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The competition this year was judged by the American poet Mark Doty, our poet in residence for 2004. Next year, the competition will be judged by Gillian Clarke.
This year we had 2,500 entries. Many congratulations to everyone who took part.
Competition Winners
Category 1 (18 & over)
First prize:
Cuneiform - By Joelene Heathcote
Cuneiform
Everything you want to say and can’t
was once a handful of bees and wind
———in the mouth of Sumerians
Words were the sounds of horses
on well-traveled roads, the open hooves of
———k, d, q, t consonants,
the throaty vowel sounds of cow and goat,
the sharp f of a crescent knife cutting stocks of grain,
or th and sh and s that is the short flight a sheaf makes
between the arms and where it lands.
Back then language was an electric storm
that snapped in the ear, acoustic
as rain in an empty barrel
or the loud ring goodbye makes
when it bursts against your chin
———after which point, every thought you have
is parched of sound, becomes
a vacuum of movement
you have no name for.
Eventually, someone will ask you
where you hurt and their lips
will form a pattern you think
you can duplicate
with a razor sharp instrument
on stone, bring what you’re feeling
down to earth
in wedge-shaped characters,
show them what suffering looks like:
one way greater than, the other way
less than
Invent for them a zero
that will stand for oh and nothing, and death.
The universal symbol your mouth makes
In mourning, and glory and fear.
Second prize:
A View of the Ferries - Andrew Rudd
A View of the Ferries
Water like polished coal. Across the table
he is still talking. She gazes into the dark,
the harbour below. A street light keeps sparking
on and off. Under the lamp two teenagers
are entwined, absorbed in the discovery
of each other, their tongues exploring
the possibility that loneliness is at an end.
She looks away, into the swirl of the bar, his face.
Begins to taste the moment of his leaving.
They eat at last. The food is passable,
passes. Little remains to say. Under the table
their knees touch in an accidental intimacy.
The song of the ferry, deeper than hearing,
vibrates the floor, the optics, the mirrors,
his heart, calling him. She picks up the bottle,
dribbles the last drop into her glass. Ferries
are still coming in, going out, slow and stately,
among the darting pilot boats, enormous
metal slabs, ponderous, symmetrical,
moving into their allotted places without
effort, shining with squares of light.
Third Prize:
Trio (after Lorca’s Sonnets of Dark Love) - Robert Hamberger
Trio
(after Lorca’s Sonnets of Dark Love)
1. If I’m Your Lordship’s Dog
Jerk the leash and my neck jerks
yanking me back in line beside your ankle.
I wallow in scuffs:
the way collar-skin is chafed to a sore.
Belly on the carpet, I learn
the language of kicks. I come running.
I gag on the bone, suck toes,
lap whatever puddle you point at.
Pearls dribble down my chin.
Can I turn wolf now? Will I snap?
Hang-dog loves
his master’s ditch, that muddy hole.
2. These Waves Hitting Me
I’m learning to breathe underwater.
Miles over my head
the sky blurs a tipsy ceiling.
Rise to it. Kick off the seabed.
Open my eyes to wet, my tongue to salt.
It’s all very well
meeting a cloud of fish, another shipwreck.
My body sways its laziest samba,
a seahorse skimming through fingers.
Barnacles where skin was,
I might never come up for air.
3. In A Dusk of Nightingales
My wrists pulse their distance from you
whose blood is water, whose mouth ash.
I swallow your voice, its absence
a moonless colour.
One breath hooks the next.
Our difference, skin and its lack.
Your fingerprints:
petals on my eyelids.
Leave me dark where stars go
and nightingales sputter their song.
Category 2 (11-17)
First Prize:
Salt - Naomi Lever
Salt
It’s not the sight that reminds me of you,
the white star-shards crushed close
in what seems to be tessellation;
not the rushing wave-whisper echoes,
not the stinging fish-reek,
not the itch of spicule-clogged lifelines,
but the taste of tears, or chips on lips,
a sea-shadow green susurrus, pungent and rough:
the sense that triggers all my senses
and my fish-furtive memories:
distilled like salt from saltwater,
minnow-winnowed and fragmented.
I remember us mock-Canuting on the beach at night,
saturated in an ethereal, sub-aquatic blue,
deceptively calm. We learnt to breathe underwater,
opening wide our black-hole mouths,
inhaling salt-spiked air and each other;
we gulped both like gulls, thirsty and thankless.
I remember that the salt was imperceptible
to optical and aural senses – at first
I remember not remembering
that taut feeling of salt crystallising
like subverted snowflakes:
fossilising our faces,
spirographing constellations on our skin –
the universe mirrored in minerals.
We marvelled at ourselves: astronomical phenomena.
Resurfacing now, surging above repression
in a bubble-bursting thrash, is the bitter tang
of the unwanted memories
of salt-stiffened hair, stretched and blistered skin
and the supernova that broke us to shell-splinters:
we are inadequate vessels for containing the universe.
These are the memories I wished to dissolve
in the tears I wept for us and for you;
after all, too much salt causes heart disease,
but the twin spindrifts I’ve cried glimmer still, distorting
saline tattoos commemorating you for the senses you awoke,
forever preserving my now-tangible memories in salt.
Second Prize:
String Quartet - Chloe Stopa-Hunt
String Quartet
1
the undeclared, we are the undeclared >>my skins stretched so thin
the children with blood on our lips>>>>>>over the years gone taught
in small flecks like plaid>>>>>>>>>>>>>white on the tendons
a few people with mud in our hair>>>>>> my skins all fine and pale
and the earth touching us>>>>>>>>>>> where smothering they cover >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>my lips
eyes that flame into yours in the plaintive smoke
in the clubs in the evenings
people who walk backwards my hot eyes and the fire on my >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> cheeks
looking over both shoulders>>>>>>>>> and my hair shaved off
2
women, no flesh >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> >>>>>river-refracted and >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>> the gills inflamed
Madonna when i see >>>>>>>>> >>>> the white blossoms the girls in >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> >white shoes
your flat eyes and your fat face>>>the black veils the gloves
your heavy eyelids always >>>>>>>>> Leonie, she the pale prince with >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> her lovelocks
about to blink but never weighing >crumpled back in brown
enough to rest you >>>>>>>>> >>>>>from the brow’s white crease
I hate the true catholick church >>salve virgo virginum
3
beating oars
in such a hollow and unseaworthy boat
the caulking peeling
from the sides like black bark
from yu skin Tamara and the pearls
at yu burnt throat
Lempicka-art-deco yu in black taffeta
>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> ave sanctissima ave purissima
4
at the far limit of my burnt sight,
after the fire flamed out from my skin to singe the air,
where the sky swells
and pantomimes where aspens speak of the sea and pour
their coolness soft into my lungs that are so burnt-
at the limits of what we can bewail,
of what can be balanced with living
is the garden and the woods and the orchards and the sea, even when the skies are all blackened and the sun
is dead, and the rooftops are drenched like Tyre drowned
and golden in the light of February – clemenza,
the aimless song of it, the very song, the cadence and undertone and rumour,
soft cadenza at the twilight hour – there is nothing left of me, but everything else
is blue-stricken >>>>>>is true-silent >>>>>>>>> Sinless and Beautiful
the choristers having wandered into the ocean mother immaculata
the oceans black and heavy on our rooftops >>>>>>>>> star of the sea
Third Prize:
Early Morning - By Laura Bates
Early Morning
At the highest point of noon I was the sleek expanse of tarmac,
As the sun seethed hard, hot fury on my naked, burning back.
In the early afternoon I was oak’s stern and lofty branches,
As the breeze breathed rippling bluster to my wafer-fine veined leaves.
As the afternoon waned low I was the mournful turning tide,
As my crooked, foaming fingers lost their grip upon the sand.
At the laboured sun’s descent I was the greedy, vast horizon,
As I slurped, the globule slithered like an egg yolk down my throat.
At the poised and trembling twilight I was a quivering, Timid shadow,
Stretching denser, deeper, darker to the summons of the moon.
As the evening grew to night I was a single, fragile petal,
Drawn compulsively to comfort with my proud back to the cold.
At the deepest time of dark I was a dewy drop of moisture,
Gleaming glossy on a blade point in the dull sheen of the stars.
But in the very early morning when the tarmac lay quite hardened,
When the leaves had ceased to murmur and the water lay like glass,
When the sun remained just buried and the buds had yet to blossom,
When the dew awaited motionless its silent, brief demise,
I was I and only I, and in my own inclusive being,
Knew the fury, love and stillness in the silence of the sky.
Category 3 (10 and under)
First Prize:
The Raspberry Hedge in Willow Oak Grove - By Zoë Duffy
The Raspberry Hedge in Willow Oak Grove
I watched from the raspberry hedge in Willow Oak Grove
as the light unbuttoned itself
and a sheaf of arrows flew through the sky
in line, like a string of horses.
The clowder of cats below
stopped their bawling and singing
to watch the wonderful formation above.
A cast of hawks surveyed the scene with amused interest
and dived down to see if they could beat the arrows to their prey,
a down of hares.
A tribe of goats heard the noise and rushed to the battle field,
shouting and screaming war cries as they went,
Only to be overheard by a field of runners
Who stopped short to be knocked down, one by one,
by the accurate arrows.
All this I watched from the raspberry hedge in Willow Oak Grove.
Now it’s far too creepy for me.
Second Prize:
The Church Lectern - Elizabeth Grant
The Church Lectern
Bright burnished wings pose, immovable.
The clipping beak opens,
The crazy look in the beady eye.
Details patterned on the brute’s back,
Gleam noticeably, attracting gaze.
The swift wing movements
Try to fight the battle
Of the stiff stillness.
Thoughts of clear skies
And trickling rivers
Threaten to overtake his mind.
Swift, beating wing movements
Start to take him away.
He swirls around and
Is almost free.
Third Prize:
Alone - By Tim Herdal
Alone
I walk along the bay
with the boats
alongside me.
There is a cat
on the fisherman’s hut,
It scowls at me.
I wander on,
The night is falling,
the lamps are turning on
in the glimmering night.
Press Release
Herefordshire Winner in International Competition
Zoë Duffy has won First Prize in the children's category in a prestigious poetry competition organised annually by Ledbury Poetry Festival.
Zoë's poem "The Raspberry Hedge in Willoak Grove" was selected by American judge Mark Doty from among the 2,500 entries. Zoë, who is 10 and lives in Much Cowarne, goes to school in Bodenham. "This is a really wonderful result," said Festival Director Dr Charles Bennett. "It just goes to show how much poetic talent there is in Herefordshire." Second after Zoë was Elizabeth Grant from Gwent with "The Church Lecturn" and in third was Tim Herdal from Sussex with "Alone".
The Festival announces all nine winners to coincide with National Poetry Day. In the adult category, the first prize went to Canadian poet Joelene Heathcote for "Cuneiform". Andrew Rudd from Chesire came second with "A View of the Ferries" and Robert Hamberger was in third place with "Trio".
But Ledbury Poetry Festival is keen to support young writers, and so in the young person's category (11-17) Naomi Lever from Milton Keynes came first with "Salt". She was followed in second position by Chloe Stopa-Hunt from Southampton with "String Quartet" and Laura Bates from Taunton came third with "Early Morning".
For more information about the Festival, call 0845 458 1743.
2006 WINNERS
2005 WINNERS
2004 WINNERS
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