• Home
  • Conditions of Entry
  • 2014
    • Keeping up appearances
    • Gracious
    • A man’s world
    • A violin solo
    • Duteous
    • Life is fun
    • The obligation
    • We’ll cross that bridge when we get there
  • 2015
    • WW1
    • Like so many shadows
    • Poem: 1-1
    • Sunrise
  • 2016
    • black and blue like night
    • Ghost of the past
    • The girl sitting next to me
    • Voyage from home
    • Home for the lucky
    • Dear people of Syria
    • Home as a platypus
    • Beginning again
    • Curled up with a book
    • Is this shack my home?
    • Layers
    • Father from Mother Country
    • Ruby Glade
    • Clouds
  • 2017
    • Headlights
    • Morning
    • The Summer House
    • Poem
    • Morning
    • Morning Poem
    • The Caledonian

Dunedin Secondary School Poetry Competition

Home for the lucky

H for the rugby goalposts in your backyard
Built by a father who loves you
Painted by a mother who adores you
Used by a sister who worships the ground you walk on
Games, fun and warmth radiate out through your windows
The light washes over the frozen ground
I am jealous
O for the shape of the pies on your kitchen table
Hot food, baked with joy, your stomach full of care
Smiling faces prattle to each other over the varnished oak
Describing days of learning and easy labour
I am envious
M for the Mickey Mouse curtains in the upstairs window
Created by you because you had the skills, the knowledge, the opportunity
Bedrooms full of colour and creativity
I can only wish for gifts like yours
E for experiences made available by having a home
You can smile, and laugh and make pretty things
I cannot
You can travel far away and the delight of home will go with you
It travels too, in your heart
I can see it in your eyes when you pass me on the pavement
You know you have a home
You know I do not
I watch you from the corner of the street
Your home is one of family, of comfort
Mine is one of cold bricks and empty alleyways
And that special place in your soul, which houses your home
Well mine is an empty void
Because I, I have no home and yours is one you take for granted


Second (juniors)

Isobel Fraser
Year 9, Columba College

2018 dates

  • Closes 5pm, Friday 27 July 2018
  • Results released 20 August 2018 (on this website)
  • Poetry Day event 24 August 2018 (placegetters invited to read)

Generously sponsored by:

University of Otago

University of Otago: Dept of English & Linquistics

Otago University Press

Otago University Press

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