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Wellington Sonnets
(Number 24 in the ESAW mini series)
by
Prize-winning entrants
in the
Wellington Sonnet Competition 2008

As a result of this competition there are now 204 new poems about Wellington and the thirteen prizewinning sonnets are published in this booklet

Judges report

It was a privilege and a pleasure to be asked to judge the Wellington Sonnet Competition 2008. There were 204 entries (including at least one sonnet submitted twice!). The criteria were sensibly relaxed. Wordsworth’s sonnet on London, ‘Composed upon Westminster Bridge, Sept 3, 1802’ ("Earth has not any thing to shew more fair") was offered as a prompt to entrants to write a sonnet about Wellington. A sonnet was defined as any poem of 14 lines, though entrants were invited to submit sonnets following more traditional formal patterns if they wanted to. All entries were numbered and anonymous.

The results were engagingly varied. Styles ranged from the ironically modern to the rhapsodically lyrical to the fustily Victorian, moods from the sombre to the celebratory to the out-and-out comic. Approaches included the historical, the loco-descriptive, the personal. Wellington appeared as a character, a setting, a metaphor, a home, a place of exile, a place of memory, a political space.

Several entries showed considerable ingenuity. There were acrostics. One entrant used a child’s picture book format as the model. Some entrants seemed to think they were being asked to produce a kind of advert for Wellington, forgetting – or half-remembering perhaps – the famous Monty Python song with its ironic refrain, ‘Finland has it all’. The wind inevitably featured regularly, so too did the harbour, the hills and various urban landmarks. In general, there was a lot of weather.

A significant number of entrants (including some of the winners) produced sonnets in iambic pentameter and strict Petrarchan or Shakespearean form. Wordsworth’s ‘Composed upon Westminster Bridge’ is a Petrarchan sonnet. This arrangement (with an octave of abbaabba and a sestet of cdcdcd or some variant) is a demanding one, allowing only four or five rhyme sounds in 14 lines – no easy task in English. It is hard now to write a formal sonnet that doesn’t sound either forced or quaintly old-fashioned. That quite a few entrants managed to is a notable feat.

What was I looking for? Poems I would want to read anyway. The ones I’ve chosen as winners and highly commendeds are of course about Wellington (in some respect) but primarily they stand up as poems in their own right, just as Wordsworth’s ‘Composed upon Westminster Bridge’ still does. The overall winner is ‘Wellington Sonnet’ by Michele Amas. I liked its tone, confident handling of metaphor and momentum, also the way it packed in a lot of Wellington life. Second prize goes to ‘Courtenay Place’ by Saradha Koirala. This, despite its title and a few features, is less specifically about Wellington, but I found myself hooked by its quietly insistent undertow, a kind of emotional tug to the writing – caught in the repeated phrasing: "Other girls/Other girls", "Sometimes/Sometimes". Those two poems are sonnets because they have 14 lines. Third prize goes to ‘Turn On’ by Richard Reeve. This is both a poignant glimpse into "new motherhood" in a Wellington setting and an impressively sustained Petrarchan sonnet – the final off-rhyme of parties/pilates is just right.

The 10 highly commendeds are: ‘Boats’ by Daryl McLaren (bold rhyming); ‘Wellington elemental’ by Cath Vidler (I love the image of the clouds "unravelling tonight like wild ideas"); ‘Wellingtonians’ by Linzee Inkster (the most successful of the acrostics); ‘My Father, Entering Wellington Harbour on SS Captain Cook’ by David Chadwick (another accomplished Petrarchan sonnet); ‘Fisherman’s town’ by Trina Saffioti (an aching exile’s lament); ‘Wellington/Whanganui-a-Tara (History recycled)’ by Adrienne Jansen (a memorable historical meditation); ‘Lowry’s Wellington’ by Lorraine Singh (Wellington cleverly imagined as a Lowry painting); ‘The Mind of "My Lai" Revisits Da Kapital’ by Michael O’Leary (a tough Shakespearean sonnet which takes no prisoners); ‘Devon Street’ by Tim Nees (another Shakespearean sonnet, quietly, observantly walking you down to Aro Street); ‘Abandoned Entry’ by Kerry Popplewell (a witty squib on the competition itself). Congratulations to the winners and highly commendeds and thanks to all who entered.

Winning Poets

MICHELE AMAS (First Prize) Wellington Sonnet

SARADHA KOIRALA (Second Prize)  Courtenay Place

RICHARD REEVE (Third Prize) Turn On

DARYL MCLAREN (Highly Commended) Boats

LORRAINE SINGH (Highly Commended) Lowry’s Wellington

CATH VIDLER (Highly Commended) Wellington Elemental

LINZEE INKSTER (Highly Commended) WELLINGTONIANS

TRINA SAFFIOTI (Highly Commended) Fisherman’s town

ADRIENNE JANSEN (Highly Commended) Wellington/Whanganui-a-Tara

MICHAEL O’LEARY (Highly Commended) The Mind of ‘My Lai’ Revisits Da Kapital

TIM NEES (Highly Commended) Devon Street

DAVID CHADWICK (Highly Commended) My Father, Entering Wellington Harbour on SS Captain Cook.

KERRY POPPLEWELL (Highly Commended) Abandoned Entry

TITLE               Wellington Sonnets 2008
AUTHORS       Various
PUBLISHED    2008
CATEGORY    Mini book, poetry anthology
FORMAT         Paperback
EXTENT           A6, 20 pages
ISBN                978-1-86942-112-0
PRICE              NZ  $4

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