Girls' School Poetry Competition

‘There are endless images and words to use when you write, but only the right combination will do.’
~ Joy Cowley, Author

This week the Girls’ School held their annual Poetry Competition. This was a highly successful and entertaining morning. The competition was adjudicated by Paula Green, an accomplished Auckland poet, who is now well known in our school, adjudicating on a number of previous occasions. Earlier in the term she ran poetry writing workshops to inspire our students and get their creative juices flowing. She enthused about the high standard of poetry she heard, and thought this year’s poetry was the best yet. As she kept saying when presenting her decisions, she found it very difficult to pick a winner in each age group.

Some of the highlights of the morning included a medley of nursery rhymes from a group of Year 1W students, and descriptive animal poems from Year 1J. A selection of confident Year 2 students took to the stage to present their autumn leave poems. Paula thought their language was ‘sizzling, simmering and hot!’

The Year 4 competitors presented poems as objects from history, sharing their point of view on historical people and events, such as Claude Monet, Nelson Mandela and Sir Edmund Hillary. Year 5 presented purr-fect cat poems and shared their tales on mischievous cats. Year 6 student, Darcy Woolford attempted to spook the audience with her Friday the 13th poem describing a visit to a haunted house, and Abigail Mills in Year 7 had the audience giggling with her tale of taking a hippo to school.

Full of great detail, there were also a couple of powerful war poems presented by Year 7 student, Kristen Hansen and Year 8 student, Sharon Susanto. The Year 8 runner up, Annie Yu, presented a poem about our native wood pigeon, the Kereru. Paula Green thought this had stunning detail. The Year 8 winner, Sophia Pettigrove drew us into a tale about one snowy December which Paula described as ‘haunting and mysterious.’

To finish the morning, the Year 8 students entertained the audience with a fun choral rap ‘Gran, can you rap?’ with Charlotte Lindsay Smail dressed in costume as a hip-hop, toe-tapping gran.

Paula runs a children’s website and blog and is looking forward to sharing many of the poems she heard this morning with her readers.

Congratulations to the winners: 

Year 3:              
Lucy Grant - Leaves                           
Chloe McGregor - Peaches the Pirate

Year 4:               
Cassandra Wood - Hillary’s Ice Cracker

Year 5:               
Vivian Pettigrove - Suvine my Cat

Year 6:              
Nieve Campbell - Nature’s Autumn

Year 7:               
Kristen Hansen - If Only

Year 8:               
Sophia Pettigrove - The Snowy December
Runner Up: Annie Yu - Kereru