Biography of Sarojini Naidu
----------------------------
Sarojinidevi was a great patriot, politician, orator and administrator, of all the famous women of India, Mrs. Sarojinidevi Naidu's name is at the top. Not only that, but she was truly one of the jewels of the world. Being one of the most famous heroines of the 20th century, her birthday is celebrated as "Women's Day"
She was born on February 13, 1879 in Hyderabad. Her father, Dr. Aghornath Chattopadhyaya, was the founder of Nizam College of Hyderabad and a scientist. Her mother, Mrs. Varasundari, was a Bengali poetess. Sarojinidevi inherited qualities from both her father and mother.
Young Sarojini was a very bright and proud girl. Her father aspired for her to become a mathematician or scientist, but she loved poetry from a very early age. Once she was working on an algebra problem, and when she couldn't find the solution she decided to take a break, and in the same book she wrote her first inspired poetry. She got so enthused by this that she wrote "The Lady of the Lake", a poem 1300 lines long. When her father saw that she was more interested in poetry than mathematics or science, he decided to encourage her. With her father's support, she wrote the play "Maher Muneer" in the Persian language. Dr. Chattopadhyaya distributed some copies among his friends and sent one copy to the Nawab of Hyderabad. Reading a beautiful play written by a young girl, the Nizam was very impressed. The college gave her a scholarship to study abroad. At the age of 16 she got admitted to King's College of England. There she met famous laureates of the time.
During her stay in England, Sarojini met Dr. Govind Naidu from southern India. After finishing her studies at the age of 19, she got married to him during the time when inter-caste marriages were not allowed. Her father was a progressive thinking person, and he did not care what others said. Her marriage was a very happy one.
Her major contribution was also in the field of poetry. Her poetry had beautiful words that could also be sung. Soon she got recognition as the "Bul Bule Hind" when her collection of poems was published in 1905 under the title Golden Threshold. After that, she published two other collections of poems--The Bird of Time and The Broken Wings. In 1918, Feast of Youth was published. Later, The Magic Tree, The Wizard Mask and A Treasury of Poems were published. Mahashree Arvind, Rabindranath Tagore and Jawaharlal Nehru were among the thousands of admirers of her work. Her poems had English words, but an Indian soul.
One day she met Shree Gopal Krishna Gokhale. He said to her to use her poetry and her beautiful words to rejuvenate the spirit of Independence in the hearts of villagers. He asked her to use her talent to free Mother India.
Then in 1916, she met Mahatma Gandhi, and she totally directed her energy to the fight for freedom. She would roam around the country like a general of the army and pour enthusiasm among the hearts of Indians. The independence of India became the heart and soul of her work.
She was responsible for awakening the women of India. She brought them out of the kitchen. She traveled from state to state, city after city and asked for the rights of the women. She re-established self-esteem within the women of India.
In 1925, she chaired the summit of Congress in Kanpur. In 1928, she came to the USA with the message of the non-violence movement from Gandhiji. When in 1930, Gandhiji was arrested for a protest, she took the helms of his movement. In 1931, she participated in the Round Table Summit, along with Gandhiji and Pundit Malaviyaji. In 1942, she was arrested during the "Quit India" protest and stayed in jail for 21 months with Gandhiji.
After independence she became the Governor of Uttar Pradesh. She was the first woman governor in India.
She died on March 2, 1949. ..
HER POEMS:
1. Autumn Song
Like a joy on the heart of a sorrow,
The sunset hangs on a cloud;
A golden storm of glittering sheaves,
Of fair and frail and fluttering leaves,
The wild wind blows in a cloud.
Hark to a voice that is calling
To my heart in the voice of the wind:
My heart is weary and sad and alone,
For its dreams like the fluttering leaves have gone,
And why should I stay behind?
Sarojini Naidu
2. An Indian Love Song
He
Lift up the veils that darken the delicate moon
of thy glory and grace,
Withhold not, O love, from the night
of my longing the joy of thy luminous face,
Give me a spear of the scented keora
guarding thy pinioned curls,
Or a silken thread from the fringes
that trouble the dream of thy glimmering pearls;
Faint grows my soul with thy tresses' perfume
and the song of thy anklets' caprice,
Revive me, I pray, with the magical nectar
that dwells in the flower of thy kiss.
She
How shall I yield to the voice of thy pleading,
how shall I grant thy prayer,
Or give thee a rose-red silken tassel,
a scented leaf from my hair?
Or fling in the flame of thy heart's desire the veils that cover my face,
Profane the law of my father's creed for a foe
of my father's race?
Thy kinsmen have broken our sacred altars and slaughtered our sacred kine,
The feud of old faiths and the blood of old battles sever thy people and mine.
He
What are the sins of my race, Beloved,
what are my people to thee?
And what are thy shrines, and kine and kindred,
what are thy gods to me?
Love recks not of feuds and bitter follies,
of stranger, comrade or kin,
Alike in his ear sound the temple bells
and the cry of the muezzin.
For Love shall cancel the ancient wrong
and conquer the ancient rage,
Redeem with his tears the memoried sorrow
that sullied a bygone age.
Sarojini Naidu
3. A Rajput Love Song
Parvati at her lattice)
O Love! were you a basil-wreath to twine
among my tresses,
A jewelled clasp of shining gold to bind around my sleeve,
O Love! were you the keora's soul that haunts
my silken raiment,
A bright, vermilion tassel in the girdles that I weave;
O Love! were you the scented fan
that lies upon my pillow,
A sandal lute, or silver lamp that burns before my shrine,
Why should I fear the jealous dawn
that spreads with cruel laughter,
Sad veils of separation between your face and mine?
Haste, O wild-bee hours, to the gardens of the sun set!
Fly, wild-parrot day, to the orchards of the west!
Come, O tender night, with your sweet,
consoling darkness,
And bring me my Beloved to the shelter of my breast!
(Amar Singh in the saddle)
O Love! were you the hooded hawk upon my hand
that flutters,
Its collar-band of gleaming bells atinkle as I ride,
O Love! were you a turban-spray or
floating heron-feather,
The radiant, swift, unconquered sword
that swingeth at my side;
O Love! were you a shield against the
arrows of my foemen,
An amulet of jade against the perils of the way,
How should the drum-beats of the dawn
divide me from your bosom,
Or the union of the midnight be ended with the day?
Haste, O wild-deer hours, to the meadows of the sunset!
Fly, wild stallion day, to the pastures of the west!
Come, O tranquil night, with your soft,
consenting darkness,
And bear me to the fragrance of my Beloved's breast!
Sarojini Naidu
Sunday, March 8, 2009
Friday, March 6, 2009
Words of London Poetry Contest 2006 Judge
Michael Symmons Roberts
Much has been said about poems that show up in poetry competitions. Judges are warned to look out for various pitfalls among the anonymous
verses. There’s the cynical poem that turns showy tricks to make it stand out from the crowd. Then there’s the
workshop poem with a great central idea but no heart. There’s even the rare but dangerous poem by a famous poet of the past sent in to be overlooked, and thereby to prove that contemporary poetry is in crisis.
I’m glad to say that the vast majority of poems I read for Poetry London were well worth the reading. Some were let down by a loose line or two, or could do with more drafts to sharpen the form. Some lacked fire, or ice, or failed to live up to their title or opening. Many others would sit comfortably in the pages of a good magazine, and that made the task harder than I’d expected.
Early in July, a huge parcel of poems – stripped of names but number-coded – was delivered to my door, and in the first week I read all of them to make some initial judgements. By the end of that process, the batch of poems was down to a quarter of its original size. I set them aside for a few days, then came back and read the surviving poems again, reducing the batch to about 50.
It took me two more stages (each getting harder as I had to ditch poems I liked) to get the batch down to a final ten from which to pick the three prizewinners and four commended poems. That final shortlist was made up of poems that wouldn’t leave me alone. Most of them had caught my eye at the beginning of the summer in the first sifting, and had grown stronger with each reading since.
The four commended poems included two impressive poetic sequences (one linked by narrative, one by theme), a quietly striking reflection on place and relationship, and a well focused telling of a captured moment in rural Ireland.
After much shuffling of the pack, I settled on three very different prizewinners. The third prize goes to a poem built on a striking idea and written subtly in the voice of a character from recent history. ‘Jacqueline Kennedy’s Guided Tour of the White House’ establishes its voice from the first line, and has telling (and sometimes chilling) details throughout. Recent history is hard to write about, but in this poem the former First Lady’s strong sense of her place in history, her role as a custodian, and the undertow of anxiety come through strongly.
Second prize goes to a poem that stood out a mile. ‘Happy Ending’ took me by surprise from its simple and strange first line. At different times it made me think of Stevie Smith, of the Ahlbergs’ stories for children, of Walt Whitman. It’s whimsical and surreal and deceptively straightforward. And it does have a happy ending too, and a lilting last line. This idiosyncratic lyric poem grew on me each time I read it.
In the end, the first prize went to a poem with a central image so strong that it struck me from day one – ‘Sunday at the Skin Launderette’. To sustain and develop that image with such richness and variety in a form as difficult as a sestina is a real achievement. Many sestinas run out of steam, or overstretch their subject. This one seems comfortable in its own skin (apologies), and wears its form lightly. I was struck by the juxtaposition of wonderful descriptions of this strange ritual – ‘fragile as sushi’, ‘her cobweb elbows’ – with the ordinariness of it. I felt – as a reader – that this bizarre scene had really been witnessed, that I could witness it myself any rainy Sunday in any launderette. Even the ordinariness of the rain was made extraordinary. I was even more struck by the delicacy with which the poem draws its characters. The painstaking stripping and washing of skins – which in other hands could be grotesque or comical – is made beautiful and moving.
I was delighted to find, as I reached the final stages of the judging – having taken no notice of the code numbers on the poems – that another poem by the writer of ‘Sunday at the Skin Launderette’ had been in my final ten, and had just missed out on a place among the commended. That was a poem with a very different subject and approach, but clearly handled with the same skill and confidence. If those two poems are anything to go by, this is a poet with a strong voice, formally adept and with something to say. I, for one, will be watching with interest to see what she does next.
Michael Symmons Roberts has published four acclaimed collections of poems. His most recent, Corpus (Cape 2004), won the Whitbread Poetry Award - and was shortlisted for the Forward, Eliot and Griffin prizes. He is also known for his work on BBC Radio and for his collaborations with the composer James MacMillan. A first novel, Patrick's Alphabet, is published by Cape this year. Born in 1963, he lives in Cheshire.
Second Prize
rachel curzon
Happy Ending
Rachel Curzon was born in Leeds and now lives and works in Hampshire. She seems to be the only person who thinks she’s kept her accent. Rachel has had poems published in Mslexia and the MUP’s Watermark Anthology.
Read the poem >
Third Prize
victor tapner
Jacqueline Kennedy's Guided Tour of the White House
Victor Tapner’s poems have been published widely in magazines and anthologies, including Bloodaxe’s The Honey Gatherers. Part of his prehistory sequence Flatlands was the bursary winner in the 2005 Writers Inc. Writers-of-the-Year Competition, and he won the Academi Cardiff International Poetry Competition in 2000. His poem Pocahontas Prepares for an Audience at Court was commended in last year’s Poetry London competition. He works in London as a journalist on the Financial Times.
Read the poem >
Commendations are awarded to
BA Humar for
'Newstead Abbey'
Michael W Thomas for
'Cows in a Corofin Field'
Alex Heald for
'The Magician Escapes the Mob, Disguised as Himself'
Kate Noakes for
'Iron'
Much has been said about poems that show up in poetry competitions. Judges are warned to look out for various pitfalls among the anonymous
verses. There’s the cynical poem that turns showy tricks to make it stand out from the crowd. Then there’s the
workshop poem with a great central idea but no heart. There’s even the rare but dangerous poem by a famous poet of the past sent in to be overlooked, and thereby to prove that contemporary poetry is in crisis.
I’m glad to say that the vast majority of poems I read for Poetry London were well worth the reading. Some were let down by a loose line or two, or could do with more drafts to sharpen the form. Some lacked fire, or ice, or failed to live up to their title or opening. Many others would sit comfortably in the pages of a good magazine, and that made the task harder than I’d expected.
Early in July, a huge parcel of poems – stripped of names but number-coded – was delivered to my door, and in the first week I read all of them to make some initial judgements. By the end of that process, the batch of poems was down to a quarter of its original size. I set them aside for a few days, then came back and read the surviving poems again, reducing the batch to about 50.
It took me two more stages (each getting harder as I had to ditch poems I liked) to get the batch down to a final ten from which to pick the three prizewinners and four commended poems. That final shortlist was made up of poems that wouldn’t leave me alone. Most of them had caught my eye at the beginning of the summer in the first sifting, and had grown stronger with each reading since.
The four commended poems included two impressive poetic sequences (one linked by narrative, one by theme), a quietly striking reflection on place and relationship, and a well focused telling of a captured moment in rural Ireland.
After much shuffling of the pack, I settled on three very different prizewinners. The third prize goes to a poem built on a striking idea and written subtly in the voice of a character from recent history. ‘Jacqueline Kennedy’s Guided Tour of the White House’ establishes its voice from the first line, and has telling (and sometimes chilling) details throughout. Recent history is hard to write about, but in this poem the former First Lady’s strong sense of her place in history, her role as a custodian, and the undertow of anxiety come through strongly.
Second prize goes to a poem that stood out a mile. ‘Happy Ending’ took me by surprise from its simple and strange first line. At different times it made me think of Stevie Smith, of the Ahlbergs’ stories for children, of Walt Whitman. It’s whimsical and surreal and deceptively straightforward. And it does have a happy ending too, and a lilting last line. This idiosyncratic lyric poem grew on me each time I read it.
In the end, the first prize went to a poem with a central image so strong that it struck me from day one – ‘Sunday at the Skin Launderette’. To sustain and develop that image with such richness and variety in a form as difficult as a sestina is a real achievement. Many sestinas run out of steam, or overstretch their subject. This one seems comfortable in its own skin (apologies), and wears its form lightly. I was struck by the juxtaposition of wonderful descriptions of this strange ritual – ‘fragile as sushi’, ‘her cobweb elbows’ – with the ordinariness of it. I felt – as a reader – that this bizarre scene had really been witnessed, that I could witness it myself any rainy Sunday in any launderette. Even the ordinariness of the rain was made extraordinary. I was even more struck by the delicacy with which the poem draws its characters. The painstaking stripping and washing of skins – which in other hands could be grotesque or comical – is made beautiful and moving.
I was delighted to find, as I reached the final stages of the judging – having taken no notice of the code numbers on the poems – that another poem by the writer of ‘Sunday at the Skin Launderette’ had been in my final ten, and had just missed out on a place among the commended. That was a poem with a very different subject and approach, but clearly handled with the same skill and confidence. If those two poems are anything to go by, this is a poet with a strong voice, formally adept and with something to say. I, for one, will be watching with interest to see what she does next.
Michael Symmons Roberts has published four acclaimed collections of poems. His most recent, Corpus (Cape 2004), won the Whitbread Poetry Award - and was shortlisted for the Forward, Eliot and Griffin prizes. He is also known for his work on BBC Radio and for his collaborations with the composer James MacMillan. A first novel, Patrick's Alphabet, is published by Cape this year. Born in 1963, he lives in Cheshire.
Second Prize
rachel curzon
Happy Ending
Rachel Curzon was born in Leeds and now lives and works in Hampshire. She seems to be the only person who thinks she’s kept her accent. Rachel has had poems published in Mslexia and the MUP’s Watermark Anthology.
Read the poem >
Third Prize
victor tapner
Jacqueline Kennedy's Guided Tour of the White House
Victor Tapner’s poems have been published widely in magazines and anthologies, including Bloodaxe’s The Honey Gatherers. Part of his prehistory sequence Flatlands was the bursary winner in the 2005 Writers Inc. Writers-of-the-Year Competition, and he won the Academi Cardiff International Poetry Competition in 2000. His poem Pocahontas Prepares for an Audience at Court was commended in last year’s Poetry London competition. He works in London as a journalist on the Financial Times.
Read the poem >
Commendations are awarded to
BA Humar for
'Newstead Abbey'
Michael W Thomas for
'Cows in a Corofin Field'
Alex Heald for
'The Magician Escapes the Mob, Disguised as Himself'
Kate Noakes for
'Iron'
Words of Poetry London Contest 2007 Judge
The large parcel of poems for judging was passed to me quietly, almost secretly like an exchange between spies, at a poetry reading in London in the first week of July. I sat listening to the (excellent) reader with only one ear, distracted by the package under my chair, wondering what was in there. When I finally came to open it, it was raining. In fact it seemed to be raining throughout the weeks I was reading through the contents of the parcel. Raining water outside and poems inside. But
the poems were good fresh rain. Growing rain, as I’ve heard it called. In the end they brightened things up because the overall standard was high, with more consistently good poems than in any other competition I’ve judged.
The quality of the poems made them a pleasure to read, like a giant anthology put together by someone with an eclectic and sometimes startling range of taste. But this made it harder than usual to sift through to my shortlist of twenty or so poems, from which I would choose the winners. The only way to approach the task was to reread all the poems, and then read them again. And again. Every time I judge a competition, I worry about the treasures which I may have missed – because I was tired reading the first time through, or simply distracted, or just not reading as well for a moment. However hard you try and however many readings you manage, it’s inevitable that something good will slip away. Because of the general high standard for this competition, I was even more aware of this possibility, which I tried to counter with as many readings of the big pile as possible. I carried sheaves of poems with me everywhere, popping a few in my handbag if I went out, to read on the bus.
Eventually my shortlist emerged. This group of around twenty by now dog-eared sheets became very familiar, and are all poems that I still think about from time to time and won’t forget. Robert Frost said that ‘writing a poem is discovering’. The three prizewinners and four runners-up which I finally chose all share this sense of discovery, of excitement in the language, and a useful tension in the line which never lets up during the downward momentum of the poem.
The four commended poems include: an exquisite sonnet, which is almost an elegy to smoking, to the old-fashioned romance of it which we hesitate now to mention; a daring double-bluff of a poem which pulls us into a landscape at the same time as deconstructing it as text; a psychological study of two people pulling each other too deeply into talking about death, with the harrowing image-world of the poem doing the real talking; and a surreal and startling encounter between doctor and patient.
Third prize went to ‘Wild Flowers’, a tightly realized villanelle. Within the strict parameters of the form wonderfully wild things happen. From the unexpected opening line, ‘I will be sober on my wedding day’, an almost gothic listing of matrimonial events follows. The poem is full
of exaggerated images of fecundity, and febrile sexual and religious ardour. At the back of all this hyperbole is a feeling that the frenetic dance masks the loss of so much; with the brilliant repeated line, ‘my tongue sleeping in her tray’, the silenced narrator lets us know the cost.
The fractured language of the second prize poem, ‘Syllable’, is brilliantly evoked to create a voice in stereo. The narrator peppers his/her own thoughts and responses to the hostile community with his/her own ‘translations’ of the voices he/she hears around. The poem holds up a mirror to contemporary western society, showing the inadequacy of understanding even for the most well-meaning of us, the ‘church boy’ and the ‘art girl’. The music of the fractured English is intense and strangely, shockingly beautiful.
The poem which won first prize was ‘Seven Weeks’. I was struck by the way the writer achieved the complex shape of the sestina with the minimum of staginess, making the form work for the poem. She has made the structure suit the circularity of bereavement, the heightened awareness of time passing, as the narrator counts the weeks since the death of someone close. The poem runs backwards, too, starting with the seventh Sunday since the death, every stanza representing a week, and each week a different character and colour of mourning, until the final short stanza which beautifully and solemnly evokes the moments immediately after a death.
Jo Shapcott is among the most influential and warmly admired poets in Britain. Her collections include 'Phrase Book' (1992) and 'My Life Asleep' (1998) which won the Forward Prize. 'Her Book: Poems 1988 to 1998' was published by Faber in 2000, and 'Tender Taxes', versions of Rilke's French poems, in 2001. She has twice won the National Poetry Competition, and teaches creative writing at the Royal Holloway College.
First Prize
Christine Webb
Seven Weeks
Seven weeks today. A July wind
is tousling the trees, rumpling the garden.
I have written five letters, washed the sheets.
A mistake somewhere – I’ve not finished
the crossword. Sit with the sounds of Sunday.
Thrashing leaves. Cows. Planes. My own breath.
All week the air has burnt: it is breath
from a lion’s mouth. No stir of wind
to brush the cheeks of the sixth Sunday:
silence quivers in the house, and the garden
shrivels, as if the season’s finished.
I sort bed linen. There are too many sheets.
A week leafed with letters. I scan these sheets
about you, half alert to hear your breath
until the words remind me that it’s finished.
So sorry to hear. Rain in the wind
hasn’t enough weight to nourish the garden.
Bells clang dryly. It is the fifth Sunday.
I wake in your presence the fourth Sunday –
not lying passive between your sheets
but laughing, striding in the summer garden
your mouth full of kisses, and your breath
sweeter and stronger than the June wind.
Why did I wake before the dream was finished?
Ready to go. I’ve nothing left unfinished
you told me once. But now beside a Sunday
river I want you here to watch the wind
curving sails, to feel the hauled sheets
as the boats put about, to taste the breath
of summer gusting down from every garden.
The second week I meet you in the garden
sitting under the oak where you once finished
fixing the swing-seat; not out of breath
but quiet and absorbed, reading the Sunday
papers, glancing up, rustling the sheets,
pinning one down that flutters in the wind.
I look out at the garden that first Sunday
when everything is finished. I smooth the sheets
and listen for your breath. There is only the wind.
Second Prize
Mick Wood
Syllable
here they speak now words
so i go round there and she give it some right grief
it like there no past
then he come in you think you big fuck man do you?
and no time to come
so i lamp him one in mouth and down he go twat
they in house or car or pub all of time they go
it too far for walk to town you fuck mug
we go we walk far each day it no mile for us
they pay man name jim to ride bike that go no where
walk on path that move
we sit out at night
the street for car or park in you thick mate or what?
we sing songs from home
stop that blood row i call filth i send hard man round
we ask learn their songs they go
i i i will all ways love you oo oo
they get drunk fight cry
you my best fuck mate sam bo how fuck sad is that?
we go our name are sunday innocent jesus solomon daniel
some time church boy come
christ love you
he like too thin
we feed him
christ save
he help us too much
tell us he cut his own flesh
christ love me
he think we not know the lord
christ save
some time art girl come
she want draw and write and tape us for
art out reach
she start dress like us learn our songs
we like her but she go
why you come? it all smile and laugh in your land
though poor you more peace and real than us
we tell her of kill and bad men she go
it all our fault i hate this blood place
i hate queen blair church pop beeb old
bill mum dad r and b
we go we hate gay
she not come more time
we miss her
we like smoke good weed and flirt with her
it rain it rain
we try walk to sea
there no path here no walk here
you up to no good we all need say so to leave path
this land it own by some one
not you
we ask where their land they go
own back yard
they laugh
but not with eyes
they not own own land
now they speak here words
we not want you in this town
this place just for us
we spell it out for you in words of one
Third Prize
Caroline Bird
Wild Flowers
I will be sober on my wedding day,
my eggs uncracked inside my creel,
my tongue sleeping in her tray.
I will lift my breast to pay
babies with their liquid meal,
I will be sober on my wedding day.
With my hands I’ll part the hay,
nest inside the golden reel,
my tongue sleeping in her tray.
I’ll dance with cows and cloying grey,
spin my grassy roulette wheel,
I will be sober on my wedding day.
I’ll crash to my knees and pray,
twist the sheets in tortured zeal,
my tongue sleeping in her tray.
Church-bells shudder on the bay,
fingered winds impel the deal:
I will be sober on my wedding day,
my tongue sleeping in her tray.
© Copyright of this poem remains with the poet: please do not download or republish without permission.
top ^
Commended Poems
Emily Berry
The Incredible History of Patient M
I went swimming with the Doctor;
he wore his stethoscope and listened
to the ebb and flow.
The water is drowning! he cried;
I feigned innocence. It’s news to me, I said.
I hid the stones in my pockets.
I’m in training with the Doctor. He can’t
work out why I’m so heavy. He takes
my pulse every hour. My blood pressure.
He straps his velcro cuff to my bicep
and pumps it till I’m breathless.
You need to breathe more, he says.
On Thursdays the Doctor examines me
on all fours. He wears a white coat
with too-short sleeves. This is as big
as they come, he explains, shrugging,
making the sleeves shorter. His wrists
are great hairy chunks, and he wears no watch.
Time is nothing, says the Doctor.
He’s unconventional. Time is nowhere,
like a dead bird in a cave. Let’s take a look inside.
I’d never opened up before. The Doctor
has a scalpel. And I’m not afraid to use it,
he told me. He calls it his shark’s tooth.
The Doctor has a bite that dimples my arm,
leaves a mark like the fossil of a sprung jaw.
He slapped my face with his penis.
To get you going, he said. My heart is now
on red alert, apparently. If it stops,
he reminds me, you’re dead.
© Copyright of this poem remains with the poet: please do not download or republish without permission.
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Matthew Caley
The Bluff
Apparently, the lights are in scatterfall above the bluff,
its incline serrated by firs
into dark-green saw teeth,
thence a slither of wortleberry and scree to where
the bay bulges into the ocean like a breathalysing balloon,
dotted by a single dhow or skiff
-from here it’s not quite clear- which is where our guts go airborne.
Barely tethered to the wild, green globe itself
the skiff is held by only a fraying lily-rope
to a spar of shingle –as if either might drift off–where, under a wind-tugged tarp
The Great Master is trying to map
the unmappable auroras. He must depend, fences not being enough,
on these few illegible scribbles holding off
the scatterfall of evening. And therein lies the bluff.
© Copyright of this poem remains with the poet: please do not download or republish without permission.
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Christina Dunhill
Romance
There is the lovely fug of it, the cloak
to shake and swirl around yourself, disguise
a darker thought and slip into a haze
of otherness. Here’s how my mouth will make
its little nothings into wisps of smoke –
a ring, a ‘no’, a ‘yes’, an ‘oh’, a kiss.
There’s absolutely nothing to express.
Instead we stretch our silence like a lake,
breathe signals over it like children’s boats
that glide across, then wobbling, start to lean.
Ghost boats that start to show a flag, then hide:
they never make the crossing from our throats.
Your smoke and mine - our breath, our screen –
Is this enough mist to undress inside?
© Copyright of this poem remains with the poet: please do not download or republish without permission.
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Linda Chase
Dare
Let’s talk about death, she said.
You first.
And he began with an oak tree, a glade
a blackbird and rain
then he nodded to her
and she began with ribbons on lapels
scissors and Hebrew prayers
then she nodded to him
and he went on with winter
leaves decaying, breath and emptiness
and he nodded to her
and she went on wanting to tear
her clothing to shreds
then she nodded to him
and he went on staring through branches
trying to count the few leaves left
then he nodded to her
and she went on with the fear of
unravelling threads, looser and looser
and she nodded to him
and he went on standing in the doorway
with the mourner’s book in his hand
and he nodded to her
and she went on with her ripped blouse
hanging from her shoulders, shaking
and he went on with his bare hands open—
as she fell against him he held her up.
Let’s talk about death
she said
and he closed his mouth and arms
and shoulders around her, refusing.
Second Prize
Mick Wood
Syllable
here they speak now words
so i go round there and she give it some right grief
it like there no past
then he come in you think you big fuck man do you?
and no time to come
so i lamp him one in mouth and down he go twat
they in house or car or pub all of time they go
it too far for walk to town you fuck mug
we go we walk far each day it no mile for us
they pay man name jim to ride bike that go no where
walk on path that move
we sit out at night
the street for car or park in you thick mate or what?
we sing songs from home
stop that blood row i call filth i send hard man round
we ask learn their songs they go
i i i will all ways love you oo oo
they get drunk fight cry
you my best fuck mate sam bo how fuck sad is that?
we go our name are sunday innocent jesus solomon daniel
some time church boy come
christ love you
he like too thin
we feed him
christ save
he help us too much
tell us he cut his own flesh
christ love me
he think we not know the lord
christ save
some time art girl come
she want draw and write and tape us for
art out reach
she start dress like us learn our songs
we like her but she go
why you come? it all smile and laugh in your land
though poor you more peace and real than us
we tell her of kill and bad men she go
it all our fault i hate this blood place
i hate queen blair church pop beeb old
bill mum dad r and b
we go we hate gay
she not come more time
we miss her
we like smoke good weed and flirt with her
it rain it rain
we try walk to sea
there no path here no walk here
you up to no good we all need say so to leave path
this land it own by some one
not you
we ask where their land they go
own back yard
they laugh
but not with eyes
they not own own land
now they speak here words
we not want you in this town
this place just for us
we spell it out for you in words of one
Third Prize
Caroline Bird
Wild Flowers
I will be sober on my wedding day,
my eggs uncracked inside my creel,
my tongue sleeping in her tray.
I will lift my breast to pay
babies with their liquid meal,
I will be sober on my wedding day.
With my hands I’ll part the hay,
nest inside the golden reel,
my tongue sleeping in her tray.
I’ll dance with cows and cloying grey,
spin my grassy roulette wheel,
I will be sober on my wedding day.
I’ll crash to my knees and pray,
twist the sheets in tortured zeal,
my tongue sleeping in her tray.
Church-bells shudder on the bay,
fingered winds impel the deal:
I will be sober on my wedding day,
my tongue sleeping in her tray.
© Copyright of this poem remains with the poet: please do not download or republish without permission.
top ^
the poems were good fresh rain. Growing rain, as I’ve heard it called. In the end they brightened things up because the overall standard was high, with more consistently good poems than in any other competition I’ve judged.
The quality of the poems made them a pleasure to read, like a giant anthology put together by someone with an eclectic and sometimes startling range of taste. But this made it harder than usual to sift through to my shortlist of twenty or so poems, from which I would choose the winners. The only way to approach the task was to reread all the poems, and then read them again. And again. Every time I judge a competition, I worry about the treasures which I may have missed – because I was tired reading the first time through, or simply distracted, or just not reading as well for a moment. However hard you try and however many readings you manage, it’s inevitable that something good will slip away. Because of the general high standard for this competition, I was even more aware of this possibility, which I tried to counter with as many readings of the big pile as possible. I carried sheaves of poems with me everywhere, popping a few in my handbag if I went out, to read on the bus.
Eventually my shortlist emerged. This group of around twenty by now dog-eared sheets became very familiar, and are all poems that I still think about from time to time and won’t forget. Robert Frost said that ‘writing a poem is discovering’. The three prizewinners and four runners-up which I finally chose all share this sense of discovery, of excitement in the language, and a useful tension in the line which never lets up during the downward momentum of the poem.
The four commended poems include: an exquisite sonnet, which is almost an elegy to smoking, to the old-fashioned romance of it which we hesitate now to mention; a daring double-bluff of a poem which pulls us into a landscape at the same time as deconstructing it as text; a psychological study of two people pulling each other too deeply into talking about death, with the harrowing image-world of the poem doing the real talking; and a surreal and startling encounter between doctor and patient.
Third prize went to ‘Wild Flowers’, a tightly realized villanelle. Within the strict parameters of the form wonderfully wild things happen. From the unexpected opening line, ‘I will be sober on my wedding day’, an almost gothic listing of matrimonial events follows. The poem is full
of exaggerated images of fecundity, and febrile sexual and religious ardour. At the back of all this hyperbole is a feeling that the frenetic dance masks the loss of so much; with the brilliant repeated line, ‘my tongue sleeping in her tray’, the silenced narrator lets us know the cost.
The fractured language of the second prize poem, ‘Syllable’, is brilliantly evoked to create a voice in stereo. The narrator peppers his/her own thoughts and responses to the hostile community with his/her own ‘translations’ of the voices he/she hears around. The poem holds up a mirror to contemporary western society, showing the inadequacy of understanding even for the most well-meaning of us, the ‘church boy’ and the ‘art girl’. The music of the fractured English is intense and strangely, shockingly beautiful.
The poem which won first prize was ‘Seven Weeks’. I was struck by the way the writer achieved the complex shape of the sestina with the minimum of staginess, making the form work for the poem. She has made the structure suit the circularity of bereavement, the heightened awareness of time passing, as the narrator counts the weeks since the death of someone close. The poem runs backwards, too, starting with the seventh Sunday since the death, every stanza representing a week, and each week a different character and colour of mourning, until the final short stanza which beautifully and solemnly evokes the moments immediately after a death.
Jo Shapcott is among the most influential and warmly admired poets in Britain. Her collections include 'Phrase Book' (1992) and 'My Life Asleep' (1998) which won the Forward Prize. 'Her Book: Poems 1988 to 1998' was published by Faber in 2000, and 'Tender Taxes', versions of Rilke's French poems, in 2001. She has twice won the National Poetry Competition, and teaches creative writing at the Royal Holloway College.
First Prize
Christine Webb
Seven Weeks
Seven weeks today. A July wind
is tousling the trees, rumpling the garden.
I have written five letters, washed the sheets.
A mistake somewhere – I’ve not finished
the crossword. Sit with the sounds of Sunday.
Thrashing leaves. Cows. Planes. My own breath.
All week the air has burnt: it is breath
from a lion’s mouth. No stir of wind
to brush the cheeks of the sixth Sunday:
silence quivers in the house, and the garden
shrivels, as if the season’s finished.
I sort bed linen. There are too many sheets.
A week leafed with letters. I scan these sheets
about you, half alert to hear your breath
until the words remind me that it’s finished.
So sorry to hear. Rain in the wind
hasn’t enough weight to nourish the garden.
Bells clang dryly. It is the fifth Sunday.
I wake in your presence the fourth Sunday –
not lying passive between your sheets
but laughing, striding in the summer garden
your mouth full of kisses, and your breath
sweeter and stronger than the June wind.
Why did I wake before the dream was finished?
Ready to go. I’ve nothing left unfinished
you told me once. But now beside a Sunday
river I want you here to watch the wind
curving sails, to feel the hauled sheets
as the boats put about, to taste the breath
of summer gusting down from every garden.
The second week I meet you in the garden
sitting under the oak where you once finished
fixing the swing-seat; not out of breath
but quiet and absorbed, reading the Sunday
papers, glancing up, rustling the sheets,
pinning one down that flutters in the wind.
I look out at the garden that first Sunday
when everything is finished. I smooth the sheets
and listen for your breath. There is only the wind.
Second Prize
Mick Wood
Syllable
here they speak now words
so i go round there and she give it some right grief
it like there no past
then he come in you think you big fuck man do you?
and no time to come
so i lamp him one in mouth and down he go twat
they in house or car or pub all of time they go
it too far for walk to town you fuck mug
we go we walk far each day it no mile for us
they pay man name jim to ride bike that go no where
walk on path that move
we sit out at night
the street for car or park in you thick mate or what?
we sing songs from home
stop that blood row i call filth i send hard man round
we ask learn their songs they go
i i i will all ways love you oo oo
they get drunk fight cry
you my best fuck mate sam bo how fuck sad is that?
we go our name are sunday innocent jesus solomon daniel
some time church boy come
christ love you
he like too thin
we feed him
christ save
he help us too much
tell us he cut his own flesh
christ love me
he think we not know the lord
christ save
some time art girl come
she want draw and write and tape us for
art out reach
she start dress like us learn our songs
we like her but she go
why you come? it all smile and laugh in your land
though poor you more peace and real than us
we tell her of kill and bad men she go
it all our fault i hate this blood place
i hate queen blair church pop beeb old
bill mum dad r and b
we go we hate gay
she not come more time
we miss her
we like smoke good weed and flirt with her
it rain it rain
we try walk to sea
there no path here no walk here
you up to no good we all need say so to leave path
this land it own by some one
not you
we ask where their land they go
own back yard
they laugh
but not with eyes
they not own own land
now they speak here words
we not want you in this town
this place just for us
we spell it out for you in words of one
Third Prize
Caroline Bird
Wild Flowers
I will be sober on my wedding day,
my eggs uncracked inside my creel,
my tongue sleeping in her tray.
I will lift my breast to pay
babies with their liquid meal,
I will be sober on my wedding day.
With my hands I’ll part the hay,
nest inside the golden reel,
my tongue sleeping in her tray.
I’ll dance with cows and cloying grey,
spin my grassy roulette wheel,
I will be sober on my wedding day.
I’ll crash to my knees and pray,
twist the sheets in tortured zeal,
my tongue sleeping in her tray.
Church-bells shudder on the bay,
fingered winds impel the deal:
I will be sober on my wedding day,
my tongue sleeping in her tray.
© Copyright of this poem remains with the poet: please do not download or republish without permission.
top ^
Commended Poems
Emily Berry
The Incredible History of Patient M
I went swimming with the Doctor;
he wore his stethoscope and listened
to the ebb and flow.
The water is drowning! he cried;
I feigned innocence. It’s news to me, I said.
I hid the stones in my pockets.
I’m in training with the Doctor. He can’t
work out why I’m so heavy. He takes
my pulse every hour. My blood pressure.
He straps his velcro cuff to my bicep
and pumps it till I’m breathless.
You need to breathe more, he says.
On Thursdays the Doctor examines me
on all fours. He wears a white coat
with too-short sleeves. This is as big
as they come, he explains, shrugging,
making the sleeves shorter. His wrists
are great hairy chunks, and he wears no watch.
Time is nothing, says the Doctor.
He’s unconventional. Time is nowhere,
like a dead bird in a cave. Let’s take a look inside.
I’d never opened up before. The Doctor
has a scalpel. And I’m not afraid to use it,
he told me. He calls it his shark’s tooth.
The Doctor has a bite that dimples my arm,
leaves a mark like the fossil of a sprung jaw.
He slapped my face with his penis.
To get you going, he said. My heart is now
on red alert, apparently. If it stops,
he reminds me, you’re dead.
© Copyright of this poem remains with the poet: please do not download or republish without permission.
top ^
Matthew Caley
The Bluff
Apparently, the lights are in scatterfall above the bluff,
its incline serrated by firs
into dark-green saw teeth,
thence a slither of wortleberry and scree to where
the bay bulges into the ocean like a breathalysing balloon,
dotted by a single dhow or skiff
-from here it’s not quite clear- which is where our guts go airborne.
Barely tethered to the wild, green globe itself
the skiff is held by only a fraying lily-rope
to a spar of shingle –as if either might drift off–where, under a wind-tugged tarp
The Great Master is trying to map
the unmappable auroras. He must depend, fences not being enough,
on these few illegible scribbles holding off
the scatterfall of evening. And therein lies the bluff.
© Copyright of this poem remains with the poet: please do not download or republish without permission.
top ^
Christina Dunhill
Romance
There is the lovely fug of it, the cloak
to shake and swirl around yourself, disguise
a darker thought and slip into a haze
of otherness. Here’s how my mouth will make
its little nothings into wisps of smoke –
a ring, a ‘no’, a ‘yes’, an ‘oh’, a kiss.
There’s absolutely nothing to express.
Instead we stretch our silence like a lake,
breathe signals over it like children’s boats
that glide across, then wobbling, start to lean.
Ghost boats that start to show a flag, then hide:
they never make the crossing from our throats.
Your smoke and mine - our breath, our screen –
Is this enough mist to undress inside?
© Copyright of this poem remains with the poet: please do not download or republish without permission.
top ^
Linda Chase
Dare
Let’s talk about death, she said.
You first.
And he began with an oak tree, a glade
a blackbird and rain
then he nodded to her
and she began with ribbons on lapels
scissors and Hebrew prayers
then she nodded to him
and he went on with winter
leaves decaying, breath and emptiness
and he nodded to her
and she went on wanting to tear
her clothing to shreds
then she nodded to him
and he went on staring through branches
trying to count the few leaves left
then he nodded to her
and she went on with the fear of
unravelling threads, looser and looser
and she nodded to him
and he went on standing in the doorway
with the mourner’s book in his hand
and he nodded to her
and she went on with her ripped blouse
hanging from her shoulders, shaking
and he went on with his bare hands open—
as she fell against him he held her up.
Let’s talk about death
she said
and he closed his mouth and arms
and shoulders around her, refusing.
Second Prize
Mick Wood
Syllable
here they speak now words
so i go round there and she give it some right grief
it like there no past
then he come in you think you big fuck man do you?
and no time to come
so i lamp him one in mouth and down he go twat
they in house or car or pub all of time they go
it too far for walk to town you fuck mug
we go we walk far each day it no mile for us
they pay man name jim to ride bike that go no where
walk on path that move
we sit out at night
the street for car or park in you thick mate or what?
we sing songs from home
stop that blood row i call filth i send hard man round
we ask learn their songs they go
i i i will all ways love you oo oo
they get drunk fight cry
you my best fuck mate sam bo how fuck sad is that?
we go our name are sunday innocent jesus solomon daniel
some time church boy come
christ love you
he like too thin
we feed him
christ save
he help us too much
tell us he cut his own flesh
christ love me
he think we not know the lord
christ save
some time art girl come
she want draw and write and tape us for
art out reach
she start dress like us learn our songs
we like her but she go
why you come? it all smile and laugh in your land
though poor you more peace and real than us
we tell her of kill and bad men she go
it all our fault i hate this blood place
i hate queen blair church pop beeb old
bill mum dad r and b
we go we hate gay
she not come more time
we miss her
we like smoke good weed and flirt with her
it rain it rain
we try walk to sea
there no path here no walk here
you up to no good we all need say so to leave path
this land it own by some one
not you
we ask where their land they go
own back yard
they laugh
but not with eyes
they not own own land
now they speak here words
we not want you in this town
this place just for us
we spell it out for you in words of one
Third Prize
Caroline Bird
Wild Flowers
I will be sober on my wedding day,
my eggs uncracked inside my creel,
my tongue sleeping in her tray.
I will lift my breast to pay
babies with their liquid meal,
I will be sober on my wedding day.
With my hands I’ll part the hay,
nest inside the golden reel,
my tongue sleeping in her tray.
I’ll dance with cows and cloying grey,
spin my grassy roulette wheel,
I will be sober on my wedding day.
I’ll crash to my knees and pray,
twist the sheets in tortured zeal,
my tongue sleeping in her tray.
Church-bells shudder on the bay,
fingered winds impel the deal:
I will be sober on my wedding day,
my tongue sleeping in her tray.
© Copyright of this poem remains with the poet: please do not download or republish without permission.
top ^
Words of a poetry competition Judge
You agree to judge a competition not because you want to sit in judgment, or ‘discover’ an unknown talent, but to find out what’s going, what the prevailing fashions are. What you receive is a sort of windfall tax on contemporary poetry.
But you have to choose winners. Soon enough a snow of rejects covers the floor. Then you ask – what is it I’m looking for? If I don’t know, how will I know when I find it? But you do know. What you look for, feel for – what you end up longing for – is a piece of work with an inner urgency. I don’t mean loud or fast. I mean any sense that the poem required to be written, and may have surprised its author. Perhaps ‘urgency’ is not the word. Maybe ‘necessity’ is a better. Or ‘self-willed’. A poem which arose out of necessity. What I sensed was many entries had been built from ‘ideas for poems’ and very probably in the context of a workshop or writers’ group. This gave them a stilted feel. Also, I sensed many had been written for the competition – which never works. Write the poem that wants to be written, then wait for a competition to happen along.
Where do poems come from, if not from ideas? – yes, that’s the question. From scraps of wild energy, from images that snag in the mind, from odd phrases that cohere with those images, from – as I say – some agenda of their own. I suspect an ‘idea’ is already too set in its ways. You want a pre-idea.
Having got the nagging feeling, the energy, the image, the scraps of words, what then? Then, of course, comes the craft; the growing, shaping and forming. The most common fault among the entries was the writer’s failure to hear a line. When I’m asked what is the difference between poetry and prose, I reply the status of the line. Lines that were both controlled and breathed, that listened to language, that revealed and slowed... or raced and paced – these were hard to find.
The three prize winning poems were those that stuck most in my mind, and brought me a species of joy. Perhaps I mean relief. All are richly imagined, unexpected, and as it happens, constructed in three different ways, which just proves that ANY structure is better than none. ‘Sisters in a Wood’ is a quiet, melancholy and tender sonnet, nicely judged, quite without pyrotechnics. ‘Hello, I’m visiting the area…’ dreams a believable, complete, if slightly tilted world with long loping rhythmic lines, which by rights ought to fall apart, but don’t.
‘The Canal Road’ is a poem where, in rhyme, and with gloriously old-fashioned poetic inversions, we are addressed by a worn-out sandal. I loved it the moment I read it. I don’t know what ‘murram’ is and don’t know if the poet is from the Subcontinent, but I kept returning to the poem, grateful to be taken far beyond myself.
Kathleen Jamie has published several acclaimed collections of poetry, including The Queen of Sheba and Jizzen. Her most recent, The Tree House
(Picador), won the Forward Prize for best collection in 2004. She has received numerous other honours, including the Somerset Maugham Award and the Geoffrey Faber Prize. As well as poetry, Kathleen writes for radio, especially travel scripts, and has published a travel book Among Muslims. She lives in Fife and teaches at St Andrews.
But you have to choose winners. Soon enough a snow of rejects covers the floor. Then you ask – what is it I’m looking for? If I don’t know, how will I know when I find it? But you do know. What you look for, feel for – what you end up longing for – is a piece of work with an inner urgency. I don’t mean loud or fast. I mean any sense that the poem required to be written, and may have surprised its author. Perhaps ‘urgency’ is not the word. Maybe ‘necessity’ is a better. Or ‘self-willed’. A poem which arose out of necessity. What I sensed was many entries had been built from ‘ideas for poems’ and very probably in the context of a workshop or writers’ group. This gave them a stilted feel. Also, I sensed many had been written for the competition – which never works. Write the poem that wants to be written, then wait for a competition to happen along.
Where do poems come from, if not from ideas? – yes, that’s the question. From scraps of wild energy, from images that snag in the mind, from odd phrases that cohere with those images, from – as I say – some agenda of their own. I suspect an ‘idea’ is already too set in its ways. You want a pre-idea.
Having got the nagging feeling, the energy, the image, the scraps of words, what then? Then, of course, comes the craft; the growing, shaping and forming. The most common fault among the entries was the writer’s failure to hear a line. When I’m asked what is the difference between poetry and prose, I reply the status of the line. Lines that were both controlled and breathed, that listened to language, that revealed and slowed... or raced and paced – these were hard to find.
The three prize winning poems were those that stuck most in my mind, and brought me a species of joy. Perhaps I mean relief. All are richly imagined, unexpected, and as it happens, constructed in three different ways, which just proves that ANY structure is better than none. ‘Sisters in a Wood’ is a quiet, melancholy and tender sonnet, nicely judged, quite without pyrotechnics. ‘Hello, I’m visiting the area…’ dreams a believable, complete, if slightly tilted world with long loping rhythmic lines, which by rights ought to fall apart, but don’t.
‘The Canal Road’ is a poem where, in rhyme, and with gloriously old-fashioned poetic inversions, we are addressed by a worn-out sandal. I loved it the moment I read it. I don’t know what ‘murram’ is and don’t know if the poet is from the Subcontinent, but I kept returning to the poem, grateful to be taken far beyond myself.
Kathleen Jamie has published several acclaimed collections of poetry, including The Queen of Sheba and Jizzen. Her most recent, The Tree House
(Picador), won the Forward Prize for best collection in 2004. She has received numerous other honours, including the Somerset Maugham Award and the Geoffrey Faber Prize. As well as poetry, Kathleen writes for radio, especially travel scripts, and has published a travel book Among Muslims. She lives in Fife and teaches at St Andrews.
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