Given Words is a poetry competition for residents and citizens of Aotearoa New Zealand, run by Charles Olsen for National Poetry Day since 2016. Thanks to support from Read NZ | Te Pou Muramura, many school children have participated and their poems have featured alongside those of adults, with prizes for Best Poem and Best Poem by Under-16s. The competition has received support from Massey University Press, Mākaro Press, The Cuba Press and Landing Press, with books from their collections for the winners. Throughout the competition the participation from schools in Christchurch has been particularly encouraging [see Fig. 1].
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| Figure 1. Participation by city and town as proportion of entries (2016-2025) |
The project began on a beach in Sardinia in 2009, when the Colombian poet Lilián Pallares asked Charles to write down any five words on a sheet of paper. They then each wrote a poem using the words the other had given them. Charles had moved to Spain several years earlier and had just begun writing poetry in Spanish.
Surprised by how this exercise helped him think creatively in another language, once back in Spain, and with the support of Lilián and the Spanish poet and publisher at Cuadernos del Vigía in Granada, Miguel Ángel Arcas, he created the online project Palabras Prestadas ('Given Words' in Spanish) asking friends to donate words. Later he asked people from his neighbourhood in Madrid—the local butcher, grocer, shoe repairer, musicians, florists, mathematicians and comedians.
As Palabras Prestadas grew, Charles began inviting New Zealand poets to donate words and translated their poems to share with the Spanish audience. He even filmed the Poem on the Terrace series with New Zealand artist resident in Madrid, Anna Borrie, where they read and comment on poems by Paula Green, Jack Ross, Emma Neale, Harry Ricketts, Penelope Todd, Carolyn McCurdie, Pat White and C.K. Stead.
What is surprising is how words that seemingly have no connection whatsoever can become indispensable to one another—and although everyone begins with the same five words, they take on a different life in the mind of each person. Palabras Prestadas continued regularly for six years with people participating not only in Spain but across the Spanish-speaking world. Each year they published a collection of the winning poems and the presentations were an opportunity to bring this online community closer together. When Charles heard about New Zealand's National Poetry Day in 2016 it was a natural step to begin Given Words.
Over the years the number of under-16s participating has grown steadily. [See Fig. 2] Teachers are asked to send in a selection of the best ten poems from their class, so the total number of children participating is possibly much higher.
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| Figure 2. Participation by year and age. |
Given Words has always been international in character, with words chosen for the competition by the late Australian poet Les Murray, girls of the Our Little Roses orphanage in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, and students at López de Arenas Secondary School, Marchena, Seville, Spain. Words in te reo Māori have featured on more than one occasion, with poets encouraged to respond in both languages, and poets have even faced the challenge of including the made up word 'biscuitchip'. For the 10th anniversary edition Charles put out a call for Word Films and selected pieces by renowned international poetry filmmakers Ebba Jahn, Tom Konyves, Cindy Stockton Moore, Ian Gibbins and Colm Scully. These collaborations are often two-way—Cindy Stockton Moore has collaborated with Sadie Yetton on a poetry film of her winning poem from 2025, and the 2022 Under-16s winning poem The Broken School by Boh Harris was featured in the Spanish poetry project Un poema cada semana (A Poem A Week).
The competition has featured online in NZ Poetry Shelf, Read NZ | Te Pou Muramura, the New Zealand Society of Authors (NZSA), and in an article in the Spanish national newspaper El País. The winning poems from recent editions have been translated into Spanish and published in the Journal of Island Literature Trasdemar.
'What would you write if I gave you five words?'