What Matters? Writing Competition 2024
Varuna is proud to have been involved in the 2024 Whitlam Institute’s What Matters? Writing Competition.
Inspired by Gough Whitlam's commitment to involving young people in shaping Australia's future, the What Matters? writing competition is open to school students in years 5 to 12 from Australia. Responding to the simple question 'what matters?', entrants are free to express their views on any matter they care about.
Part writing exercise, part civics and citizenship activity, What Matters? is the perfect opportunity to empower students to raise their voices on issues that are important to them and know that their perspectives are valuable, no matter their age, background or viewpoint. Entries can be fiction, non-fiction, poetry or prose of up to 600 words, and submitted online.
We are pleased to announce that Lottie Bruce of Eltham College was selected by Varuna as one of the winners this year.
Her entry “The patron saint of dead birds” won the Artistic Merit Award.
The patron saint of dead birds
by Lottie Bruce
Leroy noticed it straight away. There was a dead blue wren on the side of the pavement. It was small and its legs were kicked up and stiff, curled like twisted nails. It was a bright blue gem, now expired, dulling in this hot, burnt out, tin can of a day. Leroy had the sudden urge to go and scoop it up, feel it artificially warm in the violent heat of the morning.
In some small, sick way, Leroy saw himself in the bird, the same pervacious vulnerability, spiraling into stillness. Leroy wished to wander the bird's body, the tiny cathedral of its chest, the now slowed cabinet of its heart. He stood in front of it, bowing his head against the sun, he knelt as if to a king, and examined this fallen, feathered creature. It was less blue and less marvelous in the shadow of Leroy's form, tarnished and dulled. The crown of its head crawled with ants, a tiny black army on a sea of blue.
Leroy felt sick as he thought of the despicable changes taking place in the cadaver of the small bird, the rotting and decaying and decomposing. He marched, the sun beating down in a drumroll of heat, sucking the world dry.
At school he was sat between a girl with dyed blonde hair and brown eyes and a boy who smelt like deodorant and cooked meat. He felt embarrassingly large and loud and ugly, his legs jittered like a dancing skeleton, he felt jumpy like a baby foal, new and clumsy. He felt like a bug, a rat, a filthy and gritty impersonation of a person, a disgusting hologram of youth. He felt eyes on him, he was under a microscope of encroachment, invaded, pervaded, a tiny string of DNA, divided and sliced into singular molecules.
Leroy's day dragged on in a blur of amoebic movements. There was an ugly thing clawing in Leroy's stomach, citrus sour, and panicked flame. Dread like a sickness, untamable violence, prowling the weave of his organs. Panic, deep set like a bone rot, preying on the newborn creature of his senses.
Leroy existed in the half light of anxiety. He ate, slept, breathed, and lived in its dank chambers, a prisoner, a small, trapped blue wren in a cage.
As he walked home. He kept his head down, eyes squinting into the hazy film that seemed to float above the sidewalk. It glimmered in the turbidness like a cloud of crushed diamonds, so unexpectedly miraculous, Leroy almost smiled.
When he was two hundred metres from the dead blue wren he sped up, wanting to see the work done by nature to rid itself of this inconsequential, dead organism.
Would it be still there, half whole? Or rather, a pile of feathers, sun bleached and fraying?
As Leroy moved closer to where the bird lay, he saw a little girl, no older than six, crouched in a pink skirt and purple T-shirt. Her pink sandals were half a ruler's length from the bird, and she bent over it, her face was emitting a glow, pinker than her skirt. She looked in wonderment at the dead thing. Awestruck like she was seeing some indescribable marvel. He thought she looked so pure, like an angel or a very small god. He felt something release in his chest, a wave of unsteady peace. He shut his eyes and pushed air in and out of his lungs.
Somewhere deep in the temple of Leroy's heart, thousands of tiny blue wrens were taking flight.
