2008 Takahe POETRY COMPETITION   Click here

2008 Takahe CULTURAL STUDIES COMPETITION   Click here

 

 

 

 

2008 Takahe CULTURAL STUDIES COMPETITION

 

Takahe, with the support of CNZ, is delighted to announce the results of the 2008 Cultural Studies Competition judged by Brenda Allen (Auckland) and Rudolf Boelee (Christchurch).

Prizewinners:
	1st Prize	Pat White   "Gone Fishing"
	2nd Prize	Peter Dane   "Poem's Living Context"
	3rd Prize	Margaret Karmazin   "Untitled"
	4th Prize	Hayden Williams   "My Life as an Unemployable Wretch in Contemporary New Zealand"

The judges look forward to re-reading these essays in future editions of Takahe.

The judges are delighted to announce the results of Takahe's 2008 Cultural Studies Essay Competition. The standard of writing was high overall, and we enjoyed reading each essay. In the end we chose works we consider to be written with the most flowing, elegant style, clarity of expression and structure and conviction about their topic.

First prize: Pat White "Gone Fishing"
This essay addresses the ways in which an activity and a dedicated parent provided stability for a growing child within a relatively nomadic family. Various places remain associated in memory with family members through the shared experience. The writer goes on to show that while memories remain, the world changes if we degrade our environment we risk degradation of our sacred pasts.

Second prize: Peter Dane "Poem's Living Context"
This essay opens with a sonnet in which the writer speaks of longevity, life and death. The prose passage relates the poem to the writer's own inspirations and then to a specific set of events and invites readers to contemplate the arbitrary nature of some of our milestones. The final poem exposes the hypocrisy of one who would appropriate the celebration of a stranger's birthday for his own ends.

Third prize: Margaret Karmazin "Untitled"
This essayist, a painter, gives an insight into her life and motivations as an artist. The speaker outlines her changing attitudes to art from youthful arrogance to mature acceptance and enjoyment of a God-given talent. The prose is accompanied by prints of four beautifully-executed paintings. Our readings of prose and image are mutually enriched.

Fourth prize/highly commended: Hayden Williams "My Life as an Unemployable Wretch in Contemporary New Zealand"
This essayist gives a compelling, detailed and extremely readable account of the struggle to survive poverty and difference thrust on mental health patients who must fend for themselves. The speaker demonstrates that mainstream society fails in its responsibilities to those on the margins and refuses to accept blame or censure for his or her ill-health.

 

Organized by:

Takahe Collective Trust, Box 13-335, Christchurch 8141, New Zealand.

 

 

 

2008 Takahe POETRY COMPETITION

 

Takahe is delighted to announce the results of the 2008 Poetry Competition, judged by Michael Harlow, Poet and Editor.

Prizewinners:
	1st Prize	Emma Neale:   "Well"
	2nd Prize	Vana Manasiadis:   "Four Postcards"
	3rd Prize	Peter Rawnsley:   "Twenty Instructions in Tai Chi"
	4th Prize	Pat White:   "And then, with words; for autumn"

377 poems flying through the post, landing intact and ready to be read and reflected on, read again and yet again... for the Takahe 2008 Poetry Competition. Out of which I had to find four Prizewinners: a 1st and 2nd, and Runners-up 3rd and 4th; to which list I felt compelled to add a number of Highly Commendables--all of which, each in their own saying, made very strong claims to be among the Finalists.

It is I think in their very nature that poems don’t like to run in herds or fly in flocks (always a problem for anthologists), so I had to make ample time for individual poems to do their stuff, as it were, and not rub too closely or clamorously up against each other. Initial culling was not particularly difficult, although these poems deserved at least two or more readings. When it came down to the long-list of some 60 or so poems, I began to see and hear the quality of the writing, and the craft of making that made the end run to the finals a difficult but I must say a pleasurable task. Out of a gathering of 21 semi-finalists, I finally turned up 10 Finalists--poems, all of which clearly made their claim for excellence (if I can venture that word) and a final placing. At this point, I began to rue the tyranny of numbers (that mastery of restriction) and wanted to declare 10 prizewinners all, and include 10 others in the Commendable list; some indication I think of the considerable quality, and range, of the poems submitted. In the end, I answered to the claims of the 4 Finalist poems, and 10 Highly Commended.

As 1st prizewinne, "Well" by Emma Neale, is a poem whose very title is provocative and resonant with possible meanings; and a poem with some striking imagery and scrupulously judged tonal notes (that feeling quality and colour of the language) that takes the experience of an ordinarily intimate relationship into some quite imaginative territory. A poem that creates that moment of recognition, we sometimes call a truth of the imagination, and out of it makes something of the invisible, visible; an affirmation of the power of the imagination itself (‘as if the mind could be its own physician’).

The 2nd place winner, "Four Postcards" by Vana Manasiadis. A poem-in-prose (for this reader): a quartet of micro-meditations in which, among other involvements, time and place and the historic-actual when treated imaginatively and through some rather fascinating observations and very nicely tuned detail, begins to frame a narrative, or more directly ‘tell’ a story; each frame (or ‘snap’): about what happens when we look-and-listen to, and into what it is that we want to say in front of each other, and just now.

Third place winner, "Twenty Instructions in Tai Chi" by Peter Rawnsley, which may be a ‘treated text’ or not; but one that I kept coming back to (as indeed I did for others in the Finals) for the way in which it went beyond the plain prose didactic of its title into something quite other and more lyrically articulated. A composition (rather like a performance-work, a score of images sculpted on air) in which each micro-poem ‘tells’ or enacts itself, at the same time shares a field of meaning signalled by the title. A poem in fact where soma and psyche enact a ‘dance’ (a quiet, rather graceful adagio, I would think) of intentions, to as the poem says, ‘Raise, lower, stand/let gravity fall through you.’

4th place winner, "And then, with words; for autumn" by Pat White. A poem that I warmed to on first reading and that I returned to a number of times. A poem that has something to say (beyond the numerous postures of the ‘poetic’ or the off-hand ‘bland’ of the anti-poetic), and says it with that kind of artful reticence and quiet lyricism that engages the reader to listen to what’s being said beneath the surface of mere reportage or hasty observation. A poem that shows that the natural world is itself a language, and a natural source of forging an identity--this poem celebrates that fact. Finally (not to give too much away too soon), there’s something going on here about the ineffable -- and about how not knowing is not only a useful kind of mysteriousness, but keeps the world and our place in it open to what happens ‘when the unknown calls.... Cold days are due. Split dry wood for the fire.’

Congratulations and a large Bravo for the prizewinners, and the Highly Commendables. ‘Take a risk, trust your language, make a poem’ still seems to me to be at least a modest (and worthwhile) proposal.

Highly Commended in alphabetical order by title:
      "Fey", by Helen Lowe
      "Just One Question", by James McNaughton
      "Journeys", by Barbara McCartney
      "Male and female created he them", by Helen Bascand
      "Menu", by Frankie McMillan
      "On this train of thoughts",by Robynanne Milford
      "Shifting Sunlight", by Christine Tucker
      "The Physiotherapist’s Piano", by Jenny Powell
      "The woman who dangles from a balloon", by Sue Fitchett
      "Those Things You Name", by David Gregory

 

Organized by:

Takahe Collective Trust, Box 13-335, Christchurch 8141, New Zealand.