, your skin is perfume slick.
Next to you, a basket of dates you’ll never eat,
One linen glove, part of a pair, broken as a heart,
Like yours. Like mine.

All’s a phantasmagoria:
the past, the future,
harvests gathered, challenges met,
you still king.
At my breast, you were milk-drunk, plump legs Nile paddling,
a golden rattle, those cack-handed hieroglyphs,
you never got right,
teaching your brother about pubic hair, lice, women,
the art of a royal swagger, calling,
'Hey, Mum. I love you.'
All power and energy,
you slammed doors, battled teachers.

But come my love, take my hand.
Let’s weigh your heart against a feather.
See the monkeys dancing on the wall, your blue glass goblets,
your carriage oiled, luxurious?
Everyone’s waiting.

It’s time: Step into another life.

Lynda Scott Araya
Otekaieke, Oamaru

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Continue reading the winning poems along with the judge's comments here or the poems from the Under-16s category here.