1st
Prize Winner £750
Victoria Rose Poolman
Victoria Rose Poolman is a freelance writer from Eversley, Hampshire. Having
returned to university to study creative writing, her love of poetry has
bloomed. Victoria loves to travel, and has found that to date, her greatest
inspirations have been from visits to Cambodia and Bosnia. Her ultimate
ambition is to walk into Waterstone’s and see her name on the shelf.
QUOTE: “I am thrilled to be the
winner of this competition. I wrote The
chicken that saved my children whilst traveling in Bosnia. It was
inspiring to learn of how people rallied round and learnt to appreciate the
simplest things in life, at a time when the future must have seemed so bleak.
I hope this poem relays that message.”
The chicken that saved my children
Thanks be to the chicken, Hasmeta,
Who came home with us in place of Sofia’s wedding ring.
She made do with a hard and dirty yard for her home
And as she scuffed and pecked and jutted
The hills rained bullets, the sky’s moan was shrill
Hasmeta swivelled her head and saw my children crying
Alas, no egg would come.
We saved food, Nada and Almir grew thin
Their cheeks were hollow - not fat as children’s faces ought to be
Hasmeta saw this. She worried so, her feathers grew thin
She picked at herself, hateful for the lost gold.
She stopped clucking those comforting noises.
She fretted and shook with every impact.
Then one day, I took Hasmeta a slice of somun,
And noticed a beautiful thing tucked into the corner.
Hasmeta scratched the floor, puffed her chest.
Sofia heated the pan on the stove
The children gathered to see the orange and white bubble,
The edges becoming crisp and brown.
Sofia and I watched as they mopped the liquid gold
Licked their lips, made lovely smacking noises
Their eyes grew bright, their faces warmed.
They stroked Hasmeta every day,
Nada sometimes sang,
We told her we would defend her forever,
We would never harm her. We would never let them take her.
When shelling was heavy we even brought her inside.
Soon she began to cluck again.
Each day we would have three, sometimes four perfect eggs.
We were the only family that remained whole
When the Chetniks came down from the hills.
Thanks be to Hasmeta, the chicken that saved my children.
2nd Prize £300 – Anneka Williams
Aged 23, I have lived in Gwent in South Wales my whole life. I studied English
and Creative Writing at the University of Wales Aberystwyth and I’m
currently working as a civil servant. I enjoy swimming, baking, theatre,
reading and of course writing. I write mostly prose but also some poetry and
am never happier than with a pen in one hand and a mug of tea in the other. My
favourite novel is Mrs Dalloway and my favourite writers are Charles Dickens,
Truman Capote, Zadie Smith and the poet Clare Pollard.
"I was pleasantly surprised to hear I had won a prize as this is the
first time I have entered my poetry for anything - it's given me a real boost
of confidence. I wrote 'Mud' on Remembrance Sunday, when the cleanliness of
the Armistice ceremony is contrasted with the reality of war."
Mud
Pretty paper poppies held with shiny pins,
light and bright and cheery.
In those two minutes, we think of fields high with lush grass,
those red butterflies fluttering the tips.
This is not what we should remember.
If we were really to remember,
we would wear mud,
a thick, heavy clump
black as no-man’s land
that once clung to the boot
and formed the final lid for an eye
forever left to stare at the stars.
Seams of blood and settled mustard gas cut through it
and a shard of shrapnel holds it to your breast.
3rd Prize (Shared) £150/2 David Grubb
David Grubb has had many collections of poetry published.
Shearsman will publish The Man Who Spoke To Owls in June 2009 and a
short story collection will follow in the autumn from SALT.
"I was delighted to be one of the prize-winners with a poem that speaks
of what was happening in Bosnia and the radiance of ordinary people."
The Woman Who Washed Her Hair In The Orchard
The woman who washed her hair in the orchard
did this so that the snipers could see her;
every two days or so, in the afternoon when
the light would stroke the back of her neck,
the water kissing her behind each ear,
the soap sliding down onto her shoulders,
her hands working at the shell shape of her hair
as she wound it tight, then released it,
then gathered it again, then let it fall in a swirl
as their sisters did, as they imagined their mothers
might once have done, as each one with a wife
could remember it, feel it, sense the motions of it
and imagine now a humming, a slight song,
the agility and performance so that they all
should witness, before the one who was drunk
let off his gun, broke the moment, ravaged this image
and it became her falling forward against a tree
and then the swing of her torso so that she faced them
for hardly seconds, for no reason at all, for them to see
her like some animal caught in a moment of betrayal;
and they were left saying her name, each man knowing
her name and that of her father and mother and the husband
who had died that winter when there was a lull in the war,
when he had become the lover again, the believer, bringing
in water and wood and talking of sunlight on the hill.
3rd Prize (Shared) £150/2 Charlotte Gann
'I'm over the moon. It's so exciting to have something recognised
by
someone as wonderful and distinguished as Penelope Shuttle. Thank you!'
Charlotte Gann writes sitting in her window, staring out onto the
South Downs. She has had poems accepted by various magazines including South
and iota, and is currently doing an MA in Creative Writing and Personal
Development at Sussex University.
The radiologist and the consultant gynecologist
Two small women side by side; the older one
drives. She has a large head she carries proudly
like a bowl of fruit or a trifle. The other
has a voice like a music box. Open her up,
and she’ll sing you Bare Foot Days into
the loose long night. But does either remember,
as a child, hiding her white face under
blankets; finding the hot dark space she needed
for rocking and watering feverishly?
Today, as they drive, they’re busy lauding
the Royal Sussex County on which, of course,
each is an authority – until silence falls.
Such bad luck, says the older one; the other
nods, as the cancer twists and weeps inside her.
Jarrold Norfolk Prize - £150 Book Vouchers Caroline Gilfillan
'I'm delighted that my poem has been
selected as the winner of the prize for the best poem by a Norfolk poet.
The poem arose out of a short article I read while travelling through
South India in 2007.'
Caroline Gilfillan was a winner of the North West poetry pamphlet competition
in 2000, and her poem The Painter was put forward for best individual poem for
the 2006 Forward Poetry Prize. She
lives in North Norfolk, and is chair of Poetry-next-the-Sea, the poetry
festival held in Wells-next-the-Sea. When
she finds time, she’s also a novelist and musician.
Cousins
Last year we shared pens and ink blots, whispers,
lying on a single bed beneath the whump of
the fan:
‘That boy, yah, so big-headed he
is!’ Our plaits looped,
blue-ribboned, caught sun in each coconut oiled kink.
And before that we held hands in the shade of the banyan tree,
our breaths swallowed by leaf rustles, by the root and snort
of the sow and her piglets snouting piles of rubbish,
as we shared the tug of blood through our wombs.
And before that we traced patterns in the roadside dust
with sticks, our dresses thistle burred, our feet
sturdy bare, ankles chink chinking bells, as our
mothers snapped beans, gossiped with crow voices.
And before that our two backs lay side by side
on a pink blanket; our four feet kicked
because kicking makes the dust flash, snips
the threads of light pulled taut from the window.
But now, after marriage plans are announced,
our cries rise like paddy birds. In
reply: mouthfuls of sand;
shaken shoulders; our mothers, wet-eyed, slapping our cheeks;
the door locked and barred with a ragged plank; thirst.
I sling a frayed rope over a beam. Two
plastic chairs,
off-white, on which our sisters have scribbled fire-red houses,
yellow cars, are kicked away and thump to the floor.
Our fingers stretch, touch like spiders hanging from a single thread.
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