2026 runner up

Early Works

“Last time we saw one of those, God was a boy.”
— Tennis commentator Robbie Koenig on Roger Federer’s single-handed backhand half volley

So I guess he would have held his friend’s drink,
taken a shy sip, grimaced. Smiled in the mirror,
touched his face all over, tryna find it. God
would have been the sort of boy to go to parties
and watch with those melted eyes, thinking
they’re all more precious than they know, then
go home and dissect the pale cadaver of his life.
Back then he would have walked on purpose,
spoken too soon, moved with someone else
for no reason but their mouth. Spat out the bitter.
God would have swished mouthwash, jerked off,
known love for the briefest and brightest instant
sitting with his mates watching the tennis match.

Eve Hughes
Year 13
Cashmere High School

The City I’ll Never Know

I.

In fateful canterbury,
on that humid,
heat-baked
tuesday
I was only a baby—

infantilely wailing
through the plummeting earth,
a suburbia
flipped on its back
like an upturned turtle.

An incomprehensible
mess
was made of downtown,
a massacre
so grim
I wonder if even the birds knew
that the world was ending.

We were a city of swamp,
drained in the name
of a colonisers’ god,
and still
ponder how we succumbed,
so simply,

to the earth.

II.

When the sunlight first flooded
those neo-gothic halls,
like a cave,
—apocalyptic,
—-falling inward,
did the age-ridden angels
finally exhale in freedom?

holy greatness and
architectural beauty,
designed to fragility,
was carved
from quarry mined stone—
and crumbled
by its own birth.
Who knew a shifting plate,
twisting tales deep,
could return
a cathedral

to crater.

III.

Blessed were the ones
who knew not
to be ripped from their homes,
their lives plowed
to a redzone
so green, making room for
rained-down
swamps and
flax-formed water ways.

The unstable acre,
—unlivable,
—–unbreathable,
became root
to those that bear
the weight of
political discourse,
and
our conditional sense
of humanity.

Evidence
we aren’t exempt
from nature,
— falling in,
—–melting with.

It’s evidence
which makes me ask:

Were we ever worth rebuilding?

IV.

Aimless,
boundless,
we are a generation
of loose ends.
Do you know how it feels
to grow up in a
rock tumbling tide,
—manic,
—–mutable?

A city too fluid
to ever feel like home,
growing too fast
and growing not at all.

There’s a guilt
in moving forward
on land
which is not yours.
—Unfamiliar,
—–uncanny,
impossible to comprehend
that we traded
our art,
our angels,
our soul,
for concrete geometrics
and glass panels walls,
melting in the sun
crackling
once more.

We’re a city
rebuilt,
not responsible
for the erosion
brought down.
A new generation
sprouting
from the rigid cracks,
a community of change,
foreign,
revolting in hope.
On the shifting tides,

we are rose-tinted,

reborn.

Jessica McIntosh
Year 12
Hillmorton High School 

Miranda Yuan
Year 12
Burnside High School

FOB (First of Belonging)

They call me a FOB.

Fresh off the boat.

But I was born in Porirua.
The boat belonged to my parents.

They brought two shirts,
three photographs,
four kilos of dried mint
Enough to concern the government.

Anything else to declare?

No.

The officer saw food.
He did not see exile.

He did not see Tehran
folded inside a prayer book,
Shiraz in my mother’s voice,
or the life my father learned
not to speak about.

At school, they ask:

Where are you really from?

Porirua, I say.

No. Really.

Persian.

Like the cat?

Like the cat.
Like the empire.
Like Hafez.
Like saffron in hot water,
slowly giving up its colour
without losing its taste

On the news, Iran is followed by:

war,
nuclear,
threat.

At home, Iran is followed by
the smell of rice,
an uncle complaining,
an aunty yelling back,
and tea too hot to hold.

We hold it anyway.

They call me a FOB.

But F is for First:

the first born here,
the first to call this country home
without having crossed an ocean.

O is for Of:

because I am of my parents,
of Porirua,
of prayers carried across
borders, of a country I have
never touched but somehow
recognised.

At home, we say:

یا†بھاء†الابھی
Yá Bahá’u’l-Abhá.

Words my grandparents carried
when carrying anything else
became dangerous.

Prayers know
how to travel light.

And B is for Belonging:

not the kind given by a passport,
or taken away by a question.

The kind made slowly:

through my mother’s stories, my
father’s silences,
the rice steaming in the kitchen,
the place already set for me.

My maman calls:

بفرمایید

Come and eat.

The tea glass burns my fingers. I
hold it anyway.

They call me a FOB.

They mean
Fresh off the Boat.

I mean:

First
of
Belonging.

Sara Assadi
Year 13
Wellington Girls’ College

Pinecone’s succulence

Pinecone, so succulent.

Sleep, so desired.

Liar, so hated.

Commander is
Funny,

Doesn’t bother with Wellbeing

Tickles me, sensual style.

Super Duper. Or super nuker?

Eggs make me queasy.

Ah,

I’ve had an epiphany.

Green grass tall grass. Green eggs with ham.

Vrrrrr squelch bang pop

Oh why do you dance?

Funny like–taking me to cry
Oh why why

Pinecone so dry.

Thomas Rowe Palmer
Year 13
St Andrew’s College

VEINS WITHER

blood spills,
—pooling on the cold, sterile stainless steel—
—-—the sap of mātaī.

scalpel carves through flesh
—peeling skin back
—-—like ripping harakeke.

a karakia is muttered—

—-—-—–too late.

they thrash,
—-veins wither beneath the skin
—-—-glistening river eels.

—-snap.
——–grind.
————–crunch.
—-————-bones in the taniwha’s jaw

fluorescent light strips
—-–whakapapa from skin—

—whitewashed.
—sterile.
—merciless.

in this hōhipera,
—māori remain
—-—dissected on the tray—

—-—-——-scraps for the pigs.

heart twitches
—-–beneath those latex gloves

Hā—
—-—-———–—-—-———gone

Charlotte Galvan
Year 13
St Andrew’s College

soil-lickers

so we licked soil every night.
we laid together, a crochet of quiet starfish washed ashore &
letting the moon bleach our weary bodies sore.
the skyscrapers rose in the distance like high-heeled giants &
high-rise apartments divvied up the skyline
it was a negotiation, a simple give & take
here was my dress & blood & name,
& here was my citizenship.

we gave more than we took,
chopsticked citizens,
aching for the soil that parched our mouths,
choking with the delicate fish bones lodged in our throats.
tongues quick as the yellow river,
teething on a new wanting beyond our silted hands,
eating a language not our own.

my grandmother was not meant to tame vowels
———– nor wrangle the slippery eel of grammar—
—————–she was meant to knead the dumpling dough to completion
———————-steaming baozi on circular tables to meet hungry eyes
———————————-at new year gatherings where hongbao stuffed candied hands
—————————————each child with a name she could understand
my grandfather was entombed in a country he could not buy shoes in
——his feet two fisted oranges & sockless in his grave
———–the tombstone chiseled with a name he stumbled as he wrote,
———————-every letter a translation.
—————————he found t was a crooked 七 & i an rotated 一
——————————–these little surprises
—————————————forging a window of home

since he never reached the door,
at his funeral i wore red & prayed:
one day when we lick the soil dry &
the ocean bed is left parched with dust,
we’ll lay together
& you’ll teach me how to write my forgotten name.

Sabrina Liu
Year 13
Kristin School

the clipped vowel

i. i took a pair of scissors to my own name : r o s e [ I e e n] the last four letters sounded too
much like  a r r i v a l  sounded like a  v i s a  stamped on a tongue. it wasn’t that the teacher
stumbled : it was the way the leen vibrated too  i m m i g r a n t  in the air. i buried the suffix
in the playground dirt : so i could just be r o s e : a flower that was p l a n t e d   h e r e. i
turned my volume down until i was a

[ m o n o s y l l a b l e ].

ii. [ THE OVERLOAD]

india is a blunt instrument: the heat: a physical bruise : the honking is a fever : the dust is a
second skin i didn’t ask to wear : i am told i am returning : but my lungs crave the damp :
grey : predictable : chill of a kiwi morning. i love the silk : the saffron : the gold : but i am a
tourist in my own marrow : counting the hours until the sterile order of the departure lounge.

iii. [ THE COLLECTIVE DEBT ]

in the supermarket aisle : a headline flashes : a man : 3,000 miles away : wears a face that
matches mine. suddenly : the air in the dairy goes [ C O L D] the purse-straps tighten : a
stranger’s grip is a sharp frost : the side-eye is a blade : i am seventeen : carrying the crimes
of a billion strangers sewn into the lining of my school blazer.

iv. why is my skin a  u n i f o r m ? why is my heritage a li-a-bi-li-ty ? there : i am the
westerner who lost her tongue. here : i am the other who is asked to explain. i am a bridge
made of broken glass.

v. i am building a

[home]

in the static between stations. i am the girl who eats the culture but cannot speak the
source. i am the un-belonging : the ink bleeding across the border : belonging only to the

[ AIR ]

Roseleen Kaur
Year 12
Botany Downs Secondary College