The full 2019 syllabus is available for viewing, and so are the rules.
The program for 2019 is now available for viewing. Please click here.
Please click on the title of each poem to download a copy.
Test Poems for 2019:
- Ages 12-14: ‘The Bicycle’ by James Brown
- Ages 14-16: ‘The Art of Walking Upright’ by Glenn Colquhoun
- Ages 16-21: ‘From Every Corner’ by Nicholas Gresson
More about Nicholas Gresson QSM
Nicholas Lyon Gresson QSM lives in Parnell, Auckland. He began writing poetry as a fifteen-year old, and has continued through the decades of life to the present day. His poetry comes from the realm of experience and observation; he writes as a story teller placing ordinary events against a template of time. He has produced four books of poetry, A Life In Poetry, 2011, Walking With Time, 2013, A Gathering, 2015, The Writing Point, 2018, published by Australian Scholarly Publishing, Melbourne; and is presently working on a fifth collection, Of Midnight Hours. He is near completion of a major work, Every Sign of Life: On Family Ground, a book telling stories of the lives and times of the four Supreme Court Judges in his family, and other characters who peopled his world, his life as an adventurer, and his fascinating experiences in law and justice, community work, writing and poetry. His love of language, combining the tautness of judicial expression with his own in-born sense of the poetic, he altogether attributes to his father’s love of words. The poem, ‘From Every Corner’ became an Epilogue to Every Sign of Life, expressing what he, as the writer, discovered through the writing of the book. Nick was born in 1939, in Christchurch, New Zealand. https://nickgresson.wordpress.com/
Endorsements:
His brevity of language is arresting and the meaning is always accessible and clear. We revel in its sheer beauty and power – the best way to share oneself with the world. — Dr Alan Cumming, Emeritus Professor RMIT University, Melbourne.
These poems represent a lifetime’s observations and the artful constructions of a writer to make everything beautiful in its simplicity. — Professor Michael Peters, University of Waikato, New Zealand.
Whether serious or playful, the words read as if they just dropped onto the page, and that is his craftsmanship. — Maurice Alford, Educator New Zealand.
“Who puts the pieces together? It is the wind.”
But it is also the man – and I like best his easy, colloquial voice, and the connections he forges between man and nature. — C.K. Stead ONZ CBE, New Zealand writer and critic.