Nearly 300 people entered the Herald purple prize for poetry, sending odes of love or hate about the invasive species that has turned the city’s horizon into a flowering haze.
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.
Not everyone loves the jacaranda, though. The Brazilian trees were introduced into the Royal Botanic Garden in Sydney nearly 170 years ago. Kirkpatrick said he was struck by the number of entries like Spittal’s that “sought to personify the tree as an exotic female, or as being fashionably ‘clothed’ in its blossoms”.
Spittal said he was amazed and surprised when told he had won. As a senior government health official, he said he didn’t have much time to write poetry. “I don’t mind saying that one day when I am retired, definitely trying to get published as a poet is on my bucket list,” he said. Jacqui Hayes, whose poem came third, was the only poet to observe the “gunmetal grey” trunk of the jacaranda.
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