It was the organ's fifth birthday in May.
Your challenge was:
to compose a suitable verse (limerick, sonnet, haiku, whatever) for a birthday greeting card for our Town Hall organ. The most witty, funny, appropriate, dazzling, heart-warming, or doggerelised entry won one of the CDs recorded on the organ. Special consolation prize of a Town Hall organ T-shirt and A4 poster of the building of the organ for the runner up!

Entry no. 4: - RUNNER-UPS

Wood, lead, tin -
grown in the maker's mind
to a forest of sound
Ink, paper pulp -
constraining noise
behind black bars
Valve, pump, stop -
earthly mechanics
making a different music.
The squeak of patent leather on pedal,
The angle a resting leg makes with the bench
smoothed by the passing of numerous
fanatics' gliding rears.
Many have brushed past this breathing beast
Since, five years ago, it was first revved into life.
Columns and sleeves
metal fingers saluting the visitor
tickling the ceiling's underbelly
Describing a bird's wing
A miniature cathedral or a fairground exhibit
Pushing, pushing the music of keys and creaks
up and across to straining ears.

Cordelia Black,
Knox College, Dunedin

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Entry no. 3:

Homage in Haiku:

Pillar of pipes
Between sky, earth,
Music's triuimphal arch.

Betha Goede, Germany

Entry no. 2: WINNING ENTRY

Our Rieger's got in it a pommer,
A bourdon and voix celeste too;
More French stops and GOs than an old deux chevaux,
Not forgetting a trompette or two.

Our Rieger makes sounds like a foghorn,
A siren, bassoon and a dove;
The object is music not sounds that make you sick,
Like stringendo, all the above.

Our Rieger is like a computer,
Its actions are triggered by keys;
And pullin' and pushin' and peddalin' and whooshin',
(sounds more like gymnasiumese).

Our Rieger needs great kilopascals,
Of air to deliver a tune;
There's barely enough in a tree-downing puff,
Of a sudden Nor'wester in June.

Our Rieger gives many great pleasure
When sound from its pipe array soars
Most like the thunder but yet others wonder
If it's better not heard out-of-doors.

Jock O'Connor, Auckland

Entry no. 1:

The sounz are slamming
So lets get jamming
With melodious crooning
The pipes are tuning

Just five years old
But the sounz are bold
We can hear the riffs
High as lofty cliffs

They soar up high
'Til she starts to cry
Then they hit real low
As your mind she'll blow

To Christchurch Organ
Happ-ee Birthday
We just cant wait
To hear you play!
Happy Birthday from
BJ Ieriko.