This year’s theme was ‘Gratitude’ for the Patana Poetry competition, inspiring some beautiful responses ranging from the small, quiet appreciation of everyday things that we may take for granted, to the epic life-changing indebtedness that shapes who we are and promises what we may become. Whether our poets adopted the persona of another or wrote from their own experiences, all were deeply personal poems, with the entrants offering little pockets of themselves through their words on the page.
Once again, the quality this year was consistently high – it was an incredibly difficult decision for the judges to make – so difficult in fact, we have broken with tradition and have four winners with two in joint second place. Each year I am awed by the talent amongst the student body here at Patana and this year was no exception. I would like to thank each and every person who entered the competition, for taking the time to consider, think, and put pen to paper – or fingertips to keypads – and commit the brave act of sending me your poetry. Thank you – please keep on writing!
3rd: Narida (Nia) Ekaraphanich, 10N
What the Rain Taught Me
I used to run away from the rain,
hide under dark roofs
and pull my sleeves down
leaping from bridge to arch to doorway
turning back, instead of crossing the street.
I watched as classmates rushed past with shining umbrellas,
disappearing.
Till only the distant splashes of their departing wellies coming into contact with puddles could be heard.
I watched days slowly flicker away,
drip, drip, gone.
Walking without looking up,
until the day I did.
Through the translucent veil of pitter pattering.
I saw plants with stolen leaves with their outstretched arms,
young buds being tickled in the soft downpour
waiting to bloom as fresh dewy flowers,
the droplets of water dazzling the fragile petals,
vibrant clusters of red, pink, yellow, blue shoots,
embracing the curtain of rain
of growth
of renewal
of quiet strength
For I realised that without the scattered showers and stinging streams of hardships and struggles and pain
we may never grow.
The rain will come.
The rain will go.
Not every blow is meant to break us,
If we endure, we’ll learn and rise and flourish from the
freezing bullets, torrential waves and the unforgiving forces of nature
And like flowers engulfed in persistent rain,
We learn not only to survive, but to bloom
For that, I am grateful for the rain.
Joint 2nd : Krista Liu, 9A
Gratitude is the quiet light of morning,
resting gently on the day,
a reminder that even small moments
carry something bright within them.
It lives in simple things—
a kind word, a warm laugh,
the steady rhythm of breathing
when the world feels loud.
And in these ordinary miracles,
the heart pauses, soft and still,
whispering a small, humble
thank you.
And Ana Bolakoso, 11V
Thank you for the Music
Before I had words
For the weather inside me
There was music
Back then
Songs were playground currency
A rhythm clapped by chubby, sticky hands
A melody looping between friends
Along came the recorder
Plastic, squeaky
A little out of breath with itself
Its notes wobble upward
Like question marks
Not beautiful
Not yet
But brave
Because music begins that way,
Awkward and earnest
A first attempt
At turning breath into meaning
Music has this quiet talent
For rearranging the furniture of a moment
It arrives lightly
A lazy ukulele afternoon
Four small strings
Strumming sunlight into the room
Sharing earbuds
One song
Split between two people
Until silence doesn’t feel so silent
Later, when days grew heavier
Some afternoons arrived
Like unfinished chords
Legato in the air
That’s when I found the harmonica
Breathing in and breathing out
Sliding between keys
Like life sometimes does
One small shift
And suddenly the whole song is different
It taught me that feelings move
If you give them somewhere to go.
Then there was the guitar
A constant presence in my island-flavoured home
Someone would start a chorus
And suddenly the room leans closer
Laughter syncing to a beat
Unified voices finding their footing
Curated playlists, musical mosaics
Three minutes long
And somehow large enough to sum up your life
A single lyric on repeat
Catching your heart
Like a hook
In your ears
On buses
In bedrooms
Walking home
Until you realise it wasn’t a just a song
But a mirror
In verses
The quiet unfolding
Line after line of ordinary moments
Stitched together
But every song carries a chorus too
The lines that return
Until you finally understand them
LIFE HAS THOSE
The same lessons
Knocking on the same doors
Until we learn the rhythm
And let them in
And sometimes
When the whole song has been building toward something brighter
THERE IS A BRIDGE
The moment everything lifts
The sudden key change
The memory that glows
Long after the music fades
A choir fu l of voices
Finding the same harmony
Or one voice alone
Steady and soulful enough
To hold the quiet
1st Ethan Choi, 9V
In The Act of Beginning
Before memory had language,
there was a thick, endless dark
not empty,
but crowded with waiting.
I rested inside the void,
the way a seed rests in soil,
not sleeping
nor awake,
only gathering
the quiet strength
to become something louder.
Nothing moved quickly there.
Time folded in on itself
like slow water
circling a deep place,
and I drifted in that turning,
not yet a body.
A rhythm
desperately learning
how to continue.
I was not yet “I.”
I was a small listening,
a pulse practising
the ways of the breath.
Then something
began to knock.
It was soft at first,
a small wave touching shore,
pulling back,
and touching again.
Knock.
Pull.
Knock.
Pull.
I came forward
as tides do,
resisting and yielding
at the same time.
The dark loosened,
slipping from my shoulders,
whilst cold hands
lifted me
into noise,
into brightness,
into the long sentence
of living.
I cried,
and everyone said
I had arrived.
But really,
I was saying thank you.
Thank you
for the loud world,
for the sharp colours,
for the difficult gravity
that keeps my feet
from floating away again.
Since then
life has never stopped
breathing this familiar rhythm:
arrival,
departure,
fullness,
hunger,
wave after wave
undoing and remaking the shore.
Morning spills open.
Night gathers it back.
I lose things,
I am given things,
I lose them again
yet the tide keeps returning
my name to me.
And sometimes,
in the small hours
when my room is almost the colour
of that first darkness,
I feel the quiet motion
that carried me here
still moving inside my chest.
Gratitude rises inside me
steady,
as water touching land.
Again
and again
and again.
And quietly,
so quietly that,
no one hears.
I whisper again:
Thank you
for the chance
to begin.