By Ema Poposka

Year 7 classes recently finished their English poetry unit a few weeks ago. For five consecutive weeks, it was all about poetic devices and poetic forms. A feature of the unit culminated was the very first  Poetry Competition open to all Year 7 students. 

The theme of the competition was “Viral” and it was open for all poetic forms and styles. Entrants used all their knowledge and creativity to craft their poems.

Fourteen poems written by Y7 students were shortlisted. Big congratulations to our winners:

First Prize: Taara Bailur (7.5), “Cyanide of the Sea”

Second Prize: Lorraine Ng (7.6), “Bubble Tea Vogue”

Third Prize: Kentaro Kawada (7.5), “I would like to…”

Honourable mention: Tristan Cheung (7.3), “Fingers Typing”

Liam Gordon (7.1), “Monsters are like the wind”

All five of our winning entry poems are very different but they are all linked to the theme “Viral”. The theme meant something different to each poet. For Taara the inspiration came from her dedication to “spread awareness about the environment but in an interesting way”. Taara’s favourite poet is Maya Angelou, especially her poem, "Still I Rise". She is currently reading the third book in the Percy Jackson series. Taara wants the readers of her poem to become “more considerate on their plastic consumption because it can affect a very important part of the environment.”

Similarly, Kentaro was interested in the topic of the “sea/ocean getting intruded by humans and the ocean not liking that.” Since being quarantined in Japan, Kentaro has been reading a lot of National Geographic e-books and he thinks they are interesting because he gets to learn a lot about the world and what happened in the past or what is happening now. However, when the quarantine is over he is planning to get back to skateboarding, finish building his pc and go out and see his friends. But Kentaro admits the thing he misses most is “eating the banana pancake at school.”

On the issue of food, Lorrain writes about its effect on human health. She likes the poetry of  Emily Dickinson, especially her poem “Hope” because she explains, “her writing creates images (imagery) to people who read it”. She just finished The Mystery of Black Hollow Lane by Julia Nobel and is currently reading White Rose by Kip Wilson, a book consisting of “a bunch of short poems that are merged together in one book, but they all relate to the plot and main idea,” observes Lorrain. Although her poem is about bubble tea, she is not really a big fan of this drink “since it’s not really good for your health,” she says. 

Liam’s poem is more closely connected to the recent coronavirus scare. The situation was so intense that “monsters just came into my head,” says Liam. Liam doesn’t actually have a favourite poet as he admits he “never read many poems before we started this unit.” However, he did like some of the poems Mrs Lewis shared with her class. He is currently reading Watership Down by Richard Adams. In his free time, he plays lots of sports which is his favourite thing to do, but he also enjoys reading and playing his guitar. 

There is one thing all our winning poets agree on - writing poetry is not a difficult task at all. They all started with the theme and what it meant for them. “I started by writing down a story, then I added imagery,” explains Taara. Liam explained that images appeared first in his head and then he tried to put them into words. Kentaro described that he just wrote what he was thinking about, so the poem was just words coming out of his mind without even thinking. Lorraine, on the other hand, started with research, by looking for more information online, in newspapers, so she could deeply elaborate on what she wanted to write about. The next step for everyone was to add poetic devices like simile, metaphor, rhyme, etc. However, they all agree that it took some feedback from readers and a few drafts and edits to get to the final winning form.

The selection of the winners went in several stages. First, our English teachers had an important job to choose up to three best poems from their class for the judges. Our lovely judges were Mr Graeme Brasher (Head of English), Ms Claire Gore (Head of Learning Enhancement Team) and myself (Ema Poposka Year 7 student organiser). The judges had a hard job choosing from all the fourteen poems across all the Year 7 classes. All the poems were amazing, so it was tough to choose the winners as they were neck to neck. But we managed and with good communication among the judges, we picked the 1st, 2nd, 3rd place and two great honourable mentions.

The winners will get an amazing prize - a book of their choice. And you can read the five winning poems in the LAVA supplement on our website!