Alice O'Leary, a 12-year-old student at Coledale Public School, has won the Wollongong Community Greening Local Prize in the 2024 Poem Forest competition.
On November 20, Alice and her family attended an awards ceremony at Holborn Park, Berkeley, where she planted seedlings alongside Wollongong Botanic Garden staff and local dignitaries.
Her poem, 'Everything Around Us Dancing', focuses on the Illawarra coastline.
“the coastline snakes around
a ribbon of sand,
and beyond it the seemingly boundless
Ocean
dancing as it weaves its way through
channels time itself has carved”
– Excerpt from Everything Around Us Dancing by Alice O
"I was writing from a bird's eye view - looking down as you follow along the coastline, and also looking up from under the trees - those different kinds of perspectives." Alice says.
The Poem Forest competition, created in 2021 by Red Room Poetry in partnership with Wollongong City Council, gives students and teachers the opportunity to fuel environmental action.
"Kids and teachers all around Australia can write poetry, and they can ask for a tree to be planted on their behalf," Alice says.
“That means that there're thousands of trees being planted every year and eventually it will grow and be this big established forest – which is good for the environment and hopefully would be a place for people to write poetry as well.”
More than 22,500 seedlings have been planted since the project began.
This year, the competition received more than 5400 entries from across Australia and from these entries, 78 were shortlisted, including Alice’s poem, and her school friend Ada’s.
“I focused on a wider perspective of the coastline and the land, but some people focused on a certain plant, for example,” Alice says.
“My friend Ada did a piece on the environment actually forgiving us. Everyone can take on their own perspectives.”
Penny Hoswell, Wollongong Botanic Garden Education Officer and one of the competition's judges, praised Alice's work: "The understanding of life encapsulated in so few words, using the artistry of spatial design to aid the reader and eye. A born storyteller who understands the art of how to manipulate words."
Alice's success reflects a growing environmental awareness among young people in the Illawarra.
“I like to spend a lot of time at the beach, I’m a water person. I love to swim and I do nippers every fortnight, and swim in the ocean pools when it’s warm enough,” Alice says.
"I knew I wanted to write about the ocean and avoid traditional metaphors. The ocean kind of dances in its own way. That’s how I got the title for my poem.
“I thought it was really important to have the shape of the words influence the poem. I was doing a lot of individual words on lines to give them presence, and capital letters for words like Ocean, and Land because I wanted to point out ‘this is the important part’.”
Alice and her peers worked on their poems over two weeks, during a 20-minute morning session at school.
“Red Room Poetry had a couple of beautiful meditation sessions. Because I was inside writing the poem, I’d look outside first and then listen to the meditation and some didgeridoo while I worked.
“I’d sometimes take a break and read a book instead, because you don’t want to overwork it. You work too much on something – anything really – and it’s not a labour of love, it’s just a labour.”
Alice says she likes to read “all day, every day”, and she is particularly enjoying historical fiction novels such as Katrina Nannestad’s books – which tell stories from a child’s perspective in World War II. Her nature poetry has taken inspiration from other texts studied at school.
“Last year I participated in the HPAG (High Potential Academically Gifted) program, and we did a module of slam poetry. I listen to a lot of Solli Raphael, and I think he’s got some beautiful nature poems. I really like his style and some of his language really influenced my poetry.” Alice says.
Alice hopes to follow her passion for poetry going forth, as she heads to high school next year.
"I wrote little bits of poetry for class before, but knowing that other people think that my poetry has potential is really exciting and I definitely want to write more – specifically about nature because it's the best subject!” Alice says.
Read more about Poem Forest at the Red Room website.
