Zihan Gu, Hong Kong's National Honour, September 2026
Zihan Gu wrote the highest-scoring poem from Hong Kong in the Writory International Poetry Contest, September 2026: Borrowed Light, Stolen Verse, scored 67 out of 100 by the blind judging panel across five published criteria. The poem was read in English (Latin script).
Borrowed Light, Stolen Verse
I knelt where moss had swallowed stone, my palm pressed flat against its cool, slow grain. I came to harvest hues to call my own— the forest had been painting long before my hand. Silt streaks the creek in pale bruised blue, wind drags thin charcoal across oak bark. I carry a sketchbook bound in worn canvas, its pages smudged with dirt I tore to mark. In my head, a dried tube of emerald paint, cracked, abandoned on my old studio shelf; it too promised green that would not fade, locked tight in metal, robbed of living self. I tried to trap the light that slips at dusk, mix pigments to hold the fleeting glow. I hesitate — then reach. A theft, a hungry trust— art reaches out, yet nature lets it go. I scraped lichen powder from a fallen log, part of me knows I should leave it rest, yet crave that crust of green that breathed and shifted slow. The colour died once I broke its fog; the wood does not scream. It simply bleeds, subdued, beauty resists the jars where we would stow. My fingers sting from pine-needle small cuts, mud crusted thick inside my scuffed shoe seam. No neat lesson unfurls in measured thoughts. I watch the wound and feel the guilt’s sharp stream. I close the book. I leave the log scarred raw. No finished work to prove what I have seen. Nature’s brush does not beg our awe— we steal its light, then call it poetry.
Every country's leading poet each month is named on the September 2026 National Honours. The contest is open to poets in Hong Kong and everywhere else: enter the current round, and every poem receives a score out of 100 and a certificate.