What's something that this fair city has been needing since it was founded in... say, when was Wellington founded anyway?

That's right, you guessed it, you KNEW it all along, Wellington needs a sonnet!

And here's where you can help: You can write that sonnet!

Wellington Sonnet Competition 2008

Wellington needs a sonnet. London has ‘Upon Westminster Bridge’ by William Wordsworth and in more recent times, other poets have written sonnets about their favourite cities. So have you got what it takes to write Wellington’s sonnet? We are looking for the best unpublished sonnets about Wellington and you could be in to win $1000.

This competition, sponsored by New Zealand Post, is being run as a promotion for the Wellington Writers Walk, an initiative of the New Zealand Society of Authors, Wellington Branch. The walk pays tribute to nineteen New Zealand authors with a series of sculptural and ‘benchmark’ quotations set in surprising and unexpected places around the waterfront.

The Wellington Writers Walk is continuing to develop, assisted by generous individual sponsorships for each commemoration and overseen by a small, voluntary committee. By entering this competition, you are contributing to the continuity of the project.

Find out more about the walk here

Prizes
1st prize $1,000
2nd prize $500
3rd prize $250
Plus 10 highly commended prizes of $50 each

Click here for further details, an entry form & the small print.

Please note: there are very specific rules governing the construction of sonnets: the number of syllables in each line, the number of lines in the sonnet, metre, rhyme scheme etc etc...

However, in this more enlightened & flexible age, all you have to worry about is making your "sonnet" exactly 14 lines long.

Spot the purist.

Hat/tip to Harvey Molloy