Wednesday 29 April 2026
Senior student Elizabeth Walker (Year 13, Marion Bruce) was selected as a finalist in the Lest We Forget Poetry competition 2026 run by the Auckland Museum. Participants were asked to create a response to the annual theme of He Ara Whakamua: Pathways Forward.
She read her poem along with other competition finalists at the Auckland Museum 9.30am Anzac Service on Saturday 25 April. Her poem is below:
Remembrance
feels like a quiet thing.
Not loud, not sharp, just empty…
like something's missing. Like a chair
that no one sits in anymore. Like the drop of your stomach when you realise it’s actually gone.
And I stand here
consumed in my normal life
trying to understand
how something so far away
can feel this close.
they were young. I don’t know their faces,
but I know their almosts.
Their almost home,
almost older,
almost married
almost loved
almost parents.
and that word,
almost,
echoes within me
trembles my mind
corrupts my body
and damages my soul
Remembrance isn’t just a memory, its absence.
It’s the life they didn’t get to live.
lives built for bravery,
A life that was taken out of the palms of their hands and placed into the palms of mine.
the life i think I could never live up to.
but the life im going to try to.
I don’t know how to carry it
so I let it change me.
Not with medals,
not with their kind of bravery,
but with a life that means something.
Because remembrance isn’t just looking back, it’s living, living with peace and with love. Living with ambition and grace. Living with God.
And living
like their ending
wasn’t the end.
Elizabeth Walker