| InterBoard Poetry Competition | |
| Third Place Winner, April 2007 | |
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BIRD CALLER Daniel Barlow (The Maelstrom) By twenty-eight I’d moved to Idaho from Auckland, got the girl, the job, the car. My Mum came once, but said it was too far and never made the trip again. I know she would have loved the way the sycamore transforms the yard and those on either side with autumn drifts. When Luke was born I cried to know she wouldn’t be there any more. Yet sometimes, through the kitchen window, dawn bears rising sounds that call the winter brave. I hear the furtive trilling of the birds and catch the gentle timbre of her words, her tutelage that lives beyond the grave, reminding me to go and rake the lawn. Judge Bryan Appleyard’s comments: “This poet set himself a difficult task--writing a strict sonnet in a relaxed, conversational style. He pulls it off by sneaking a strong but easy rhythm into the lines. The poem doesn’t fall from its own fiction into excessive directness, a common crime with naive sonnet attempts. It is, simply, very complete and lovely.”
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About the InterBoard Poetry Competition |
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