Judge’s Report by Indrani Perera
First Prize
A rock could be thrown by Hannah Mc Cann (VIC)
Runner-up
Sign to Me by Tayla Richardson (VIC)
Highly Commended
Scuttle Sparkle by GJ Kelly (QLD)
Knead by Gaye McPhie, (WA)
Paper Days by Willo Drummond (NSW)
Commended
The Sense of Skin by Jenny Magann (WA)
To reach you by Jane Frank (QLD)
It usually looks at me like a pigeon by Sashi Tandon (WA)
Judge’s Report
It was my very great pleasure to judge the 440 poems entered into the 2025 Poetry d’Amour International Poetry competition from all around the world.
After reading all the entries, it is safe to say that many poets are looking around them with eyes of love. And they are writing poetry about it. And not just poetry, but good poetry! Poetry that demands to be read, that leaps off the page, that draws you in.
As poets, it’s easy to focus on the negative – to dissect the problem in detail and derive some sort of understanding, some healing from the process. However, we poets also need to look at the positive emotions, the ones that lift us up like happiness, joy and love.
Which is why it is vital that a prize such as this exists.
There is so much love, all around us. All we have to do is look.
Judging the Prize
In judging the prize I asked three main questions: Does this poem fit the theme of love? Can it be felt? Does it give the reader an insight?
In particular, I was looking for poems that stayed with me after I read them. Poems that continued to work on me as I went about my day. Poems that demanded to be read again, poems with layers to uncover at each reading – the ones that had hidden depths.
I was interested in the poetics of the poems. Were there vivid images? Fresh language? Were poetic techniques employed? Was there a clear voice? A sense of time, place or personality? Was it relatable? I looked at the poem’s form and structure and the way in which it used white space and inhabited the page.
I wanted to find poems that surprised me, that took me in unexpected directions, to places I had never imagined before. Those hard to define poems that spoke to parts of me, of us, that we can’t name. The poems that work on us even though we don’t know why, in ways we can’t even describe. Those wise poems that know just what we need even when we don’t.
The Poems
The poems entered into this competition meditated on love in all of its forms — the love of self, of the other, for the environment, and for something greater than the self. They also tackled the ways in which loving can lead to longing, and to loss. There were poems about heartbreak and grief at the loss of a loved one or the destruction of the planet. And ones about the absence of love due to time, distance or loss.
The poems in this anthology represent a rich, sensory world. Subjects included the domestic sphere of baking, soap and hot sauce! As always in poetry, the natural world provided rich inspiration for poets with Christmas beetles, birds, the ocean, shells, sands, herbs, weeds, oranges, dogs, different kinds of light (candle, fire, sun, star and moon) all finding their way on the page.
The way we interact with the world and change it was represented by maps and cartography, architecture, masons and builders. There were pop culture and literary references with mentions of detective fiction, Chekov, Byron, Oliver, Donne and of course, Romeo. What would a collection of love poetry be without that great Shakespearean tragic hero?
There were narrative and lyric poems, mostly free verse but there were also haiku and a concrete poem. Poems were written in couplets, tercets, quatrains, cinquains and septets. Poets used techniques of alliteration, simile, metaphor, repetition, enjambment, personification, imagery, rhyme to get their message across.
It was a pleasure to walk through the worlds of love created by from poets all around the world and I hope that you enjoy the poems in this magnificent anthology from WA Poets Inc!
As the Beatles famously sang,
all you need is love, love
love is all you need
— and poetry of course!
Indrani Perera
Judge, 2025 Poetry d’Amour
The Finalists for Poetry d’Amour 2025
First Prize
A rock could be thrown by Hannah McCann
The winning poem, A Rock Could be Thrown by Hannah McCann, introduces us to a world of protest, police and spontaneous combustions of rage. A conflagration at the heart of which lies the seeds of love, waiting to burst forth and rip the ‘frayed canvas’ of the speaker who ‘knew another world was possible.’
It is a poem about the love for justice and human rights. And the love for creating a world for everyone to live in, even if that means putting bodies on the line, as the police:
drove you into concrete
with the action of shovelling weeds
This is a poem of layers and depth. It bears re-reading to divine its full impact and meaning.
Runner-up
Sign to me by Tayla Richardson
The runner up’s poem, Sign to me! by Tayla Richardson, is about the tender bond that exists between siblings. It uses alliteration, similes and metaphor to great effect. The poem itself is a visual treat that uses a concrete shape combined with gradient text to add another layer to the words of the poem. It starts with a single word and then expands line by line into a love letter to family.
I found you
twisted in armour, husked
by a realm that misunderstood.
Highly Commended
Scuttle Sparkle by GJ Kelly
Knead by Gaye McPhie
Paper Days by Willo Drummond
The first highly commended poem, Scuttle Sparkle by GJ Kelly, takes us on a mesmerising journey to a beach at low tide and introduces us to a ‘whiskered thing’ that is ‘turned inside out / With our skeletons on the outside as armour.’ This poem employs the extended metaphor of the crab to illustrate the ways in which the gaze of a lover can help us to love our sparkling selves.=
The second highly commended winner, Knead by Gaye McPhie, brings us a beautifully constructed poem of couplets about childhood and kitchen tables. The hands in the poem speak first of love through baking and nurturing, then of grief as they become stained and gnarled. The poem is a sucker punch of grief seen from a child’s perspective.
The third highly commended poem, Paper Days by Willo Drummond, is an exquisite ode to heartache, longing and loss written by an assured hand. This is the ending of a relationship said ever so elegantly and poetically. The poem stays with you, continues its quiet work as you go about your day, wondering about those worlds that were once held.
Commended
To reach you by Jane Frank
The Sense of Skin by Jenny Magann
It usually looks at me like a pigeon by Sashi Tandon
The first commended award, To reach you by Jane Frank, is a mysterious poem of places and memories, waded/dreamt and walked through by the poet, like the ’Enchanted kauris’ and a ‘wet sheet of river’. It is filled with rich images such as ‘a winter ocean stroking needles of cold’ and ‘the bone structure of the landscape.’
The second commended award goes to a sensual poem that takes an everyday object, gives us its history and origins and then turns it all into a romantic poem filled with sensory details. The Sense of Skin by Jennifer Magann is a clever poem working on two of levels at once – the description of the object can also be read as the description of the elements of a love affair. And at the end there’s a twist!
The third commended poem, It usually looks at me like a pigeon by Sashi Tandon, looked at all the ways in which love manifests. It personifies love through the speaker gazing at the people around them and seeing all the ways in which love has come to call. It tells us about spending days looking at love out of the corner of your eye until, one day, it finds you.
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First Prize
A rock could be thrown
For Geraldine
Air crackled between us; it was frost on the night grass
as we hammered on windows. Still-wet acrylic paint
scent of swished letters, brass candelabras visible
through thin glass as suits clinked champagne. A crack
and one of us sliced a wrist banging so hard. Cops came
padded to stop us bruising, drove you into concrete
with the action of shovelling weeds. Before
you appeared in our lives, a decay had spread:
fees were trickling up, marriage excluded all others,
government islands became floating prisons, again,
again. It was a summer of bloated fish, mud cracks.
Leaves yellowed, the Dean began pruning classes,
leaving an empty campus, bare twigs. Back then, fate
was a toxic boyfriend. Then you arrived, late to the meeting:
loose jeans, red flannelette, spiked hair. Held my hand
open and said a rock could be thrown. At once
flint was struck. After the arrests, our bone-cold resolve
hardened like teeth. We began to camp outside
buildings named for eugenicists, and one day the art school
kiln exploded, as if sparked by our own crystal rage
spontaneous combustion. Still hard to believe
one of us stood up, said I’m from the AFP, left
to investigate the blaze. Remember his quiet friend,
that stick thin man in brown? Photographed all our rallies.
Did they shred the evidence of our young love,
or is it filed away? How I would kiss the space
between your nose and cheek, how you ate the apple
whole, the seeds. I was frayed canvas by the time
the blossoms burst, and yet – when I looked at you,
I knew another world was possible.
Hannah McCann
Runner-up
……………………………………………………………………………………………..Sign To Me
Tucked
under a fort
of sheets, I found you
twisted in armour, husked
by a realm that misunderstood.
A pillow bent into a helmet, cushioning
your attuned ears from the deep hmmmms,
tutting tongues, that thundered through your tender
belly, like shards of ice. Their eyes narrow on your plush
hands, cradling a lemon sorbet tub like it was sunshine. Sticky
sweet gossamer draping the creases of a radiant smile, you relished
every bite, before the peach-velvet skin of your thighs rebelled, in swells,
in welts. In love, we silenced words that would have harmed you — who spoke
in timeless quotes from yellow brick roads, personas cloaking your empathic flesh
like bandages preserving glimmers that leaked from your pores, in our rare embraces
you wrapped your fingers around my thumb; a promise ring, only siblings could keep.
Tayla Richardson
Highly Commended
Scuttle Sparkle
Flip a rock at the beach at low tide
And a whiskered thing will scuttle
Cramming its body into a cranny
Pulling its legs in
Leaving you with a peek at the tip of one toe
We do not like to be seen, we whiskered things
We creatures that are turned inside out
With our skeletons on the outside as armour
And our claws raised high in defence
Of threats we cannot even see
But when you hold me up and examine me
Like you’re trying to catch the sun in the facets of a gem
Careful fingers avoiding my pincers
Palms cradling my cracked shell
Gently brushing the sand from my face
I feel myself emerge, cautiously,
Turning my eyestalks to try and see myself as you do
Mirrored glimpses in the sparkle off the water
Voice like popping bubbles in the slurp of the surf
Playful and extraordinary
Perhaps it doesn’t need to take ten million years
For a crab to turn into an opal.
GJ Kelly
Knead
When I was a child your fingers spoke
to the mound of soft creamy dough,
pulling and kneading its smooth heart,
massaging it to life. Covered in snow
dust, the kitchen table sang pummel
and pound as you drummed the old oak.
Your hands rose, two starlings in
flight, outstretched to catch the plump
dome of yeasty goodness in your warm
palms. Cinnamon scrolls, crusty bread,
gingerbread cakes. But when I turned
eight, you stopped baking. The day my
grandfather disappeared, earthy aromas,
sugar and spice no longer wafted through
the hallways of home. No one knew where
– the drunk just wandered off, they said, and
as you waited, your fingers stained mustard
yellow. Smoke choked your shame.
Your fingers spoke of grief then, became
gnarled, the wedding ring you wore, a
sparkling dahlia laid to rest in the dresser
drawer. Once your fingers, sweet and sticky
danced as words fell from your lips, now they
lay in your lap, quiet like two broken birds.
Gaye McPhie
Paper Days
Write to me, with those hands
that once held the silver moon.
Hands that held stillness
cool against quiet
in the place where we were
at our best. Write to me
of when the world was words,
days were paper. Write to
me of those moments
now. Or, of sand at the shore
where you are, far,
far from me—write,
under the same
remembering moon. Write
to me of each wave
thread of silver kelp
bioluminescent traces
of your quicksilver
body, write me brushstrokes
of possibility
and loss—
each whorl a pearl—
the world
we once held.
Willo Drummond
Commended
The Sense of Skin
Cologne Imperiale Russe has gifted us a largesse of mystery and romance, as well as its fragrance—immortalised now as Imperial Leather, bath soap.
There was a Russian officer, a Count so history tells.
A cavalry man stationed in London, keenly nostalgic
for the dazzle and extravagance of the Russian Court.
So he calls on Bayleys—perfumers of Bond Street,
desiring a fantasy, a fragrance to ease his heart.
Ah! what secret ingredients mingled in that remedy?
How to recall those oiled parade horses, the polish
of boots and saddles, the smell of cigars in the officers’ mess,
and of mossy brandy to toast the health of the Czar? Alchemy!
Hold this soap and close your eyes. Breathe. Take in
that medley of warm aromas: of musky sandalwood,
so rich and balsam-like; now recognise that whisper
of earthy patchouli, its heady strength softened , but
its potency pulsing; cherish the velvety noble amber;
till there at the end, ever bewitching, subtly sweet vanilla.
Ah, I know a man who loves Imperial Leather.
Jenny Magann
To reach you
I’d have to wade through a winter ocean
stroking needles of cold.
Love’s other name is understanding
but where you come from
light is processed differently.
Dreaming you is no problem:
we walk beneath enchanted kauris
and a glass-roofed sky—
ordinary streets turned marmoreal—
and from this arcade
we can take in the valley’s view
in a glance of past and future.
We talk about a time when we could
share whole evenings and wine and luck
backgrounded by a wet sheet of river,
buildings of coral stone.
You admire the flowers here:
poinciana, oleander, eucalyptus
lush after summer rain
and the bone structure of the landscape
with its hills and ridges and rainforest
It seems you thrive in sunshine
but Chekhov said that people don’t notice
whether it is winter or summer
when they’re happy.
Jane Frank
it usually looks at me like a pigeon
I only know how to look at love
in profile
I can trace the ridges of its nose
in silhouette when my cousin
meets her fiancé’s eyes across a room
the youthful curve of its cupid’s bow
as my brother says a fourth goodbye
to his girlfriend under the porch light
I can recognise its stoic chin
when my parents put another disagreement
to bed, with a familiar smile
and a kiss on the cheek
and I’d know that wrinkled forehead
anywhere – my grandparents’
hands tracking the well-worn
road to each other
but here it is
with two eyes – and I don’t know
what to make of it
Sashi Tandon