Peter Dix Memorial Prize for Poetry 2016

Congratulations to Helena Gromotka, winner of this year's Senior Poetry Prize. 

Mr Canning, the judge, writes that her poems show "a very mature control of language, precisely distilled but intimately conversational. What was most impressive was how her poems contained and restrained powerful feelings and emotions."  Here are two of her entries (some from other candidates will shortly be published).


'Maybe'

Maybe coffee stunted my growth, or maybe

It taught me to associate bitterness with desire,

To see the world through darkening eyeliner

And expect disappointment, and pain

that won’t be fixed through appointments.

Maybe cigarettes killed my lungs, or maybe

They just taught me how to breathe out negativity

To worry less about age and more about agility

And run out of breath running after buses:

Red-cheeked, like a sunset.

Every time the sun sets it rises,

And every time I’m born, I die.

The world is washed clean again

And again, it waits for me to catch up

Before moving on toward tomorrow.

And tomorrow, God help me,

I will wait for myself.

'Daydream'

I’m drowning in a salty sea,

One I have produced.

Red, blue and yellow glares

As my breaths silently reduce.

I hear muffled voices

With words I can’t quite make out.

I think I hear my mother

How I wish she wouldn’t shout.

I think I hear my father.

I think that he is crying.

I think that he is fearful;

Fearful of me dying.

I feel my heart has stopped

But why am I still

Here.

If this is the afterlife,

I wasn’t thinking clear.

I see the doctors tell my parents

There was nothing they could do.

Their precious little angel

Just could not make it through.

Fast forward to my funeral

As I watch from the back

And everyone cries the same

Salty sea, in uniforms of black.