SpecFicNZ is thrilled to announce the  winners of the National Poetry Day Competition. Thank you to everyone who entered, and congratulations to:

First place: The Sounds of Evolution by Piper Mejia

Second Place: Encore by Tim Jones

Third Place: A Toast to the Kreigles by Deryn Pittar

Thank you also to our wonderful judges, Lee Murray and Elizabeth Heritage, without whom we may not have been able to pick the best. Here is what they have to say about the competition entries:

Thank you to our poets who contributed their work to our poetry competition in honour of National Poetry Day. The judges had a wonderful session reading and discussing your poems, which ranged from a four line ditty to an ambitious thirty line world-building saga in the manner of Lewis Carroll’s The Jaberwocky. Given the speculative theme, poets tended to address ‘big picture’ concepts such as evolution, time and eternity over smaller ‘slice of life’ observations, yet all the entries received were evocative, thought-provoking and a pleasure to read. Of the winning three poems, we loved the simplicity of the onomatopoeic history of the world in The Sounds of Evolution, from its uncertain beginning with an ellipsis, to the ambiguous twist at the end of the poem. A fun read aloud poem, which we have awarded first place. In Encore, our second place winner, the tale of a rock band’s demise, the economy of words, simple verse, and clever interweaving of musical references hooked us in, and we liked way the reader was left with the idea that music transcends the life of the players. The third place winner, A Toast to the Kreigles, impressed us with its speculative content and especially with its wonderful neologisms, which had both of us longing for a swig of galleymop. Thank you to everyone who submitted, and congratulations to our three winners. | Read More...

Send us your sci-fi sonnets, your fantasy free verse, your horror heptameters – it’s time for a poetry competition!

NZ Poetry Day is coming up on 22 August, so get writing – you have until 15 August to send us a poem. The rules are simple: your poem must have a spec fic theme; it must be under 30 lines long; and you have to send it to specficnz.fiction@gmail.com with ‘Poetry Competition’ in the email header.

First prize $30, second and third prizes $10 each. All three placed poems will be published on the SpecFicNZ blog on 22 August to celebrate NZ Poetry Day. | Read More...