Poetry Contest

The “All Australian” poetry contest to select the Aussie Poet Laureate  is held every 5 years in the Sydney Opera house.

The judges would select a word at random that would be given to the finalists five minutes before the start of the final competition. Each finalist would study the word and were required to come up with a short four line poem that contained the selected word.

Last September, the contest came down to 2 finalists – a British immigrant PhD graduate from University of Melbourne and an outback Aborigine from Waga Waga, estimated to be about 75 years old.

The word selected by the judges was ‘TIMBUKTU’.

The graduate won the coin toss and elected to recite his poem first. Stepping to the microphone, he said:

 

Slowly across the desert sand,
Trekked a lonely caravan.
Men on camels two by two
Destination - Timbuktu .

The audience applauded loudly, no way the old aboriginal could top that they thought.

Without a sound, the old Aborigine slowly and calmly made his way to the microphone, took a deep breath and recited in a deep voice:

Me and Tim a huntin' went,
We met three whores in a pop up tent.
They were three, and we was two

So I bucked one, and Timbuktu.

Needless to say, the elected Poet Laureate for the next five years will be an original Australian native.