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.
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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 ^
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