John Adams, The Judicial Wordsmith

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Now what rhymes with "community service?" - District Court Judge John Adams serves with sentences that are lyrical and prize-winning. 

Waitakere District Court judge John Adams has won the New Zealand Society of Authors’ (NZSA) 2012 Best First Book Award for Poetry for his collection entitled Briefcase.

Convener Chris Bourke says the award judges considered Briefcase to be “a daring debut thatmarries law and poetry – a challenging, creative and moving collection.

“Using clever language play, Adams has created a poetry smorgasbord of plain poems, lyrical lines, traditional forms, fake documents, a Sudoku puzzle and so on. But what takes this collection beyond the post-modern gymnasium is its ability to affect you.

“His experimentation with form depends upon the heart as much as it does the intellect.” Judge Adams, receives $2500 asan award winner from the awards sponsors NZ Post and CreativeNew Zealand.

In a review of Briefcase published in The Listener earlier this year, reviewer Hugh Roberts, a New Zealander teaching English at the University of California, Irvine, described the book as “an intriguing and accomplished first poetry collection”.

This should come as no surprise, Mr Roberts wrote, because Jakob Grimm (of the fairy tale collecting Brothers Grimm) once wrote that “poetry and law have risen from the same bed”.

Source: Law News