Dubbo’s Mark Spittal has won The Sydney Morning Herald’s inaugural purple prize for poetry , likening the jacaranda to a Brazilian ballerina whose lithe limbs twist between lilac tresses. Runner-up Claire Mason from Coffs Harbour took a deep dive into popular culture, saying the jacaranda was “way prettier than a bay” – a pun on the tree of that name and the popular slang for babe, “bae”. It brought back memories of Prince, Jimi Hendrix and an older woman’s purple rinse, she wrote.
Kathryn Zhong, Ellarose Morris, Ava Jean-Baptiste, Adriana Antunes, Olivia Tong, Portia Rizzo and Aviva Wang are among the students in 4C at Danebank Anglican School for Girls who entered the Herald’s jacaranda poetry contest. Credit: Wolter Peeters Among the 292 eligible entries received by the Herald in response to a call for short poems about the jacarandas now in bloom, there were 13 references in entries to Purple Rain , the 1984 hit power ballad by Prince and the Revolution. But year 4 students from Hurstville’s Danebank Anglican School for Girls won hearts with their entries.
Aviva Wang, aged nine, wrote the tree is “like a key that unlocks the love above”. After a poetry class organised by 4C teacher Lena Cooper held under the school’s jacaranda tree, 23 students submitted poems. Not everyone loves the jacaranda, though.
The Brazilian trees were introduced into the Royal Botanic Garden in Sydney nearly 170 years ago. Marcelle Tonkin wrote that the “obnoxious Braz.
