By Cate Plink, Competition Convenor
This year has been a different year for us all. We have learned many lessons in coping with a change in our circumstances. In spite of this, I was pleased to note that both the Jean Stone and the Hilarie Lindsay competitions had as many, or more, entries as previous years, with Jean Stone garnering 79 entries and Hilarie Lindsay 73.
As always, I have enjoyed reading as many of the entries as I was able to and found many of them enjoyable. I wish to thank our judges for this year, Jan Dean who has judged the Hilarie Lindsay poetry since 2016, and Carol Heuchan who stepped into the breach when our usual judge was not available. Both ladies did a sterling job, and I have a great deal of respect for them. I know that judging is a difficult and time-consuming task.
The Winners are:
The 2020 Jean Stone Award for Poetry
Mcpherson Belfort, Collingwood VIC, for the poem ‘The Writers Curse’.
The Hilarie Lindsay Young Writers 2020 Poetry Competition for Australian School Children
Section 1
Jess Hill, Year 12, Hawker College, ACT for ‘Falling Awake’.
Section 2
Rebecca O’Neill, Year 9, Brisbane Waters Junior Campus, Umina for ‘Isolation’.
Section 3
Hayden Anderson, Year 5, Candelo Public School, Candelo for ‘Ocean’.
Section 4
Susanna Lau, Year 4, West Pennant Hills Public School, West Pennant Hills for ‘Into the Woods’.