Last week, a courier arrived at Warringah Mall Library with a box of books and a note revealing that a young reader in Year 3, a budding Northern Beaches poet, had won a national poetry prize run by a major publisher.

The winning entry? A haiku that stopped the judges in their tracks. It’s heartfelt, hilarious and powerful in just 17 syllables: 

Feeding my dog Frank
the remains of my dinner
because peas are gross

The mystery? We don’t know who the young poet ‘Ivy D’ is (and due to privacy laws, we wouldn’t ask the prize organiser!). But we’d love to celebrate them.  

For those unfamiliar, a haiku is a Japanese form of unrhymed poetry made up of 3 lines with a 5–7–5 syllable structure.

Their poem was selected by acclaimed poet Maxine Beneba Clarke, who read every single submission and chose winners and runners-up across age categories. 

If you know who ‘Ivy D’ is, please let us know! We’d love to congratulate them and say thank you for the books.