COMPETITION OPENS: 1 March
ENTRIES MUST BE RECEIVED BY: 31 May
Our competition has multiple options for entering, depending on your age and the poetry genre (verse or haiku). The links below take you to all the forms you need, as well as the instructions for entering each competition. School group rules are for multiple entries collated by class teachers – individual students should use the general entry forms.
We offer a PayPal option for emailed entries. However, due to technical difficulties our PayPal buttons are temporarily AWOL. You can get the PayPal details from the Competition Secretary at: competition@poetrysociety.org.nz
Competition rules and entry forms
School group rules and entry forms
Open Section
Prizes: 1st prize NZ$600, 2nd prize NZ$300, 3rd prize NZ$200. No entrant will win more than 1 cash prize. Up to 20 Commendations.
Entry fee is NZ$8 per poem; NZPS members – NZ$7 per poem. 1 free with every 5 entries (ie pay for 5 get 6 entries, pay for 10 get 12 entries).
Open Junior Section
Prizes (Open only to entrants who are 17 years of age or younger on 31 May) First Prize: NZ$200. Primary/Intermediate Runner-up: NZ$50; Secondary Runner-up NZ$100. No entrant will win more than 1 cash prize. Up to 20 Commendations.
Entry fee is NZ$2.50 per poem. 1 free with every 5 entries (ie pay for 5 get 6 entries, pay for 10 get 12 entries).
Haiku Section
Prizes: The top five haiku/senryu will be awarded NZ$100 each. Up to 20 commendations. No entrant will win more than 1 cash prize, except that the 1stprize winner will be awarded the additional Jeanette Stace Memorial Prize of $150.
Entry fee: NZ$3.00 per haiku; NZ$2 for NZPS members. Multiple entry discounts: 1 free with every 5 entries (ie pay for 5 get 6 entries, pay for 10 get 12 entries).
Junior Haiku Section
Open to entrants who are 17 years of age or younger on 31 May.
Prizes: Primary/Intermediate: three prizes of NZ$50; Secondary: three prizes of NZ$50. Up to 20 commendations. No entrant will win more than 1 cash prize, except that the best of the two 1st prize winners will be awarded the additional Jeanette Stace Memorial Prize of $100.
Entry fee: NZ$1.00 per haiku. 1 free with every 5 entries (ie pay for 5 get 6 entries, pay for 10 get 12 entries).
Our Judges
Open Section: Anne French
Anne French is a poet, critic and editor. Born in Wellington, she became Oxford University Press’s New Zealand managing editor in 1982 and managing editor at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa in 1995. French gained early success as a poet, winning the PEN Young Writer’s Incentive Award in 1973 and 1974. Her first collection wasn’t published until 1987, but attracted considerable attention, winning both the New Zealand Book Award for Poetry and the PEN Best First Book of Poetry Award in 1988. !n 2018 she received The Lauris Edmond Memorial Award for Distinguished Contribution to Poetry in New Zealand. (New Zealand Book Council)
Open Junior Section: Janis Freegard
Janis Freegard is a poet and fiction writer whose writing is imbued with scientific imagery and verbal playfulness. She won the BNZ Katherine Mansfield Award in 2001 for her story ‘Mill’. She has had numerous works published locally and internationally in magazines and anthologies. In 2008 she was one of three poets to feature in AUP New Poets 3 (Auckland University Press) and her debut poetry collection, Kingdom Animalia: the Escapades of Linnaeus, was published in 2011. Her debut novel, The Year of Falling, was published in 2015, as well as another collection of poetry The Glass Rooster. (New Zealand Book Council)
Haiku Section: Katherine Raine
Katherine Raine has worked internationally as a landscape architect and garden historian, including two years in Japan. These days the sound of home for her is the roar of the South Otago surf. Though she first encountered haiku in a tiny book in her Christmas stocking at age 16, her own haiku and tanka have appeared only since 2010. She is working on a book of haibun and haiga featuring her photography. Katherine has twice won the NZPS International Poetry Competition, Haiku Section. (HaikuNewZ Showcase)
Haiku Junior Section: Quendryth Young
“I write haiku because I must. Since childhood there has been a progression through scribbled jingles, ballads, bush verse and free verse, until I discovered haiku.”
“Haiku has opened my senses to myriad images to which I was previously unresponsive. For instance, my daily walk often takes me down an alley between houses. For a few days a dead rat lay there, rotting. This engendered five haiku, one of which was published in the Austrian journal Chrysanthemum #18 in 2015.”
“My greatest joy is finding the exact words to encapsulate a moment of observation now perceived with a new clarity and resonance…”
“…There is an acute awareness of daily surroundings, an awakening to stimuli that have previously been denied the power to arouse sensitivity, a harmony with the environment and, for me, there is gratitude that I am a part of it all.” (Australian Haiku Society)