We gave you 30 minutes to write a six-line flash poem using the words: Cloud / Sound / Orange / Clear / Shark / Break.
New Zealand poet Johanna Emeney judged the overall winner and five runners-up.
The winning poem by Harriet Bright Photo: RNZ
Many people wrote of "shark fins breaking the water" but the winning poems were all a bit different and unexpected, Johanna says.
This can be done with subtlety, surprise, word choice, who the poem addresses or "a door or a window" offered at the end of the poem.
Barb Collins
Shark-like men were popular in the poems, Johanna says, but this whimsical one stood out because of its surprising and brilliant last line.
You're a shark, she said
You cruise around, without a sound
When the coast looks clear, you appear
You cloud my mind
You break my resolve
O range, you predator
Jennifer Clarke
Many people try to make a neat and tidy little poem with a rhyme at the end of each line, but economy of expression works to create an "ominous little poem" here.
Loud cloud sound, listen
Wind, biting shark-like
Clear orange sky forewarned
Donna Demente
Just went to a new world for dogroll
Came back with blood orange lime and bitters soda syrup, amongst other things
There is a cloud blanket, but it will clear
A break in the summer weather that has been a lockdown dream
I still hear the sound of the chortling tui
Sky shark
Glen Bisdee
Dark clouds surround, as the sound
of new airplanes drop old ghost orange ideas.
History, clear but not free,
the new misery shark cycles,
whilst many wait for their break,
and wait and wait and wait....
Mary Haggie
Please no more sound my darling
As Hazel sings Baby Shark again
Time to break this tune my heart
My mind is orange and red
Rest on this cloud and then
Your sweet sleep will clear my head
Harriet Bright
The winning poem is titled 'Orange Quarters at Half Time'.
"The whole poem is about something breaking open and changing, and changing for the better. It's such a lovely poem because I think that we're all sitting in that feeling at the moment, where we want things to break to a clear sky… and we're just in need of those orange quarters at halftime.
"It's just so precise and so beautifully seen. Absolutely brilliant."
Orange quarters at half time
Shark tooth clouds break to
A clear sky
As the whistle sounds.
