Thank you to everyone for participating in our 8th annual poetry contest—we are happy to provide an outlet for students’ creativity. Over twenty amazing poems were submitted this year (a record!), so selecting just three was very difficult. We appreciate the effort students put into writing the poems and the courage it takes for submitting them. Thanks also to staff from Events and Facilities Services and IT for helping us select the top three poems. Until next year…
Alexia Loumankis
Bora Laskin Law Library
Letters and Laws: A Father in Law School (by Michael Roclawski – 1st place)
The halls hum with eager minds,
late-night readings, tight deadlines.
Casebooks stacked like city towers,
measuring our sleepless hours.
My classmates brief, debate, refine,
while I check the clock – past dinnertime.
Between Civil Procedure and Corporate Deals,
I chase small footsteps, share warm meals.
While others plan for clerkship days,
I soothe my child’s cries and stays.
They draft in silence, crisp and neat,
while bedtime stories wrap my week.
Income Tax weighs wealth and worth,
but nothing rivals home’s own hearth.
A wife’s embrace, a toddler’s cheer,
the sweetest laws I follow here.
The balance shifts, the days are tight,
briefs by day and books by night.
But love rewrites the harshest clause –
this life is mine, and so, I pause.
For here at U of T, I find my way –
a husband, a father, day by day.
The Lights in the Fishbowl (by Humza Mehdi Khan – 2nd place)
Sometimes
The lights in the fishbowl move
They move like the people in the fishbowl move
Rhythmic and steady but with purpose
Moving but staying in place
Anchored to their chosen spot
The lights in the fishbowl sway
They sway like the people in the fishbowl sway
Rocking back and forth
Coming in and out
Each swing counting
The moments of their journey
The lights in the fishbowl spin
They spin like the people in the fishbowl spin
From one cycle to the next
Admissions, moots, recruits
Never reversing direction
No turning back the clock
The people in the fishbowl change
They bump into each other for a time
They see friends come and go
And in a few short years they too leave the fishbowl
The lights in the fishbowl do not
They have been together their whole lives
In this way,
I envy them.
A Dream of Justice (by Goldi Gill – 3rd place)
I wait for a time when law can be accessible to all.
Though we believe it is, we are kidding ourselves.
Law is for the privileged, with words in Latin
that laypeople do not understand.
Once upon a time, I lived below the cost of living
and have struggled to make it to where I am
so that one day I too can be privileged enough to learn about the law.
But the law is a fortress, built with walls of jargon,
A language foreign to those without the key.
Its gates are guarded by the privileged few,
While the rest of us stand outside, yearning to see.
I dream of a time when justice is a river,
Flowing freely to every corner of the land.
When knowledge of the law is not a treasure,
But a right for all to understand.Until that day, I will continue to strive,
To break down the walls, to open the gates.
For a world where the law is accessible to all,
Is a world where justice truly awaits.
