{"id":510,"date":"2018-09-17T07:24:12","date_gmt":"2018-09-17T07:24:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thebuzz.net.au\/fortstreet\/?post_type=article&p=510"},"modified":"2018-09-24T02:12:03","modified_gmt":"2018-09-24T02:12:03","slug":"petersham-poetry-competition","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"https:\/\/www.thebuzz.net.au\/fortstreet\/article\/petersham-poetry-competition\/","title":{"rendered":"Petersham Poetry Competition"},"content":{"rendered":"

As part of the new Stage 6 syllabus, the Year 11 cohort have been exploring Narratives that Shape Our World through the poems of the American modernist poet William Carlos Williams. Williams has a distinct perspective of the world and a unique style of free-verse poetry that is both idiomatic and complex. An early proponent of the imagist movement, his poetry deals with experience of the common man in his home town of Paterson, New Jersey. He rejected the literary elitism and labyrinth of allusions that were associated with his contemporaries T.S. Elliot and Ezra Pound and attempted to explore the human experience through the local in a linguistic style that came to define American Modernism.
\nAn example of his writing can be seen in the poem The Red Wheelbarrow:<\/strong><\/p>\n

so much depends
\nupon<\/p>\n

a red wheel
\nbarrow<\/p>\n

glazed with rain
\nwater<\/p>\n

beside the white
\nchickens.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Williams\u2019 most famous piece of work is Paterson, a multi-volume collection of poems that explore the small New Jersey town. The English Faculty decided it would be a great idea for the students to try and engage more critically and creatively with the work of Williams by having them write their own poems in the style of Williams. This is where the Petersham Poetry Competition was born. The similarities between the title of Williams\u2019 seminal work and our own suburb was serendipitous.<\/p>\n

The brief:
\n1) It could be no longer than 24 lines
\n2) It had to capture the essence of Petersham
\n3) It had to written in the style of William Carlos Williams.<\/p>\n

The student\u2019s participated in an excursion on August 22 that allowed them the time to visit four main sites in Petersham – Petersham Park, Petersham Station, a local caf\u00e9 and New Canterbury Road \u2013 and were allowed to make notes on what they witnessed on that warm winter\u2019s day. From there, the students had a week to draft a series of poems, and to choose one for an anonymous submission for the competition. In total there was over 70 submissions. These submissions will be created into a volume of poetry title Petersham, that will be kept in the school\u2019s library and front office.
\nIt was decided that there would be two awards given from the submissions. The first would be decided by the teachers of the English faculty. The second would be decided by the students of Year 11. Each English class chose the poem which best matched the criteria. From the four classes, a student representative was chosen, and these four panel members chose the winning poem from the finalists. Each award came with a gift voucher from Gleebooks.<\/p>\n

The quality of the submissions was of a high standard and the range of ideas\/observations varied, making choosing winners incredibly difficult.<\/p>\n

The Student\u2019s Award was awarded to Leon Stokes<\/strong> for his poem Small Talk<\/strong>:<\/p>\n

The clock strikes nine,
\nDisinterested, tardy students scatter off trains
\nSmalltalk dribbling off their lips<\/p>\n

Conversation designed to take up time
\nConsisting of no pattern or rhyme
\nRestrained to a handful of topics<\/p>\n

“God, it’s cold today”
\n“How’d you go in geo”
\n“You watching the fight”<\/p>\n

The burgundy tone of the school uniform
\nReflected this smalltalk,
\nDull and mediocre<\/p>\n

It just takes a moment of reflection<\/p>\n

To deduce that the architects
\nOf Petersham aimed to capture the essence
\nOf smalltalk in planning their suburb<\/p>\n

Tediously safe
\nPainfully protected
\nThoughtfully bland<\/p>\n

The language of smalltalk is universal,
\nThe forced facial expressions
\nThe archaic attitude<\/p>\n

I hate smalltalk
\nI hate Petersham<\/p>\n

The Teacher\u2019s Award was awarded to Eric Deng<\/strong> for his poem The Field<\/strong>. \u00a0Eric\u2019s poem was the only poem to be selected by both the students and teachers for the finals.<\/p>\n

The Field
\nto consider It beautiful.<\/p>\n

the field,
\na warm green \u2014
\ndespite
\nbeing a chilly afternoon \u2014
\nIt is the green field,
\nthe pigeons playing,
\nthe boys running,
\nthe men working \u2014<\/p>\n

beautiful, perhaps.<\/p>\n

the men force the unworking
\nmachine towards the centre
\nof the field, in hopes of
\nreconstructing the pieces there \u2014
\nwith each new push stronger,
\nmore straining than the last.
\nIt is the broken, the painful,
\nthat makes It a rich comradery \u2014<\/p>\n

all built from revolution.<\/p>\n

the field becomes cool
\nand the men share their final cigarettes \u2014
\nred dots in the dark that stay in the field.<\/p>\n

though unseen, unheard,
\nshall we assume that they grin, laugh and cheer?
\nor is It stripped of Its beauty then<\/p>\n

Congratulations to all the students who participated in the competition. The students approached this with enthusiasm, behaved sublimely on the day of the excursion and were prompt with their submissions. They also showed great maturity and diligence in the selection of finalists.\u00a0 It was an extremely rewarding process that produced a collection of poems that the year can be proud of. A big thanks to the English teachers who put their own time into supporting this competition, namely Mr Leonard, Mr Rosin-Melser, Miss Maddox and Miss Lawson. A final congratulations to the competition winners, Eric Deng and Leon Stokes.<\/p>\n

Jonathon Glover<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As part of the new Stage 6 syllabus, the Year 11 cohort have been exploring Narratives that Shape Our World through the poems of the American modernist poet William Carlos Williams. Williams has a distinct perspective of the world and a unique style of free-verse poetry that is both idiomatic and complex. An early proponent […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":548,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","class_list":["post-510","article","type-article","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebuzz.net.au\/fortstreet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article\/510","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebuzz.net.au\/fortstreet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebuzz.net.au\/fortstreet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/article"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebuzz.net.au\/fortstreet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=510"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebuzz.net.au\/fortstreet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/548"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebuzz.net.au\/fortstreet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}