Prize Winners

2010 Free Verse

2010 Rhyming Poetry

ON MEETING MY COUSIN

Brown Clarks with button and bar,
grey skirt, pleated, knitted,
grey 'v' neck, bought,
red-and-grey tie, striped, far too wide,
brushed cotton blouse, white, Peter Pan,
such a daft name for a collar, my blonde hair
clipped to one side, a gap where teeth
are sure to appear soon.
This is me. And this the first time
I've met him, cousin Mark,
a barefoot man in drainpipe jeans,
marooned in a splintered glass sea,
eating a doorstep sandwich like
his first meal in weeks. This is why
they've bought bunks, why we've been told
to share. This is the first man
I've seen without a vest, smooth-skinned,
too tanned for November.
Six months we can't know about yet,
all the knocks on the door at night,
those easy promises, harder
to keep, slipping away; later,
from another continent,
the stories. This first time
he's just too foreign, too unclothed
to be family, bright
button eyes, travelling light,
trailing the unexpected.

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TILL DEATH

(1)  In Salisbury

What was severe is comfort now:
the TV being quiet Saturday,
those same two lager cans each week
iced deeper into the fridge.
Frost can be solace, as if, in time,
it will mass to sweetness. They say
if you sleep in snow you grow warm.
I wonder about the sound of bullets.
Will he tell me, is a pin hammer clipping brick
not being dead yet; the club of a fist
slapping wet sand the first clue to pain?
I wish sometimes to hear his flesh leak
bringing its drone of homecoming.
If he leaves blood behind, I'll still drink all he holds.
On the fridge door I mark each day in magnets.
In this slow silence each click is a trigger.

(2)  In Kandahar

Some count the months. Some days. Or hours.
They think it's normal, here
behind rocks rich as a vein in the eye,
a ruin shot with blood.
Secrets breed in rock.
A stranger discovers his place in no place:
a land of stones tipped on pivots of stone,
mounted by a stone sun.
In this salt heat my true love sleeps
steel in my arm's crook, wordless as a wound.
My eye had not sighted on love at first
till she simplified our ruin with blood.
Her sweat is oil on my hands.
I've filed off safety. Upon my chest
lies her absolute trust, for I'll carry and keep her
as we make room for other lives.
I don't count days. Time is solid as stone.
I count enemies, cold.

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SAHARA SAND

Dunes are roseate with the dawn,
brassy gold at noon,
burning orange in afternoon sun,
then streaking tawny
softening to beige.
Between slopes
deep brown touches maroon,
as the sky sighs towards a bruise,
and the moon beams a blue spectrum:
cyan soughing into mauve
opalescence darkening to cobalt.
But it's not just tricks of sun and moon -
see these multi-coloured grains,
harvest from the Acacus,
where crags' fantastic shapes
erupt through the desert floor,
stippled with black,
like unshaven chins,
uncovered and re-covered
in a permanent kaleidoscope.
Boulders tumble
onto splashes of salt,
assemble as phalanxes
in green camouflage,
or parade the palette of ochre
through rock-art red,
every stone dandruffing surfaces,
till sand dribbles like water,
swirls as if steam,
patterning rainbows across my palms.


(Note: the Acacus is the south-west part of Libyan Sahara)

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SHADES

It's restful seeing the architecture
of snow accumulate
its palaces,
huge butterflies settle between
iron curlicues in park gates,
structures are
built to ultrasonic music.
Not so rain: it has an orchestra,
varying tempos,
bursts of strings and timpani,
moods, crescendos,
scales from lullabies to rage.
It gives a performance with
the landscape,
pine and cypress brush
in pauses,
paths ring fanfares,
grass puts down the soft pedal.
Glasshouses make cymbals
fences mark
the bars in an improvisation,
every cloud has its style.
After being saved from blindness,
I learn to hear the shape
of the garden,
contours mapped by tarnishing of rain.

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WOOD AND CLAY

Wrists true as mares' tails: the intimacy
of trunks plaited, ribbed branches inter-
twined; split timber knit into a weave
the wind passes through, but not the wether -
trees are sliced, snapped and cross-hatched.
They skirt Bruton and Tudor Grange Parks
and Prince's Way; hemming the soft curves
of the Grand Union and Stratford Canals:
webs of hedge spidering Warwickshire,
each branch tamed to edge the land's sway.
In the shade of his fence, a resting man
whets his hook; haloed in steam, bends
to his tea. A magpie stitches a clinching
twig into her roofing; a long-tailed tit
sews silver leaves of lichen to her nest.
In Dorset, a man, for a life, has thrown clay,
each mug same as the last save odd dribbles
of glaze and a paternal thumb print where
handle joins pot:
shape shifting makers’
lined hands folded in their laps at nightfall.

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WEEKEND IN THE COUNTRY

An early daybreak sun shafts mullion panes,
and stirs sleep laden eyes to watch... take in
the overwhelming silence of the dawn,
now broken by a curlew's plaintive song.
The ancient room sleeps on, lie still and hear
it breathing little creaks and sighing sounds.
Draughts steal and whisper through the panelled cracks
and whistle underneath the high latched door.
Lie flat between home laundered starchy sheets,
old fashioned blankets like a coffin lid.
The paisley patterned eiderdown half slipped,
the poled and curtained bed a chilly shroud.
Escape, take flight and catch the a.m. train,
return to noise and bustle, urban smells.
A tight-packed flat, white paint and melamine
a TV in the bedroom on all night.

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THE BOY FROM WAPAKONETA

What he said was man instead of a man
and launched these forty years of dispute
since he was sure he spoke a man out loud
yet the record has man and nothing else
which we understand to imply the human race
losing sight of the contrast with mankind
who that day (his point) took a giant leap
while he trod dust beneath one small step
so did he fluff this greatest of lines
or did his Ohio accent blur what he said
does his indefinite article hover still
out there launched forever falling short
or did he subconsciously prefer
the phrase the lilt of that step for man
rather like Auden who I read somewhere
would sometimes destroy the sense of a line
wrench denial even to affirmation
to sweeten further his music for mankind

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FREE VERSE SHORTLIST (in alphabetical order)

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ARCHAEOLOGY ON BOSWORTH FIELD

Over generations the slow earth spasms
indiscernibly, spitting detritus
out of history's gut across the chasms
between us and how we choose to see
the natives of the past — phantasms
of technicolor, digital, reborn
in idiom just like ours;
until time swiftly - shockingly - narrows,
eras park side by side in a man's hand.
He holds the waste of war - not the arrows
of imagination, not the bullets
they really found, not shrapnel from the shallows
of the years, wart-covered iron balls
like Vulcan's ferrous sweat -
he holds a little wild boar statant, gilt
on blackened silver, with a curling tail
and snarling mouth, as if it just saw spilt
over the tussocky heads of August grass
a fearful slash of blood, and felt the guilt,
the failure to protect the young warlord,
the last Plantagenet.
Echoing round it are the scrape and clang
of murder, effort of grunting breath, thud
and scream of boots; grass scent and metal tang
of blood; sobbing of wounded horses; the
November smell of gunpowder and bang
of early ordnance; the desperate prayer to
find another mount -
which, polished up by poetry, unfurled
a perfect five-foot line. The silver boar
arches between that lost, pre-Shakespeare world
and this; between the man with anxious eyes and
the celluloid cartoon, mouth smirked and curled,
grotesquely hunched: but under that mask, behind
the oxidized black tarnish of the mind,
is the cool sterling core.

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ETERNAL SUMMER

I want to walk down sheltered hedge-lined lanes
Between tall willow herb and meadow sweet,
To watch the mist rise after sudden rains,
Be dazzled by the sun on fields of wheat.
I want to tour the high moors on a horse
Where buzzards glide in cloudless skies, so free,
Emerge from narrow corridors of gorse
And gaze across the diamond sparkling sea.
I want to pluck a peach, but not to eat,
To hold the fruit of sunshine in my hand,
To halt the flood of summer for a beat
And fix its fleeting beauty on the land.
Let thoughts of winter vanish in their haze,
I'll linger in the heat of endless days.

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STAR-STRUCK ON THE 121

She boards at Sidcup, mobile clamped to ear,
cocooned in some invisible techno-bubble,
oblivious of the fact that we can hear
her every word. 'No,' she cries, 'no trouble,
none at all this time. He was gentle. Older
than the last one. Put some cling film on
when he'd finished.....My mum? I haven't told her.
Well, by tonight the soreness should have gone.
It isn't like before. No, nowhere near
as painful as my shoulder. It really pissed
me off last time... Say again.... Can't hear....
I will, I want one on my other wrist
and one on the back of my neck. It's really cool,
addictive. I got a catalogue before
I left. Okay, I'll bring it in to school
and show you.... Loads. You know how I adore
anything with stars. Well, he's got some pink
and black ones, edged with gold. Or should I go
for the red hearts covered in leaves? What do you think?
Mmm... I asked him about that, you know,
but he said I shouldn't have one there, not
unless I thought I could cope with all the pain.
It's like, tricky, you see. He says you've got
to be absolutely sure... You too. Bye Jane.'
Confident, composed, she sends a text,
dons ipod and then dark designer glasses.
The rest of us look on, like aliens. Perplexed
and mobileless, we clutch our freedom passes.

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TRAIN

Sun, shadow, leaf and grass -
Every wood and field we pass
Invites escape as, caged in glass,
I sweat the journey through.

Sun, shadow, grass and leaf
Offer to unstook my sheaf
Of thoughts, to thresh out - sweet relief -
All not concerned with you.

Leaf, grass, shadow, sun -
My grainy thoughts have now begun
To grow and spread and ear till none
Of me's apart from you.

Grass, leaf, sun, shadow,
Barn, pool, copse, meadow -
Now a town hurls past to widow
All my thoughts of you.

Sun, shadow, leaf and grass
Fade and wither: through the glass
I watch the sullen people pass -
And none of them is you.

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A BAT CAVE IN PANAMA

Behind a statue of Mary, water laps
darkly through a grotto. Stalactites
bud from the slimy roof like rows of teats
suckled by litters of gothic cherubs that flap
and chitter about my head. Christians pray
at the shrine outside where doubtless, pagan Mass
went on before this place was marked on maps.
If bats hung here when shamans ruled, did they
fear them as minions of evil or, like me,
adore their bulldog pouts and velvet wraps,
proclaiming the cave a place of sanctity?
Is nature the wellspring of religion? That's
a question we should think about: perhaps
behind the Virgin there were always bats.


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RHYMING POETRY SHORTLIST (in alphabetical order)

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