Liberate Your Words with Jason Kerrison from OpShop!
Posted: Sat Mar 14, 2009 12:40 pm

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Calling all Year 11,12 and 13 students. Get your pens ready because the New Zealand Post National Schools Poetry Awards are open for 2009, where students who liberate their words could be writing their way to a radio hit with OpShop’s lead singer/guitarist Jason Kerrison!

Celebrating young writing talent in New Zealand, this year the Awards strongly encourage all students to get involved, regardless of their writing confidence as great poems can come from anyone. Both judges say they will be looking for a poem that “lifts” off the page through it’s freshness and interesting use of language

All poems submitted to the competition will be judged under two categories, Best Poem and Best Lyric. There will be six finalists in each category from which the two winners will be selected.

Judged by Jenny Bornholdt, one of New Zealand’s most popular poets and former Poet Laureate, the winner of the Best Poem will receive $500 cash and a weekend for two at the New Zealand Post Writers and Readers Week in March 2010. The winner of the Best Lyric will win $500 cash and be flown to Auckland to spend two days working on the song in a professional recording studio with judge and musician Jason Kerrison. The song will be sent out nationwide to radio stations and will also be available on www.loop.co.nz for free download.

The two category winners’ schools will receive a $500 book grant each for their libraries and the five runners-up in each category will win a cash prize of $100.

Previous years have seen young poets having an unforgettable time collaborating with Barnaby Weir (The Black Seeds) and Samuel Flynn Scott (The Phoenix Foundation), transforming their poem into music. Last year’s Best Lyric winner Sonya Clark said the experience had opened opportunities with other approaches to use her poems for song lyrics. “It’s a really cool opportunity. I'm not very musical - but it was awesome to see how words can come alive when put to music”

Jason Kerrison is looking forward to the competition and excited to see what gets submitted from his own lyric writing point of view. "In my own writing I find the hard work begins after I've managed to trap the muse by pen or some type of recorder. That's where the editing and re-editing starts. And although it's the hair pulling phase it's also the most satisfying and fulfilling moment when the sweat pays off and the lyric breathes life and speaks truth."

This year, entry forms and a creative writing teacher resource are sent to every secondary school in New Zealand. Students are also able to enter the Awards online at www.nzpost.co.nz/poetryawards.

The New Zealand Post National Schools Poetry Awards are supported by Tearaway magazine, the bNet, New Zealand Post Writers and Readers Week, the New Zealand Book Council, Booksellers New Zealand, the New Zealand Society of Authors and literary magazinesSport andLandfall.

Entries close on 15 June and winners will be announced on 28 August.

RE: Liberate Your Words with Jason Kerrison from OpShop!
Posted: Mon Nov 30, 2009 4:21 pm

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