Page 11 - 2020 Altiora Vol 72

SEMESTER HIGHLIGHTS
SEMESTER HIGHLIGHTS | 11

| 11

BRIGHT T ALENT SHINES THR OUGH
BRIGHT TALENT SHINES THROUGH
Year 8 student Ivy Downes has won the national Dorothea
Mackellar Poetry Prize (Junior Secondary) for her poem
‘Stars’.

In Term 1 this year, Year 8 English students were invited
to consider how writers use poetic language to explore
notions of beauty. As part of their formal assessment,
students were asked to compose and submit two original
poems on this subject. Ivy went a step further and
submitted her poem in the prestigious Dorothea Mackellar
Poetry Prize. This national competition recognises the
ongoing importance of poetry in Australian education and
cultural life, and as such, is the preeminent competition for
young poets across the country.
This year more than 7,600 students submitted poems to
the competition, and we were thrilled to hear that Ivy’s
poem won the Junior Secondary division. This is truly an
outstanding achievement.

Normally, competition winners would be flown to an official awards ceremony in Gunnedah, the
home of the competition, but COVID-19 restrictions prevented this. Instead, the ceremony was
nd
filmed and officially released online on 2 September.
The poem itself is a striking free verse composition that employs startling imagery and
juxtaposition in a sublime and disarming meditation on human perception and wonder.
Secondary School judge, Meredith Costain described it as “a beautifully controlled and sincere
poem, with a clever extra layer that set up questions about how we view and value what is
undeniably real, and what is purely artificial.”

Stars
Stars
I saw the stars last night.
I lifted my head as if to drink the darkness, and I saw them.
The streetlight flickered out, with my fluttering breath.
And I saw the holes in that great tapestry of sky
Perforated with a knife of fire.
I saw them. I listened to their silent symphony,
Hardly breathing, because too much noise and I would
Scare their beauty away.
I saw them.
When you spend your whole life with something
You forget to wonder.
For so long I forgot to wonder.
I forgot to listen to the stars, their whispers and their music
Their cosmic mutterings.
I forgot to let the night take me in its shadowy embrace,
gentle arms. I forgot how to whisper, holding my words close to me
“Oh, how beautiful.”
I forgot.

Because your perfect, poised, vase-of-roses, trapped-in-glass looks
Your lips like petals, your magazines
And pretty laugh, they will fade.
Like all things they will fade, into wan, sepia ghosts.
Except for one thing. One thing that has never faded
In ten billion years of galactic rumination.
The stars. They will never fade.
Their beauty, it can be heard and felt, and drunk and cradled.
It will never fade.

Ivy Downes, Year 8
Ivy Downes, Y ear 8