2009 poetry competition winners

Our thanks go to Daljit Nagra for reading every poem and selecting the winners. Our thanks too, of course, to everyone who sent a poem in. Please don’t be disheartened if you didn't win this time and keep on writing.

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Adult section - First prize

TRASHBOTS by Mick Wood (Strasbourg)

Our trashbots are risen.  Came cobbling
from heaps of cartons and pots
lashed with sticky and string,

stocky yakuza, tattooed
head to foot with cereal pack
symbols of freedom and goodness

no one’s wholesome family
dancing in their breakfast bowls,
a yogurt’s curt homily

on mountains and cows, spaghetti’s
sentimental strings.  This one’s brow
is branded with code, fetishes

of figures, RDA
to exorcise the evil Fatsandsugars.
That one’s nine-tenths phallus, its squeezy

torso wrapped with hands
that do dishes, do dipsticks,
do dirty girl, and still look grand.

Never expected to feel the felt
eyes following us, the sexless
loins lusting, these pelts

of blinding grin and bran-tanned
buttock.  Expected our litter-bin
mercenaries to reclaim some lost ground.

The trashbots are with us, bestriding
the table to dry, the postbox
screams we carved for them inviting

our dreams in to the cardboard-
grey galleries of their heads.
Radiophonics moog in our memories; hoards

of scissors, staplers, glue guns,
marching after a hapless
clay man, who melts as he runs.

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Adult section - Second prize

Prelude by Alice Willington (Oxford)

 (An interior of a church in the Kremlin is painted in icons.) 

The way up Belukha is the glacier,
its rocks lifted and turned
into uneven scarps.  It seeps
at its terminus into untouchable Eden,
a lake of jade.
We hammered steel into snow
and rock, as if carving out
a dream of mountaineers
in one night’s sleep.                                     

                                          Dislodged,
it fell away, until the walls
of the tent were a curtain
before the planets, the arched icons.
I dreamed the sun, the moon
and Jupiter eclipsed,
each one of us isolated and split.
In unbearable brightness
into the depth I climbed the cathedral.

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Adult section - Third prize

After The Rain by Tamora James (Powys)

1

Stream-sensed shedding of prismed light,
The erratic pulse of the afternoon:
Systaltic vessels bear wave upon wave,
An insistent, unselfish assault on the day,
Until the downpour’s played out
And tugged shreds of sky frame
The day’s ending.

2

Placid brook, evening calm contained
Between mounded weeds; my eye maps
Your generous curve.  I step down into
Your quiet, shallow gold, feel the pull
Of your insistence; yet I press ahead,
Urged against the flow, as I’d walk
Upstream in a crowd to watch the faces
Of those passing with purpose.

3

Daring, diving through dark-nighted air,
A flickering shadow pursues lesser shades,
Whose ghost-sung journeys follow threads
Of moonlight and scent.  But perfume’s
In abeyance; evening flowers engulfed
By thicker scents with the season’s change:
Flakes of clay, shattered leaves
And the eager thickening of thirsting roots.

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Young persons' section - First prize

The Lane by Maggie Tate (Hereford)

The winter calm is showing in the lane.
Hedgerows are cloaked in a light blanket of
Frost, concealing the bare remains of the
Autumn and camouflaging them with the
Rest of the white winter world.

Verges of grass glisten with dew in the
Low winter sun, reflected off a few
Remaining puddles. Frozen. Lest we
Forget the bitter cold.

A holly berry, the only hint of
Colour in the bland countryside, a blood
Red rose among the crisp thorns of Winter’s
Frost, a hope of the spring to come.

A robin calls;
His voice echoes in the stony winter
Silence as he flits over the lane, the
Sole life in the lifeless cold.

He is lonely, but the other birds are
Far away.  He is strong, like the branches
Of the stripped, dormant trees.
Together, they will wait for the blossom
Of the Spring.

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Young persons' section - Second prize

Forest by Joel Scott-Halkes (Cornwall)

Trees crouch and surrender, a fog
Churns and twists – the air itself is tangled.
A bitter twist of branches tied in a great knot;
A tangled mane on the face of the moors.

Crows fight and tumble through elms
And beeches, and choke the trees with
Their nests.  Clasp your steely hands and stare;
Dark mouth of night, a knot of despair.

As the soil weeps and bleeds, thick with
The reek of earth; roots are lost and blindly rot
In the fetid moaning ground.  The branches seep into mist,
And tears fall stagnant on the loam.

It is easy to lose yourself in these woods;
To lose who you once were
Amongst the rustling of
Feathers and the scraping of bark.

Boundaries broken,
The forest quakes.
Mouthfuls of bloody berries

Crunch and bleed.
Juicy pips squeezed dry,
The forest clenches its teeth.

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Young persons' section - Third prize

Cherry Trees by Sidi Bai

I like to think that somewhere
Under this mountain of broken wood,
too deep for metal machines to dig
Is an orchard full of cherry trees
Where you sit laughing in the breeze.

When the hills quaked, throwing our towns to the ground,
We were marching, laden with food, single-file
Along paths slipping over the mountainside,
Our backs to the hailing of boulders
Shaken restlessly from the dusty sky above.

When walls were shaken to pieces and roofs tumbled
And you, sweet, were running, breathless, for your life,
We were trekking, our arms around children, over hills,
Their schools fallen to the ground, their teachers now buried,
Their futures resting in our hands. We led them
To safety, to shelter, led them to new life.

Sweet, sorry I wasn't there when the call
Came from above and below to summon you to go
Like I promised. Believe me I would have been at your side
Holding your hand, whispering farewell, if I could.
But then all those people in the mountain would have died,
Been with you in the orchard under this mountain of broken wood.

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Children's section - First prize

THE FOX by Zac Jeavons-Fellows (Worcester)

The Fox stood proudly on the dark grey rock,
A sandstone island in a sea of waving grass.
His conker-brown eyes fixed on the unsuspecting pheasant
A sudden gust brushes against his brick-red fur
That shimmers shades of autumn in the wind.
The colour of oak leaves falling in October,
Burnt orange bracken glowing golden in the sun.
Suddenly, his white-tipped tail flicks like a shark’s fin,
He sinks closer to the rock, tensed and focused.
He slowly stalks forward into the sea of green.
Silently, creeping, sloping towards his prey.
Too late the pheasant’s amber eye glints as it bursts into the sky.

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Children's section - Second prize

The Magic Box by Kieran Athayde (Kingston-Upon-Thames)

I will put it in the box.

An Arctic Fox creeping up on its prey,
The swish of a wand casting a spell,
A manticore wiping out light.

I will put it in the box

A mermaid on the crest of a wave,
and a sea serpent sneaking up behind her.
A black flamed dragon soaring through the sky.

I will put it in the box.

The Creator raising the land,
and the Herald of Creation filling the world with water,
and Wild-Horn taking the first steps on this world.

I will put it in the box.

A wizard with a sword,
and a Samurai with a staff
and Goryu the wise bringing back the light.

My box is created from ice, dragon hide and mist,
With reality on the lid and myth in the corners,
its hinges are the antlers of stags.

I shall fly in the box,
over the towering mountains in the north,
and softly land on the coral in the murky ocean waters.
The power of the earth.

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Children's section - Third prize

Sandy Gate by Dualtagh Grundy (West Yorkshire)

Up Osborne St
into a field of mole-holed grass
up the steps –
a confusing forest
of enlightenment –
a graveyard
next to fast growing allotments –
carrots, potatoes, rocket, tomatoes,
bursting with liveliness.
The graveyard like rough, dry hands and fingernails –
hard, thick, and stuck
into fruit.

Tilted,
broken old gravestones
just sitting there
on lean-back chairs
as if under umbrellas
admiring the loveliness of themselves
as they were.

Spades, rakes, forks,
shiny like diamonds,
stuck in the earth,
mirroring each other.

Through the slack-black gate –
the stench of crispy, crumpled nasturtiums
tumbling over
washed by wind.

 

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2009 winners

Category 1 (Adult section)
1st prize - Mick Wood
2nd prize - Alice Willington
3rd Prize - Tamora James

Category 2 (11-17)
1st Prize - Maggie Tate
2nd Prize - Joel Scott-Halkes
3rd Prize - Sidi Bai

Category 3 (10 & under)
1st Prize - Zac Jeavons-Fellows
2nd Prize - Kieran Athayde
3rd Prize - Dualtagh Grundy

Commended in Category 1
Ashleigh John for 'Saddleback'
Graham Anderson for 'Prayer to an unspecified Creator'
Rosemary McLeish for 'A Gimmer with a Zimmer'

Commended in Category 3
Drew Alan Evans for 'My Teacher Ate My Homework'
Sophie Cox for 'Sunny Days'
Jessie Hale for 'Daydream'
Poppy Park and Georgie Simpson for 'My best school recipe'