The prestigious Dorothea Mackellar Poetry Competition has been running for forty years, and this year, the organisers received over seven thousand entries from across Australia, with twenty-four entries coming from Marist Regional College. The theme for 2024 was ‘Listen, I have an idea!’
So, how do you craft a successful poem? There is no set formula when it comes to writing poetry. The word poetry comes from the Latin poeta, loosely meaning “pattern”. However, the patterns in poetry are highly flexible. Though there are many forms, strong traditions and high expectations, there are no universal “rules”. In poetry, the poet’s personal insight, words, images, themes and connotations are just as important as the patterns generated.
Year 9 student Sanuli Karunaratne was awarded 1st place in the Junior Secondary Section of the 2024 Dorothea Mackellar Poetry competition. Her poem, cleverly titled ‘I have an idea’ had a “unique viewpoint with descriptive language and clever use of the suggested theme in the last line” according to the competition’s secondary judge, Karen Comer.
William Blake’s words, “No bird soars too high if he soars with his own wings” perfectly encapsulates Sanuli’s unique and powerful writing style. Her poetry is evocative, emotional and transcendent.
For her outstanding efforts, Sanuli received a beautiful trophy, an Anne Knight limited print, $500 prize money and a $100 Dymocks gift voucher. Congratulations Sanuli. This is an incredible achievement!
Mrs Nicki Rogers
English Teacher, Extended Learning Key Teacher
‘I have an idea’ by Sanuli Karunaratne
i shiver in between the margins of my page, split
into red rule and blue lines. they have grown stale,
yellowed, the edges curling into itself from the forceful
hold of time, but it is shelter enough for me for these
few moments, for the first few seconds of my birth.
eventually, when She beckons me forward, and
i leave my stationery shell of comfort, tendrils
of warmth releasing their grasp on my skin, i feel
unbearably real. i can feel the imperfect pounding of
my heart in the bone of my head, can almost taste the
iron of the ink trickling inside my veins. my flesh
feels scrubbed open, pink and red with vigour. the
price of life is death, after all.
yet She looks at me with trained disdain, the menacing
hold of Her pen angled at me accusingly. What have
you got to show for yourself? What makes you different,
unique- what about you changes something in me?
and i look up at her, tremblingly bare, the frost of
judgment icing over my skin. She is my creator,
my being, my life. She is my god, for she has my
life dripping out of the piercing point of her pen.
She clicks her tongue, my eyes, my body, every
disfigured inch catalogued with the omnipotence of
her mind. You are not good enough, She says.
You taste of the sweetness of dewdrops. But you are
not enough to make my tongue throb, to be the
sinful drops of ambrosia that I desire. There is
not enough in you for me to call home.
You do not have enough of me in you to be perfect.
and that is rejection, packaged into a polite parcel,
exchanged coolly like business details. but for me,
with Her, this is akin to the disowning of a child by
its mother. to me, this makes the pounding of my heart
come to an insignificant halt and makes the ink of my
blood freeze into cloudy red crystals inside me. my skin
turns pearly white, the suffocating colour of death,
my paper cradle is crumpled in the infinite fist of Her
hand, and i leave, becoming past tense.
………………………………………………………………
my only revenge is that with me, i take a thin slice of
her, a tiny shard of the mirror of her soul.
…………………………………………………………………
She sighs, in my aftermath. a graveyard of crumpled
paper lies around her, a field of my slaughtered siblings
leaking ink onto her floor.
Again, She says, taking Her pen, brandishing it
dangerously over another blank sheet of paper, but then
She hesitates. for a moment, there is nothing but the
echo of silence, and the musk of inspiration.
Oh, She says. I have another idea.