Judge’s comment:
 
“I chose this poem for its light touch with a shocking and heart-breaking subject.
 
I loved the way it was set within the opening and closing of a theatrical event – Peter Pan of course.
 
I particularly admired its closing lines: ‘up and away… and the heavy curtain falls again and again’.
 
This poem portrays the fragility, fatal adventurousness and vulnerability of young males with great delicacy, turns them into legend, makes the unbearable beautiful.”
 

Hylda Sims

Mammogram, by Anna Avebury
Sedna the Sea Goddess, by Caroline Carver
Screen Test, by Philippa Lawrence
Mirror Mirror, by Maxine Linnell

Aug 11 – Round 4 – Final; Judge: Dilys Wood

At the end of Round 4, the overall winner, chosen by Dilys Wood, is Fiona Ritchie Walker for her poem Leaving:
 
“Choosing was like being stretched on the rack – inevitable with the second sift of work already picked out. The poems were all strongly felt and thought-provoking. I chose Fiona Ritchie Walker’s Leaving. Written in couplets, this poem is economical, forceful, restrained but deeply moving, a well-turned narrative. It’s about an exodus from war, or from a genocide … So much is left unsaid and just two images, “A thundering like rain / but nothing wet”, “I hear scorched stones crack” characterise the background of extreme violence. In the foreground a man breaks his ankle, twisting “like a weeping fig”. You feel the accident is ironic, exactly what would happen. The group – mother, child, grandmother, the man, Mr de Souza – with their few possessions (salt, a silver spoon, bee-hives) stand for humanity in trouble. A fine achievement to pack so much into twenty lines. ”

To hear Fiona Ritchie Walker read Leaving, see link below.

Leaving

A thundering like rain
but nothing wet.
 
Cattle kissed, untied.
We slap them towards freedom.
 
I carry a pot of salt,
our silver spoon.
 
The baby bounces in my mother’s shawl,
rags over his eyes.
 
Mr de Souza bound six hives to his oxcart before dawn.
Now bees dance round our faces.
 
Crossing the river, he stumbles.
His ankle twists like a weeping fig.
 
I bite the hem of my petticoat,
use a strip to stem his bleeding.
 
The pot floats downstream,
salt dissolves.
 
The baby chews on the spoon,
throws it to the ground.
 
Mr de Souza is heavy against my shoulder.
Between his cries, I hear scorched stones crack.
 

Fiona Ritchie Walker

Poem published in Ten Years On a New Writing anthology celebrating 10 years of the Norther Writers’ Awards

Listen to the poem: Leaving

Jul 11 – Round 4 – month 9; Judge: Myra Schneider

The Judge for the July competition is Myra Schneider. She has selected Philippa Lawrence’s poem, Screen Test as her winner. The four commended poems going forward into the July competition are: Burns, by Judith Allnatt; Wreck, by Rosalind Johnston; The Inheritor, by Gerda Mayer; and Praise Song, Laurna Robertson

The judge’s comment on the winning poem, along with links to the four commended poems, is given below.
 

Screen Test

I strip to the waist
in the breast scanning caravan’s cubicle:
an aging Page Three Girl shape,
my bosom milky pink,
blue veined and crêpey
with soft, pale nipples.

The kind, brisk radiologist instructs me
to contort myself in Picasso posture,
elbows raised asymmetrically.
I rest the right half of my 38DD
on the glass X-ray table under spotlights,
try to scoop my left boob out of shot,
hand overflowing.

The angle-poised plate firmly squishes
my right breast down
like a ripe peach –
a Damien Hirst sort of sandwich
which might vie for the Turner Prize.

A leaflet stresses the importance
of buying a bra which fits you.
Chance would be a fine thing!
No such model exists for me
even at Rigby and Peller of Knightsbridge,
the Queen’s corsetières.

My back aches and bends
after decades of bad engineering.
As a teenager and young woman
I was perplexed at men smirking appreciatively
when I said I lived in Bristol.

If only Isambard Kingdom Brunel
could have applied his genius
to designing a suspension bridge
for my bristols,
as Howard Hughes did for Jane Russell,
though she outlawed it.
 

Philippa Lawrence

Poem published:
Winner of the Wiltshire Libraries’ Humorous Poem Competition 2001;
in anthology, Images of Women, Arrowhead Press in Association with Second Light 2006: 1SBN 1-904852-14-93;
read on Salisbury’s Spire FM Radio during interview.

Judge’s comment:
 
This is an outstanding humorous poem. I am struck by the way that Philippa Lawrence has written with sharply accurate, inventive and really funny details about a procedure which is in fact unpleasant. She is completely open about the size of her breasts, plays wittily on the word ‘bristol’ making it the base for a marvellous sustained image which she cleverly links to the world of film at the end of the poem. The lively range of reference is skilfully controlled and there is a warmth and immediacy which draws the reader in.
 

Myra Schneider

Burns, by Judith Allnatt
Wreck, by Rosalind Johnston
The Inheritor, by Gerda Mayer
Praise Song, by Laurna Robertson

Jun 11 – Round 4 – month 8; Judge: Anne Stewart

The Judge for the June competition is Anne Stewart. She has selected Merryn Williams’s poem, My Cousin as her winner. The four commended poems going forward into the July competition are: Burns, by Judith Allnatt; Yellow Bird, by June Hall; Praise Song, Laurna Robertson; and Slow Light, by Jill Townsend.

The judge’s comment on the winning poem, along with links to the four commended poems, is given below.
 

My Cousin
Edith Hemp d. Bournemouth 1930

She came here–not to rest–to sweep the stairs
and empty chamber pots. The gilded chairs
still stand here, the enormous mirrors throw
my face back as they did hers, aeons ago.
Down these plush corridors she moved, her feet
not echoing–dusting, leaving all things neat.
Somewhere her midget room, a great way up
these stairs. Invisible beneath her cap
to Bournemouth’s guests, but I know who she was;
my flesh, my blood, thrown early from the nest.
A small skimped woman when she was alive,
all siblings lost, unmatched at forty-five.
No trace, not one. Still stands the Grand Hotel
but now she rests. Somewhere in Bournemouth still.
 

Merryn Williams

Judge’s comment:
 
I love the way this poem brings the cousin back to life, yet keeps her at a distance, as though she is truly here, not simply a ghost or a memory, yet in another dimension and unreachable. I think the poem accomplishes this by the way she moves delicately through the space. I find it tender and loving – very moving.
 

Anne Stewart

Burns, by Judith Allnatt
Yellow Bird, by June Hall
Praise Song, by Laurna Robertson
Slow Light, by Jill Townsend

May 11 – Round 4 – month 7; Judge: Kate Foley

Our judge this month is Kate Foley. Her winning poem is Day Starting on an Upper Floor by Claudia Jessop. The four commended poems going forward into the June competition are: Nappies on my Neighbour’s Washing Line, by Sue Moules; My Cousin, by Merryn Williams; Burns, by Judith Allnatt; and Mended Fence, Barra, by Anna Crowe.

The judge’s comment on the winning poem, along with links to the four commended poems, is given below.
 

Day Starting on an Upper Floor

Early morning
I raise the blind, and see
the stacked city
re-invented by sunlight.

Other people’s windows turn
to changing screens
of marbled inks
where glass records the change of days,

a face, suddenly framed
or a glimpse
of someone, folding
white clothing, carrying
a child from room to room,
buttoning a shirt while walking
over the floor.

I am so high up here,
attending to the detail
I think I am alone with it,
but a woman
watering a plant
raises her face; we share her pouring stance, arrested
over her green leaves,

we see each other
before the day.
 

Claudia Jessop

Poem published in collection from Cinammon Press, 2009

Judge’s comment:
 
What a strange kind of dailiness, to wake and see the ‘stacked city / re-invented by sunlight.’ Reality is refracted from the ‘changing screens’ of other people’s windows. The quotidian – folding clothes, carrying a child – is invested with distance. Yet the nub of this quiet poem, with its dream-like cityscape, is finally about connection – ‘we see each other / before the day.’
 

Kate Foley

Burns, by Judith Allnatt
Mended Fence, Barra, by Anna Crowe
Nappies on my Neighbour’s Washing Line, by Sue Moules
My Cousin, by Merryn Williams

Apr 11 – Round 4 – month 6; Judge: Katherine Gallagher

Katherine Gallagher judged the competition in April, choosing, from her selection of 18 poems, Anne Ryland as our winner with her ‘evocative’ poem, For a Daughter. As always, four poems are commended and go forward to the judge in the following month. These are: Mended Fence, Barra by Anna Crowe, From Brechin to Auchenblae, 1897 by Pippa Little, Green by Eve Pearce, and My Cousin by Merryn Williams. The judge’s comment on the winning poem, along with links to the four commended poems, is given below.
 

For a Daughter

My name would not be your middle name.
 
You wouldn’t inherit my listomania, I promise:
I’d renounce list-making in honour of your birth.
 
The term Muscular Dystrophy would not be sewn within you.
 
I would not pass on my stony ova
or the euphemisms stuffed up the sleeve like handkerchiefs.
 
Thank You wouldn’t be your mantra; it trapped me at the amber light.
 
You wouldn’t stare at every dog and see only its bite.
 
You would never know that ‘worry’ derives from ‘wyrgan’, to strangle:
I’d lock the door to my mother’s worrymongery
 
but I would be your guide in the storehouse of the thesaurus,
assure you there’s no such curse as being too clever.
 
I’d even show you how to blow a trumpet in a long and steady tone.
 
My desk and my blue propelling pencil would be yours.
 
I’d hand you your great-grandmother’s last letter to her daughter
from the hospital – ‘bye bye, dear’
 
All my words would be yours, so you’d observe me on the page,
learn all that I am and was and should have been.
 
And, my daughter, each night I’d hum you a lullaby.
You would remember me as a song, not an apology.
 

Anne Ryland

Poem published: Mslexia, No. 34. Runner-up, Mslexia Women’s Poetry Competition, 2007.

Judge’s comment:
 
I’ve chosen this poem for its poignant mystery, sustained meditative tone, and original approach to the subject of parenthood and childlessness. The first ten lines list attributes that would not be handed down to her daughter: ‘I would not pass on my stony ova / or the euphemisms stuffed up the sleeve like handkerchiefs.’ The remainder focusses on the gifts that would be forthcoming, ending with great irony: ‘You would remember me as a song, not an apology.’
 

Katherine Gallagher

Mended Fence, Barra, by Anna Crowe
From Brechin to Auchenblae, 1897, by Pippa Little
Green, by Eve Pearce
My Cousin, by Merryn Williams

Mar 11 – Round 4 – month 5; Judge: Wendy French

Our judge for the March selection of 18 poems is Wendy French. She has chosen Helen Ivory’s poem, The Beginning as her winner. Maggie Butt and Merryn Williams stay in again with their poems, Lipstick (Maggie) and My Cousin (Merryn) and are joined by two of the new entries: Denise McSheehy’s Salt and Eve Pearce’s Green. Links to the 4 commended poems are given below.
 

The Beginning

When they nailed the cabinet shut,
the rabbit knew it was quite dead.
Innards and eyes were replaced
by straw and glass,
its heartbeat had become a rustling.
 
When it tried to drag itself
from the mounting,
its hide shredded like paper,
but still it climbed up on two legs,
kicked open the door with new cloven hooves.
 
The crepuscular light of the workshop
hinted at other creatures
trapped in glass boxes.
In each one, a shifting
of fur or scales, the glint of a claw.
 
The key to the door was easy to find,
and the rabbit unlocked it
with dexterous fingers.
He slipped a dark cloak around his shoulders
and trotted into the high street.
 
Across the road, a fish with wings
played the accordion
in the shelter of a shop door
and a cat with the face of a bird
was scanning a newspaper.
 
The streets were filled with people
on their way home from work,
too busy to notice the new born dead in their midst,
following the rabbit in slow procession
towards the freshly built structure of ribs and human hair.

Helen Ivory

published in collection, The Breakfast Machine, 2010, Bloodaxe Books, ISBN 978-18522487-3-4

Judge’s comment:
 
I chose this poem because it took me somewhere I haven’t been before. The content, language and expectations from the first line are exciting. I, as the reader and who while reading it, owned the poem, was taken to new places. I worried as to where I was going but needed to be there, to be in sympathy with the world created.
 

Wendy French

Lipstick, by Maggie Butt
Salt, by Denise McSheehy
Green, by Eve Pearce
My Cousin, by Merryn Williams

Feb 11 – Round 4 – month 4; Judge: Hylda Sims

Our judge for February is Hylda Sims and she has chosen Jo Bell’s poem, Last as her winner. Maggie Butt stays in with her poem, Lipstick, in the commended list and three new poets also have commended poems carrying forward to the March competition. They are Gerda Mayer with The Inheritor, Helen Jagger with The List Thing and Merryn Williams with My Cousin. Links to the 4 commended poems are given below.
 

Last

The object you would choose to be remembered by –
the artefact that signifies your life –
will not survive. It’s going to be the busted zip,
the plastic shoelace tip;
the unsuspected screw that holds your Filofax together.
 
Likewise of all the days, the day that I remember
isn’t one I chose.
It wouldn’t make a photo for the mantelpiece.
There is no New York marathon,
no beaded satin dress or crumpled newborn child.
 
One young morning in the flat at Portland Grove
while you made coffee, I lay matted in your quilt.
The radio was on, and half-asleep in student filth
I heard The Lark Ascending for the first time.
I filled up like a fountain pen, inhaling through the nib;
the barrel slowly swelling under pressure.
 
I smelt you on the covers, squinted out at dust specks
dawdling in sunshine wedges past the Anglepoise.
And when they come to prise my fingers from the days,
it will be that one I let go of last.
 

Jo Bell

Poem published: Navigation, Cheshire CC, 2008, 978-1-905702-36-7

Judge’s comment:
 
An original look at life and death. I love the double-edged title, the way the poem recalls a moment of pure delight but with unsentimental, unclicheed precise descriptions. And then that wonderful, chilling, image ‘when they come to prise my fingers from the days’… This poem convinces me that when the time comes it will be like that. (a bit like ‘Bugger Bognor’ as one of our Royals was heard to mutter as he expired!)
 

Hylda Sims

Lipstick, by Maggie Butt
The List Thing, by Helen Jagger
The Inheritor, by Gerda Mayer
My Cousin, by Merryn Williams

Jan 11 – Round 4 – month 3; Judge: Joy Howard

Joy Howard is our competition judge for January. She has selected Fiona Ritchie Walker’s poem, Leaving as her winner. The four commended poems she has selected are: After the Creation by Alice Beer, Last by Jo Bell, Lipstick by Maggie Butt, and Moontrade by Rose Flint. Links to the 4 commended poems are given below.
 

Leaving

A thundering like rain
but nothing wet.

Cattle kissed, untied.
We slap them towards freedom.

I carry a pot of salt,
our silver spoon.

The baby bounces in my mother’s shawl,
rags over his eyes.

Mr de Souza bound six hives to his oxcart before dawn.
Now bees dance round our faces.

Crossing the river, he stumbles.
His ankle twists like a weeping fig.

I bite the hem of my petticoat,
use a strip to stem his bleeding.

The pot floats downstream,
salt dissolves.

The baby chews on the spoon,
throws it to the ground.

Mr de Souza is heavy against my shoulder.
Between his cries, I hear scorched stones crack.
 

Fiona Ritchie Walker

Poem published in Ten Years On a New Writing anthology celebrating 10 years of the Norther Writers’ Awards

Judge’s comment:
 
Out of the 18 poems under consideration this was the one that stayed in my mind, and I kept on wanting to go back to it. What’s it about? Who are these people? I’m not sure, but the language is wonderfully precise and the story-telling powerful. It’s written as a series of two-line sentences that resonate like footsteps – perhaps there’s a war on and these are refugees. By the end, they seem to have lost everything but each other. Haunting and memorable.
 

Joy Howard

After the Creation, by Alice Beer
Last, by Jo Bell
Lipstick, by Maggie Butt
Moontrade, by Rose Flint

Dec 10 – Round 4 – month 2; Judge: Ruth O’Callaghan

Our judge this month is Ruth O’Callaghan. She has chosen Lyn Moir’s poem, Dream Cigarette as her winner. The four commended poems she has selected are: Things I Have Found in Books by Miki Byrne, Risk Assessment by Pauline Kirk, Hand in Hand by Kaye Lee, and Salmon Nude in Olive Trenchcoat (N.F.S.) by Margaret Wilmot. Links to the 4 commended poems are given below.
 

Dream Cigarette

Not the ritual post-coital, languorously passed from hand to hand,
smoke sucked further down than orgasm’s launch-pad: that’s not the one
comes back in dreams. No, I’m doing something ordinary, some daily task
so boring I’ve no idea what it is, and you’re there with me: it’s as I said,
a dream. We do this thing, we talk, we pass the time companionably
or not, depending if we argue, but the closeness never goes. That’s when
I realise I’m smoking, cigarette in hand as normal as the punctuation mark
it often was, marking conversation stresses with a jab. Still in the dream
I know that this is wrong, recall, in parallel with whatever task we’re doing,
that evening forty years ago when as usual I offered you my Senior Service
and you, who always carried Player’s Navy Cut, said "No, let’s give up now."
Asleep, I feel a twist of longing. Awake, I’m made aware it must have been
a real addiction. But then of course, in dreams I only ever smoke with you.
 

Lyn Moir

Poem published: commended in the Second Light Competition 2006 and published in Skeins of Geese – The 100 Poets Anthology (2008) (a StAnza publication).

Judge’s comment:
 
All the commended poets were strong contenders and especial mention must be made of Kaye Lee’s simply written and extremely moving Hand in Hand. However, Lyn Moir’s Dream Cigarette with its long lines makes the form admirably suited to the subject matter. The imagery reflects the everyday in a refreshing way ‘… as normal / as the punctuation mark / it often was.’ whilst the ambiguous ending ‘… But then, of course, in dreams I / only ever smoke with you.’ compels the reader to re-visit the poem.
 

Ruth O’Callaghan

Things I Have Found in Books, by Miki Byrne
Risk Assessment, by Pauline Kirk
Hand in Hand, by Kaye Lee
Salmon Nude in Olive Trenchcoat (N.F.S.), by Margaret Wilmot

Nov 10 – Round 4 – month 1; Judge: Anne Stewart

we start round 4 of the Poem of the Month competition with an increase in the number of poems entered (from 15 each month to 18) and Anne Stewart is our first selector. She has chosen as her winner, Caroline Gill’s poem, Elegy for Idris Davies (see poem and Anne’s comment below). The four commended poems are: Five Changes by Simone Mansell Broome, Things I Have Found in Books by Miki Byrne, Dream Cigarette by Lyn Moir, and Kingfisher by Judith Taylor. Links to the 4 commended poems are also given below.
 

Elegy for Idris Davies

Who hears the bells of Rhymney as they toll?
There are no drams to draw along the tracks:
the empty tarmac waits for laden trucks,
but hollows in the hillside tell their tale.
 
The winch and winder man have long since gone:
deserted pits are crudely steeped in slag.
Would Shelley’s spirit ring out once again
if flames of silver leaped to greet the lark?
 
A sloping cemetery will testify
to times when angry voices could be heard.
An echo rises from the Rhymney bard:
it rocks and rolls a piercing lullaby.
 
The grass is brown: brass bands have lost their sheen,
but April’s music trickles down the rill.
A shaft of sun makes rainbow-puddles shine
in terraced streets, to light the poet’s trail.
 
Allotments snake along the mountain road,
with weathered water butts of blue and green.
A raven waits while seeds of hope are sown,
but wigwam-canes stand vacant and betrayed.
 
A poet plants his footsteps in the mire,
through furnaces and forges razed to soil.
Bare strips of sky and horizontal moor
arouse defiant voices in his soul.
 
Stonemasons shed their monumental tears
in mounds below the monkey puzzle’s arm.
A sombre moon cast shadows on the dawn:
a valley dreams beneath the midnight stars.
 

Note: A dram is a cart for carrying coal

Caroline Gill

Poem published: THE SEVENTH QUARRY (ed. Peter Thabit Jones), no.3, Winter 2006. Also on the Poetry Library Southbank Centre Website.

Judge’s comment:
 
This poem stood out for me from the start. It’s very accomplished technically, no bumps or jags in the pattern or rhyme, and poetically, the pace and language, the turns of subject, are very supportive of the loss and grief expressed, verging on but not descending into pathos. I like it that the three poets are brought in as witnesses, and are not allowed to turn this into ‘a poem about writing’… This seems to me an important poem, successful on many levels, including doing justice to the poet whose ‘Rhymney’ take was so influential on other writers and songwriters.
 

Anne Stewart

Five Changes, by Simone Mansell Broome
Things I Have Found in Books, by Miki Byrne
Dream Cigarette, by Lyn Moir
Kingfisher, by Judith Taylor

Oct 10 – Round 3 – Final; Judge: Dilys Wood

Dilys Wood, founder and coordinator of Second Light Network, has selected Nadine Brummer’s poem The Frog’s Princess as the overall winner from round 3’s winning monthly poems. Her comment on the poem is:
 
“It was hard to make a choice from the eleven eligible poems, all of which were built round striking, original ideas and were very well executed. The Frog’s Princess stood out for its multiple strong qualities. Using this particular fairytale as a framework for insights into a woman’s attitudes, and writing in the voice of the princess, has been done by other women poets, but Brummer drew fresh inspiration from the encounter between woman and frog.
 
I commend the poem for its easy, conversational flow of language (very difficult to achieve) and for the subtle line-breaks. The language had immediacy, with touches of controlled exaggeration and humour: “spasm of green” describing the frog’s surprising quick movement … The most outstanding quality was the breadth of ideas drawn into the familiar story framework, so that the poem continuously moved on a step, and quickly distanced itself from the expected. As in all good poems, a number of ideas are sketched and can take different readers on different journeys. For me the poem was essentially about the reaction of a sympathetic human being to the ‘other world’ of the animal kingdom – fascinated, slightly appalled, but protective, not aggressive.
 
The link is made between animals’ (not just the frog’s) intriguing faces and the look of a very young child, “some new-born child / you swear has been here before”. As in all good ‘voice’ poems, the the princess learns about herself as she talks to us. Her conclusion – that the best part of the experience came before frog turned back into prince – leaves us with a beautifully modulated challenging ending to the poem.”

Nadine has recorded the poem for the Second Light Audio Archive. (see link below)

The Frog’s Princess

That night, finding him in my bed,
within kissing distance,
I wanted to take the stare
off his face – those eyes
all bulge and goggle.
Then I saw their depth, a look
that could take me anywhere
backwards in time. I recalled
an aquarium under the sea where
I’d pressed my face to the glass
of a wolf-eel’s tank, mesmerised
by a little reptilian head
with eyeballs lifting off
like spaceships that settled
into an expression beyond
a seal-pup’s dopey smile
or the pout of fish –
like that of some new-born child
you swear has been here before.
The frog was like him,
but when he gulped and a mouth
smelling of weed or bull-kelp
came close to my lips
I flinched and held out my hand
to stop his jump and touched
a spasm of green, a creature trying
to slither out of himself.
I’ve been so often trapped
In flesh that didn’t feel mine
I wondered what he could see
when he gazed into a pond;
he took my sigh as a signal
to kiss. I loved him best
the moment before he changed,
a small, crouched, alien thing
in need of a body.

Nadine Brummer

Poem published: Poem published: Poetry London, May 2003

Listen to Nadine reading The Frog’s Princess

Sep 10 – Round 3 – month 12; Judge: Hylda Sims

This is the last month in this round, aside from adjudication of the overall winner. Congratulations to Gerda Mayer, for her winning poem The Inheritor. Our commended poets are Maggie Butt, Miki Byrne, Lotte Kramer and Alison Michell, whose poems will go into the first batch in round 3 for another opportunity of selection. The winning and commended poems were selected by Hylda Sims

The Inheritor

I the sophisticated primate
Have stunted fingers on my feet,
And almost I control my climate,
And Everything is what I eat.

I wrote the story of Creation
When I discovered nudity;
‘The world is yours for exploitation.’
I gave this charter unto me.

I traded in for my survival
My peaceful heart, my flealined coat;
Did down my vegetarian rival.
I have Creation by the throat.

 

          the third line refers to ‘cloud seeding’ of which there was some talk in the seventies

Gerda Mayer

Poem published:
(under its previous title The Survivor), Encounter magazine, 1978; The Knockabout Show, Chatto; Poets for the Young, Chatto & Windus; Bernini’s Cat.

Judge’s comment:
 
I’ve chosen this poem, firstly for its intriguing, original, succinct, Darwinesque subject matter – the ascent (or descent?) of personkind – an important subject treated with sad, satirical humour. It reminds us who we are and where we are. It is a warning about the arrogance of our species and hints at our probable downfall but expresses this unwelcome news with wonderful brevity and the lightest touch. The poem rhymes nicely and is written in slightly Europeanised English which gives it a disarming oddity fitting to its form and strange but telling imagery. This poem sticks in the mind. It is a poem which, unlike much contemporary verse, can be learned by heart and quoted. It should be!
 

Hylda Sims

Lipstick, by Maggie Butt
Things I Have Found in Books, by Miki Byrne
Bilingual, by Lotte Kramer
Cross My Palm, by Alison Michell

Aug 10 – Round 3 – month 11; Judge: Joy Howard

Our winner this month is Rose Cook, for her poem Casting Off, and our commended poets are Rose Flint, Lotte Kramer, Alison Michell & Angela Topping. Congratulations to all – and there’s only one more judging (Sep) before Dilys Wood selects the overall winner for this round in October. The commended poems will be submitted again to next month’s judge, along with the final 11 other poems in the round. Our judge this month is Joy Howard and her comment on the winning poem is given below.

Casting Off

She should have let him go ages before
he asked her, several times, I heard him,
but she stood thigh deep, her small hands on
the prow of his boat, offering instructions
in a gentle voice, as an air hostess does before
take off, her own fears chained together
like clauses and carefully wrapped around
as fast as he tries to cast off, until he can
take it no more and shouts to her to let go
and to shut up since he knows more about sailing
than she does, so she stands with her arms
at her sides, watching, while the wind takes
her son and his orange sails and carries him out
far on a run, so he cuts through the slate sea
not looking back, but we can just hear his voice:
I know far more about sailing than you do.
 

Rose Cook

Poem published: Everyday Festival, Happenstance, 2009.

Judge’s comment:
 
A powerful evocation of a mother/son relationship at the difficult but necessary time of change. The maritime imagery works beautifully to convey the excitement and danger of travel, of partings. There are no interruptions – no stanzas, no full stops – and this free flow enhances the feeling of being precipitated into a perilous unknown. The time for contemplation will come later. We are in the moment.
 

Joy Howard

Moontrade, by Rose Flint
Bilingual, by Lotte Kramer
Cross My Palm, by Alison Michell
How to Capture a Poem, by Angela Topping

Jul 10 – Round 3 – month 10; Judge: Myra Schneider

Congratulations to our winner this month, Gill McEvoy, for her poem Bridge, and to our commended poets: Jo Bell, Carlotta Miller Johnson, Maggie Norton and Sibyl Ruth, whose poems will be submitted again to next month’s judge, along with 11 other poems. Our judge this month is Myra Schneider and her comment on the winning poem is given below.

Bridge

Its shape an arc between two worlds,
a sudden brief flight into space
and down again, an eyebrow raised.
 
Two stout roots that fuse in No-Man’s land,
it’s frozen in the leap that it began.
 
Consider its masonic handshake
world to world, the messages that pass.
 
Admire its daring jump between two points.
 
Place your hands on its naked bones;
 
touch its loneliness.

 

Gill McEvoy

Poem published: Poetry Nottingham, 2007.

Judge’s comment:
 
From the many poems which appealed to me I finally chose one of ten lines – Bridge by Gill McEvoy. I was particularly struck by the original and telling images which create the sense of space and movement in space, also the personification of the bridge at the end, for which Gill makes subtle preparation. The syntax, which moves from statement to the imperative, is very effective. The shifts from an opening three line stanza, to two line stanzas and then single lines – the last one short, also support this poem. It carries considerable emotional force.
 

Myra Schneider

Last, by Jo Bell
A Week on the Missouri, by Carlotta Miller Johnson
Mrs Tennyson is Interviewed in the Morning Room at Farringford, by Maggie Norton
Curious, by Sibyl Ruth

Jun 10 – Round 3 – month 9; Judge: Anne Stewart

Congratulations to our winner, Anne Ryland, with her poem For a Daughter, selected by Anne Stewart, our judge this month, and to our commended poets: Liz Loxley, Gol McAdam, Gill McEvoy and Christina Van Melzen, whose poems will be submitted again to next month’s judge, along with 11 other poems.

For a Daughter

My name would not be your middle name.
 
You wouldn’t inherit my listomania, I promise:
I’d renounce list-making in honour of your birth.
 
The term Muscular Dystrophy would not be sewn within you.
 
I would not pass on my stony ova
or the euphemisms stuffed up the sleeve like handkerchiefs.
 
Thank You wouldn’t be your mantra; it trapped me at the amber light.
 
You wouldn’t stare at every dog and see only its bite.
 
You would never know that ‘worry’ derives from ‘wyrgan’, to strangle:
I’d lock the door to my mother’s worrymongery
 
but I would be your guide in the storehouse of the thesaurus,
assure you there’s no such curse as being too clever.
 
I’d even show you how to blow a trumpet in a long and steady tone.
 
My desk and my blue propelling pencil would be yours.
 
I’d hand you your great-grandmother’s last letter to her daughter
from the hospital – ‘bye bye, dear’
 
All my words would be yours, so you’d observe me on the page,
learn all that I am and was and should have been.
 
And, my daughter, each night I’d hum you a lullaby.
You would remember me as a song, not an apology.

 

Anne Ryland

Poem published: Mslexia, No. 34. Runner-up, Mslexia Women’s Poetry Competition, 2007.

Judge’s comment:
 
I was struck first by the selflessness of not naming a child for your own remembrance, then by the anxiety of that ‘I promise’, a plea to be found trustworthy and credible, so important to the speaker here that it’s not possible to contemplate failure. The pace and impact of the emotive elements in these wishes are perfectly controlled. I like the created word ‘worrymongery’ used to encompass a long, uncomfortable story. Here is tenderness, along with the implication that it skipped this particular generation. I can’t help thinking we’d all like to be this good at parental love.
 

Anne Stewart

The Thickness of Ice, by Liz Loxley
My Mother’s Room, by Gol McAdam
Bridge, by Gill McEvoy
The Twelfth of December, by Christina Van Melzen

May 10 – Round 3 – month 8; Judge: Hylda Sims

Our judge this month is Hylda Sims. Congratulations to our winner, Merryn Williams, with her poem My Cousin, and to our runners-up – Claudia Jessop, Mimi Khalvati, Lyn Moir and Anne Ryland – whose poems will be submitted again to next month’s judge, along with 11 other poems.

My Cousin
Edith Hemp d. Bournemouth 1930

She came here–not to rest–to sweep the stairs
and empty chamber pots. The gilded chairs
still stand here, the enormous mirrors throw
my face back as they did hers, aeons ago.
Down these plush corridors she moved, her feet
not echoing–dusting, leaving all things neat.
Somewhere her midget room, a great way up
these stairs. Invisible beneath her cap
to Bournemouth’s guests, but I know who she was;
my flesh, my blood, thrown early from the nest.
A small skimped woman when she was alive,
all siblings lost, unmatched at forty-five.
No trace, not one. Still stands the Grand Hotel
but now she rests. Somewhere in Bournemouth still.

Merryn Williams

Judge’s comment:
 
Five excellent poems and hard to choose the winner. In my view, poems can’t really be ‘ranked’ and in the end it’s a matter of taste. I like poems which tell us something about the way of the world, past and present. I chose My Cousin for its economically expressed subject matter: its retrieval of Edith Hemp, forgotten drudge, from the dustbin of history. In fourteen carefully crafted lines (with some cunning enjambment and repetition) this poem tells us something we need to remember about rich versus poor, ostentation versus exploitation, fame versus obscurity. There’s no sentimentality here, no self-pity, no excess but an elegant evocation of the ornate Victoriana of a Bournemouth Hotel contrasted with the shabby, unenviable life of Merryn’s cousin Edith. ‘…a world ill-divided – those that work the hardest are the least provided’ as an old folksong puts it.
 

Hylda Sims

Day Starting on an Upper Floor, by Claudia Jessop
The Valley, by Mimi Khalvati
Dream Cigarette, by Lyn Moir
For a Daughter, by Anne Ryland

Apr 10 – Round 3 – month 7; Judge: Wendy French

Our judge this month is Wendy French. Congratulations to our winner, Simone Mansell Broome with her poem Five Changes, and to our runners-up – Caroline Carver, Claudia Jessop, Jennie Osborne and Merryn Williams – whose poems will be submitted again to next month’s judge, along with 11 other poems.

Five Changes

If I tried to give you up, it would be like
buying a train ticket from Aberystwyth
to Hastings, on a Sunday or a Bank Holiday —
a reduced service, works on the line…
essential maintenance;
and I’d expected five changes, steeled myself for
Shrewsbury, Wolverhampton, Reading, Gatwick
and Brighton,
had psyched myself to tick them off, one by one,
but found cancellations,
my progress halted, my plans thwarted,
my route re-arranged on a chalked easel
with quirky spellings…inaudible apologies…
and instead of three-down-two-to-go,
time for a coffee, a quick last sidinged pass
at crossword or sudoku,
I’d find I was just travelling — locomoting slowly —
in a large reticulated arc
back
to you.

Simone Mansell Broome

Poem published: 1st Prize winner, Carillon magazine competition 2007, and published in Carillon issue 17, Mar/Apr 2007, ISSN 1474-7340.

Judge’s comment:
 
I chose this poem to be the winner for this month because I liked the pace of the lines and the train-like rhythm that ran constantly throughout. It’s a witty poem and yet has a hard edge attached to the meaning of the words. The internal rhymes are skillfully executed and I found myself travelling the journey with the poet. That for me is the mark of a good poem, when the reader is there in the poem trying to find a way through. ‘my route re-arranged on a chalked easel / with quirky spellings… inaudible apologies…’. How often we’ve all been in this situation when we’re not sure what is going on. For me the poem is a metaphor about life and a journey that takes us back (thinking of Eliot) to where we started from.
 

Wendy Fench

Sedna the Sea Goddess, by Caroline Carver
Day Starting on an Upper Floor, by Claudia Jessop
There’s Something About a Woman Swallowing Flames, by Jennie Osborne
My Cousin, by Merryn Williams

Mar 10 – Round 3 – month 6; Judge: Kate Foley

Our judge this month is Kate Foley: our winner is Bee Smith with Being Lazurus’ Wife. Congratulations to Bee, and to our runners-up – Claudia Jessop, Gill Learner, Julie Sampson and Merryn Williams – whose poems will be submitted again to next month’s judge, along with 11 other poems.

Being Lazurus’ Wife

So how did Lazarus’ wife feel
When her husband came back
From his very dramatic second act?
 
Would he seamlessly pick up the old reflexes
The same routine – dinner with his mother
Every Friday night, Saturday night sex,
Or would he have visions of something other?
 
Would he just drop his winding sheet
And suddenly want to buy a Porsche?
Would he demand divorce? Become a
Hippy, a zealot? Or do nothing at all – a life replete
 
Not needing a different wife or
A different life.
 
But still,
When you have been resurrected,
Either to amuse Jesus or serve some
Opaque higher purpose,
When your life has been turned into parable,
 
People will scream and stare. They faint.
Your debtors despair and your creditors stop
Gnashing their teeth. But mostly they want
You to tell them what it’s like to die.
 
But Lazarus, all he wants to talk about is
Being alive. He grows vague about the dying.
He disappoints with no tale of angels or
Gorgons although sometimes into her pillow
 
He will mention the night train to Edinburgh,
All darkness and motion with a sudden flash
When you pause at a level crossing. There was
A clang and a lurch forward and he looked out
 
Through a rain splashed window.
It was that mundane. It was that sublime.
Although for him, this time
They managed to clear the leaves off the line.
 
He reached the station but
It was not a terminus. All change.

Bee Smith

Poem published: Shit Creek Review, Issue 3, March 2007 at Shit Creek Review web-site

Judge’s comment:
 
Wry, funny, technically accomplished – what more do you want in a poem about Lazarus’ wife? What you get is Mrs L’s rather tongue in cheek take on Lazarus before the Big One. She, wearily, would not be surprised if he remained the same-old-same-old ‘…Saturday night sex…’ or if he developed his toys-for-the-boys tendencies and splashed out on a Porche. Even Jesus is just amusing himself with this resurrection party trick. Then, for a few lines after ‘…sometimes into her pillow…’ this poem does what good poems do and unsentimentally captures the terror, tenderness and mess of relationships and death.
 

Kate Foley

Day Starting on an Upper Floor, by Claudia Jessop
A worm updates itself, by Gill Learner
Lost Trees, by Julie Sampson
My Cousin, by Merryn Williams

Feb 10 – Round 3 – month 5; Judge: Anne Stewart

Our judge this month is Anne Stewart: our winner is Laurna Robertson with Praise Song. Congratulations to Laurna, and to our runners-up – Anna Avebury, Elizabeth Birchall, Margaret Eddershaw and Sue Moules – whose poems will be submitted again to next month’s judge, along with 11 other poems.

Praise Song

For a drowned mountain range surfacing,
scoured by salt winds, bathed in pearl light,
shawled in mist.
 
For fretted voes and geos; stranded
pillars of rock, hill lochs and peat
banks, sheep on the scattald.
 
For beaches of shell sand; for wet shingle
that is moorit and shaela. For red
granite cliffs lit by sunset.

For stretches of rust pink Thrift,
Eyebright, Wild Orchis and Lady’s Smock,
honey sweet Clover and Bird’s-foot Trefoil.
 
For puffins skimming under water; for dark caves
glowing with gannets, their etched eyes watchful;
for sea-gulls oobing before rain.
 
For cliffs falling sheer to rock pavements,
for seals splashing ashore to nurse pups
whose howls float through the air.
 
For tarred roofs, tethered cows, netted
hay-ricks, fish drying on gables. For boats
drawn to noosts above tide lines.
 
For wild reels to fiddle tunes,
the kiss of the wave, the slap of the sea,
for crescendos of wind diminishing.
 
For islands caught in a time-warp of childhood.
For islands that taught how the world would be.
 

voes and geos:  bays and gullies
scattald:  common hill grazing
moorit and shaela:  shades of native sheep
oobing:  mournful crying

Laurna Robertson

Poem published: Northwords Now, The New Shetlander.

Judge’s comment:
 
I had a shortlist of 3 potential winners, but Laurna Robertson’s Praise Poem won me over completely in the end, with its musicality, its brightness of language and imagery, its authenticity, and its effective saving (praise-worthy in itself) of endangered words that paint these tough and craggy “islands caught in a time-warp of childhood”. You can hear the wild alien sounds of the place and feel the sea lapping at your ankles. This poem has a gale in it that would blow you over a cliff… And I’m drawn in by it, enjoying getting to know it even better.
 

Anne Stewart

Mammogram, by Anna Avebury
Oxford United, by Elizabeth Birchall
Golden Rule, by Margaret Eddershaw
Nappies on my Neighbour’s Washing Line, by Sue Moules

Jan 10 – Round 3 – month 4; Judge: Katherine Gallagher

Our judge this month is Katherine Gallagher: our winner is Ann Alexander with The daughter from America. Congratulations to Ann, and to our runners-up – Anna Avebury, Margaret Eddershaw, Laurna Robertson and Vicky Wilson – whose poems will be submitted again to next month’s judge, along with 11 other poems.

The daughter from America

The daughter from America
flies home to watch her mother die.
Hi mom, look, it’s me, your daughter, me –
 
Her voice strides confidently
round the Trauma ward,
a Yankee-doodle-dandy Cornish girl.
 
There are worse places to die,
and ancient Lizzie Annie rides the thermals
of the finest pharmaceuticals.
Still her cloudy eyes flick flick
from face to face, uncomprehending.
 
It’s your daughter, mom, come all this way –
The neon stranger in the corner
rattles words like pills.
 
Lizzie Annie, on the final lap
of her long journey home,
cries out, flutters the sheets.
 
And suddenly the daughter’s heart is back
on Helston’s granite streets.
She grips her mother’s hands
as if to hold her to the world,

cries dear of her, crumpling,
finding the proper words at last.

Ann Alexander

Poem published: Scryfa, December 2008

Judge’s comment:
Ann Alexander’s cameo of a daughter’s return home to see her dying hospitalised mother is layered with poignant resonances as the daughter, ‘a Yankee-doodle-dandy Cornish girl’ gradually peels back her ‘American’ self: – ‘It’s your daughter, mom, come all this way’
 
The images are moving, sparsely-drawn. The mother ‘rattles words like pills. / Lizzie Annie, on the final lap / of her long journey home, / cries out, flutters the sheets.’ And suddenly the ironies of all their journeys hone in on the final journey of these two as the daughter ‘grips her mother’s hands / as if to hold her to the world, / … finding the proper words at last.’ Powerful, spare, evocative.
 

Katherine Gallagher

Mammogram, by Anna Avebury
Golden Rule, by Margaret Eddershaw
Praise Song, by Laurna Robertson
Burst Pipe, London N1, by Vicky Wilson

Dec 09 – Round 3 – month 3; Judge: Myra Schneider

Our judge this month is Myra Schneider: our winner is Nadine Brummer with The Frog’s Princess. Congratulations to Nadine, and to our runners-up – Judith Allnatt, Anna Avebury, June Hall and Gill Nicholson – whose poems will be submitted again to next month’s judge, along with 11 other poems.

The Frog’s Princess

That night, finding him in my bed,
within kissing distance,
I wanted to take the stare
off his face – those eyes
all bulge and goggle.
Then I saw their depth, a look
that could take me anywhere
backwards in time. I recalled
an aquarium under the sea where
I’d pressed my face to the glass
of a wolf-eel’s tank, mesmerised
by a little reptilian head
with eyeballs lifting off
like spaceships that settled
into an expression beyond
a seal-pup’s dopey smile
or the pout of fish –
like that of some new-born child
you swear has been here before.
The frog was like him,
but when he gulped and a mouth
smelling of weed or bull-kelp
came close to my lips
I flinched and held out my hand
to stop his jump and touched
a spasm of green, a creature trying
to slither out of himself.
I’ve been so often trapped
In flesh that didn’t feel mine
I wondered what he could see
when he gazed into a pond;
he took my sigh as a signal
to kiss. I loved him best
the moment before he changed,
a small, crouched, alien thing
in need of a body.
 

Nadine Brummer

Poem published: Poetry London, May 2003

Judge’s comment:
I love this imaginative and layered version of The Frog Prince fairy story. The poem is written in the voice of the princess who is maybe the writer or any ‘I’ who has felt ‘trapped / In flesh that didn’t feel mine’ – any misfit. Poignantly, because of this, the princess feels closest to the frog just before he changes into the prince. The language summons up marvellously the physicality of the frog and strange but precise memories which are also potent. The whole poem, in one block and short run-on lines, builds up a strong emotional charge.
 

Myra Schneider

Burns, by Judith Allnatt
Mammogram, by Anna Avebury
Anniversary, by June Hall
Naming Dusk in Dead Languages, by Gill Nicholson

Nov 09 – Round 3 – month 2; Judge: Ruth O’Callaghan

Congratulations to this month’s winner, Elizabeth Stott, for her poem That. The four commended poems are by Judith Kazantzis, Sue Rose, June Hall and Judith Allnatt and these will be submitted again to next month’s judge, along with 11 other poems.

That

All afternoon the tank fills, as, drip-by-drip, the faulty valve lets in more water.
 
In the yard, the family goes about its business:
Mother hangs washing, mutters over grimy collars, threadbare sheets. Jack kicks the
ball on the flagstones – that for the wall, that for the ball bouncing back, a whack on
the shin, a stifled yelp. Jill sits on the coalshed roof, saying nought as she picks the
crumbs from a slice of bread. No school today. It’s the summer, and kids roam the
streets – but not these two.
 
At four o’clock, the first little spurt – no more than a tearfall, a wetness on the stone,
like a blotting paper stain; and Jack looks up at the overflow, dodges the dribble,
kicks his ball to the other side of the drain. That for the wall, that for the ball bouncing
back, a whack on the chest, another on the mouth. Jill looks up, a fret of crumbs on
her lap, a hole in her frock from climbing the shed. Mum’ll give her one for that. The
little talk on women’s things does not exempt her from that.
 
Mum sweeps the lino, prepares tonight’s rehashed dish of Sunday roast.
 
The water’s peeing from the thin pipe overhead. Jill watches as the little stream soaks
the flags like bedsheets. Jack skirts the problem, skidding round it, playing a game
with it, getting wet, laughing.
 
Mum runs the tap, the dribble stops, for now. She has a ritual – let out some water
once an hour to keep the level down, and she ignores the drip, drip drip drip drip that
goes on all the while. Mostly it’s all right, it stops for a bit – a week, perhaps, then
starts again. Today, she forgot to run the tap, too much going on. The ground below is
mossy green, treacherous. A flabby washer, a leaking ballcock – simple to fix. It’s
something Jill’s dad could do if he chose. Mum’s asked him often enough – threatens
to get a plumber in, but they cost. She looks at the clock – the hand reaching up.
She’ll hear the gate open at six o’clock, get that feeling of heartsink. Jack’ll scoot off
and miss his tea, but he’ll get one for that. And Jill – she’s sat there all day, what use
is a girl who moons about, tears her frock, won’t talk, let alone help her? As useful as
knife without a fork. The big hand grabs the twelve.
 
That for the wall, that for the ball bouncing back, that for the rattle of a garden gate,
that for a slow, slow drip – that for a knife without a fork.

Elizabeth Stott

Judge’s comment:
An accomplished prose poem whose title aptly sums up the result of certain actions yet allows the reader to dwell upon the unspoken ‘That’ which has life-altering effects – the immediate consequences of which leave a girl silent and a boy to constantly miss his food. The sentences have a rhythm that increase the ever-present, unseen menace and heightened by such images as that of the clock: "The big hand grabs the twelve."

Ruth O’Callaghan

Burns, by Judith Allnatt
Anniversary, by June Hall
Eurynome, by Judith Kazantzis
The Seamstress at Queille, by Sue Rose

Oct 09 – Round 3 – month 1; Judge: Wendy French

The start of a new round and our judge this month is Wendy French.

Congratulations to this month’s winner, Jill Townsend, for her poem Slow Light. Four commended poems, by Martha Street, Merryn Williams, Margaret Wilmot and Vicky Wilson, will be submitted again to next month’s judge, along with 11 other poems.

Slow Light

Stone light. Close up: chill, heavy beads.
Curling tendrils of fog on fog.
Easy to feel lost, be lost
in this–the jewel-studded threads
of spiders’ webs lit from nowhere,
and life’s debris–twig legs of birds
clutching the feeder as they search
for seed–while fog squeezes the air.
 
Strange here, where I’ve been living
thirty years, I watch my breath
escape to its own element
as if part of me were dying.
What thoughts hung on those molecules?
And what’s given back? Not enough.
A purblind sun searches for clues
while the birds fly off somewhere
and return, so touch sensitive
to the lilac bush, the titbits
whether or not I am here.

Jill Townsend

Judge’s comment:
 
This is a very accomplished poem reminding me of the way Dylan Thomas reflects on words/thoughts by the joining up of similar sounds and thoughts that take the reader further into the depth of the poem. The first stanza has a strange ephemeral feel to it, an almost other worldliness and then in the second stanza we’re brought back to the passing of time and life and breath and how a universe exists whether we’re part of it or not. I love it!

Wendy French

My Shirt, by Martha Street
My Cousin, by Merryn Williams
Salmon Nude in Olive Trenchcoat (N.F.S), by Margaret Wilmot.shtml
Burst Pipe, London N1, by Vicky Wilson

Sep 09 – Round 2 – Final; Judge: Dilys Wood

Founder of Second Light Network and coordinator of all things SL, Dilys wood has chosen Jennie Osborne’s poem There’s Something About a Woman Swallowing Flames as the overall winner of round 2, saying:
 
Members may guess that I chose Jennie Osborne’s poem because it is a feisty, feminist poem. This is true in part. The poem is about a woman performer, a flame-eater. At another level, it could be about a woman writing poetry, ‘You don’t think she can do this, her skin is paper thin ....The air catches its breath. / Light fizzes from the copper hair, the copper fingertips.’ Some people still don’t believe the really risky leaps of the imagination are for ‘the weaker sex’. But the poem makes us feel both the woman’s vulnerability and her determination from the opening, ‘She kicks her head back ...’ to the ending, ‘You scent the quick musk of vixen. / She scents the room.’ There are also other strengths. The poem is a narrative and a mini-drama which touches on disaster, ‘the firesnakes / race for her throat, home in on the blaze / under her breastbone.’ It is a quick-paced poem, with a wealth of good detail and it doesn’t repeat itself. Within the rush of action there are moments of stasis, an intake of breath, ‘the oh so flammable curtains.’ Instead of developing one image, images are drawn from twenty different sources and still work because the poet’s eye remains wedded to the thrilling event that we feel she has really experienced and conveys.

Jennie has made a recording of the poem to add to Second Light’s Audio Archive. (see link below)

There’s Something About a Woman Swallowing Flames

She kicks her head back: if you’re quick
you spot the hunted fox in her eyes
before it goes to ground. She is diamond tonight
or something decked out as diamond. She spins
so fast you’re trapped in her sleight of hand,
dazzles fire and ice in a fever of smiles.
You don’t think she can do this, her skin is paper-thin
and her hair crackles with static. Her torches hurl
through the air, juggle saffron, electric blue, flame.
Colours skelter up and down the sharp tongues. Spit.
Curse. Bite at the ceiling, the oh so flammable curtains.
A flick of her wrists and the firesnakes
race for her throat, home in on the blaze
under her breastbone. The air catches its breath.
Light fizzes from the copper hair, the copper fingertips.
Your eyes want to bolt for the door,
sidle home but are held in check.
You scent the quick musk of vixen.
She fills the room.

Jennie Osborne

Poem published:
Images of Women, Arrowhead Press in Association with Second Light Publications, 2006;
on CD, Something about a woman, £5 and 50p p&p, direct from Jennie at 23 Brooklands, Totnes, Devon, TQ9 5AR.

Listen to Jennie reading There’s Somthing about a Woman Swallowing Flames

Aug 09 – Round 2 – month 9; Judge: Joy Howard

Our final winner of round 2 is Sally Clark for her poem I Decide To Go To You As The Crow FLies. Congratulations to Sally and to our four commended poets: Maxine Linnell, Amanda Parkyn, Kate Rhodes (for the 7th time in a row!) and Laurna Robertson. Sally’s poem will go into the judging of the Round 2 Overall Winner and the commended poems will be included in the 1st month of round 3…

I Decide To Go To You As The Crow Flies

Exit my bedroom through cavity walls and fuse box,
not winded by mortar or the snick of static,
yet suck my breath into a whistle
as I snag through the hawthorn hedge into the field.
 
Wet grass licks my feet. Another hedge into the first garden,
across rockery, barbeque, compost heap, brush through
leylandii, leave security lights prowling and break
the arrow of a stone cupid when I lose my footing in a fountain.
 
Split one lamppost down the middle.
 
Thought I’d miss the supermarket but meet it
at an oblique angle to squeeze through sliced bread
and hatch out of three chill cabinets;
dips, yoghurts and ready meals.
 
Check out, smelling of garlic and Domestos,
through a tangle of trolleys. More walls,
twenty seven in all now that new estate’s gone up.
A prickle of splinters from the furniture.
 
Your gate; I open,
 
ring the bell without hesitating
and you, catch your surprise before it lands,
pick up your car keys, shrug your feet into shoes
as you close the door behind you.
 
Hushed, gentle, as if you’d found me sleepwalking,
guide me to your car, drive me back home.
Me, sat there, still holding
the words I came with in my mouth.

Sally Clark

Poem published: Printed in Magma 42 Autumn 2008.

Sally Clark’s poem is a remarkable feat of narration. She describes a fantasy journey, one full of urgency and purpose, but her imaginary travels are packed with ordinary, mundane, but almost tangible detail. This makes an extraordinarily powerful impression, so that the ending of the dream-state – a return to the reality of a stuck-for-words status quo – seems magnified beyond endurance.
 

Joy Howard

Commended poems:
 

Mirror, mirror, by Maxine Linnell
Skin, by Amanda Parkyn
Wells-next-the-Sea, by Kate Rhodes
Praise Song, by Laurna Robertson

Jul 09 – Round 2 – month 8; Judge: Wendy French

Only one more month to go in this round before Dilys will select the overall winner for round 2…
 
Our winner this month is Angela Kirby for her poem Trizonia. Congratulations to Angela and to our four commended poets: Alison Brackenbury, Alyson Hallett, Amanda Parkyn and Kate Rhodes (6th time in a row!).

Trizonia

O most excellent donkey who,
not having heard of the sleep button,
woke me three times this morning
with your ancient and execrable lament,
do you bemoan the start
of your over-burdened day
and the end of your brief night’s rest
in this unpromising patch of scrub
or do you, perhaps, grieve for me
who today must leave this incomparable islet
where there are neither cars
nor motorcycles, where nothing
very much happens, apart
from the occasional birth or marriage
and the rather more frequent deaths,
where there is little to see, just Iannis
repainting the peeling mermaid
on his taverna, and his grandmother
taking a broom to the six hollow-ribbed cats
who have stolen yet another chicken-leg,
and the three old men who,
having finished their backgammon
and the last of the ouzo, now take
the sun’s path home across the harbour
in a boat as blue as that clump of scabious
you are considering?

 
Angela Kirby

published in anthology: Speaking English, Five Leaves Press, 2007.

Judge’s comment: Several of the poems I was sent stayed with me throughout the day and night for different reasons. The poems are all so well-crafted that the emotional content creeps through each line without being intrusive to the reader. In the end I decided on Trizonia because of the other world the poem took me to. I could hear and see the donkey and the blue of the scabious. I wanted to be there to see the cats steal the chicken legs and the re-painting of the peeling mermaid. I was left wondering if the donkeys are still braying.
 

Wendy French

The following commended poems will be submitted again to next month’s competition:
 

No, by Alison Brackenbury
The Hare in the Moon, by Alyson Hallett
Skin, by Amanda Parkyn
Wells-next-the-Sea, by Kate Rhodes

Jun 09 – Round 2 – month 7; Judge: Sibyl Ruth

Only two more months to go in this round before Dilys will select the overall winner for round 2…
 
Our winner this month is Caroline Carver for her poem Sedna the Sea Goddess. Congratulations to Caroline and to our four commended poets: Christine Coleman, Anne Kind, Kate Rhodes (5th time in a row!), and Bee Smith.

Sedna the Sea Goddess

The bird turned into a man
so beautiful
snow lay on his shoulders
like ermine

was he petrel or fulmar?
he didn’t say
 
At first he came
only in dreams
one summer night
lay with her
 
at dawn she left her house
to marry him
 
Who could explain
her father’s rage?
His storms reached
across oceans
 
she knew full joy
only six days     before
 
he killed her husband
threw her in his umiak –
pushed her overboard
when winds frightened him
 
she wouldn’t give in
gripped the boat so hard
he had to chop her fingers off
one by one
did not know
as she sank into her new Kingdom
 
they would transform
become    whales   narwhals   seals   walruses…
 
Among those she loves best
Singing Midshipmen
fish which  like humpback whales
sing to the seabirds
 
make sailors who hear them
believe in mermaids

Caroline Carver

Poem published: Acumen.

Judge’s comment: The poem tells a story. Retells it rather. The piece is based around an Inuit folk tale. The language is simple and precise, perfectly measured. The form is spare and restrained. And yet there’s something elusive and uncontrollable here (like the shape-shifting lover) which the reader can’t pin down. This writing is brutal one minute, tenderly lyrical the next. This is a narrative of desire and revenge, loss and transformation. It’s magical.
 

Sibyl Ruth

The following commended poems will be submitted again to next month’s competition:
 

When I Can Choose, by Christine Coleman
My Dad Doesn’t Like Jack, by Anne Kind
Wells-next-the-Sea, by Kate Rhodes
Being Lazarus’ Wife, by Bee Smith

May 09 – Round 2 – month 6; Judge: Anne Stewart

Congratulations to this month’s winner, Elizabeth Rapp, for her poem Ice Garden. Our commended poets this month are Kate Rhodes (4th time in a row!), Denise McSheehy, Clare Crossman and Frances Green (2nd time).

Ice Garden

I begged him for a garden,
hollyhocks and delphiniums.
He gave me grottoes of ice.
No birds sing here: only the sound
of moonlight dreaming snow at midnight.
 
I have become bone carved from ice.
I spin on a needle’s point,
watched by an angel huddled
in snow with icebound wings;
his stricken face as I twirl and twirl.
 
Those dark and subtle hands
have locked me in this kingdom,
this palace of death-white ice.
Floors are as slippery as his lies.
I wander through cubes of refracted light
 
where indigo and jade dance on my silver dress,
turn into birds of paradise.
But today a small brown bird
perched on my wrist, then
gave me a pomegranate seed
from his beak.

Elizabeth Rapp

Poem: Winner of the A.A. Sanders poetry prize, 2000

Judge’s comment: I was told recently that the (competition) winner ‘leaps out at you̵. This is certainly the case here, the shiver up the spine, further inspection confirming a well-wrought and fully accomplished poem, no slip-ups. The form is well-managed and suits the message and delivery. You can feel the cold in this poem, and the movement, the trap and the anxiety, the release in an explosion of light and colour that takes your breath away, finishing with promise, strong and clear; the pomegranate seed and the intimacy of beak-to-lip bringing a whoosh of wider meaning and possibilities. What a great poem.
 

Anne Stewart

The following commended poems will be submitted again to next month’s competition:
 

The Winter Crown, by Clare Crossman
December 1952, by Frances Green
Salt, by Denise McSheehy
Wells-next-the-Sea, by Kate Rhodes

Apr 09 – Round 2 – month 5; Judge: Kate Foley

Congratulations to this month’s winner, Janet Fisher, for her poem Brittle Bones. Our commended poets this month are Kate Rhodes (3rd time in a row!) and Joan Poulson (2nd time), Jane Fraser Esson and Frances Green.

Brittle Bones

birds’ legs, dried stalks
a Chinese vase, a baby’s wave
slivers of green on dead laburnum
tracks translucent up an arm
chalk line on a pavement, a child’s logic
fingers pressing a wine glass stem
change of key on the downbeat
worn paths tracing the grass
a moon thumbprinted on a light sky
an old woman’s face, her knuckles
strands of breath on a sharp morning
cracked glaze on a bedroom jug
its pattern of blue ivy and pouting lip
the roots I clutch at on the way up

Janet Fisher

Poem published: Salt publishing web-page on Salt Publishing site.

Judge’s comment: A powerful sense of fragility and transience is created in this short poem by images which only seem to be random. From the calligraphy of ‘bird’s legs’ to the stasis of ‘dried stalks / Chinese vase’ and on through the fugitive ‘chalk line on a pavement, a child’s logic / fingers pressing on a wine glass stem’, we are being moved skillfully towards a mysterious conclusion. The images haunt each other with delicacy and precision. The ‘I’ who finally appears is clutching at ‘roots … on the way up.’ Which way is up? Perhaps sometimes we must simply settle for being haunted…
 

Kate Foley

The following commended poems will be submitted again to next month’s competition:
 
Four Spanish Widows, by Jane Fraser Esson
December 1952, by Frances Green
Fiery-winged, by Joan Poulson
Wells-next-the-Sea, by Kate Rhodes

Mar 09 – Round 2 – month 4; Judge: Katherine Gallagher

We are pleased to announce that the winning poem this month is There’s Something About a Woman Swallowing Flames by Jennie Osborne. Two of our runners up last month have been commended again: June Hall and Kate Rhodes …

There’s Something About a Woman Swallowing Flames

She kicks her head back: if you’re quick
you spot the hunted fox in her eyes
before it goes to ground. She is diamond tonight
or something decked out as diamond. She spins
so fast you’re trapped in her sleight of hand,
dazzles fire and ice in a fever of smiles.
You don’t think she can do this, her skin is paper-thin
and her hair crackles with static. Her torches hurl
through the air, juggle saffron, electric blue, flame.
Colours skelter up and down the sharp tongues. Spit.
Curse. Bite at the ceiling, the oh so flammable curtains.
A flick of her wrists and the firesnakes
race for her throat, home in on the blaze
under her breastbone. The air catches its breath.
Light fizzes from the copper hair, the copper fingertips.
Your eyes want to bolt for the door,
sidle home but are held in check.
You scent the quick musk of vixen.
She fills the room.

Jennie Osborne

published in anthology, Images of Women, Arrowhead Press in association with Second Light Publications, 2006, ISBN 978-1-904852-14-8

Judge’s comment: Judith Wright said, "Poems should take you somewhere new". Following its eye-catching title, Jennie Osborne’s There’s Something About a Woman Swallowing Flames … passionate, urgent, enigmatic, does just that and dazzles with juxtapositions and sustained tension.
 
At the beginning, the reader is reminded: "if you’re quick / you spot the hunted fox in her eyes / before it goes to ground". The remainder of the poem follows this woman/fox/flame-swallower but concentrates on her performance. "You don’t think she can do this, – (but) Her torches hurl / through the air, juggle saffron, electric blue, flame./ Colours skelter up and down the sharp tongues. Spit". It’s exotic, daring; the fire metaphor "home(s) in" inside her. "The air catches its breath." In spite of everything, our eyes are held, enthralled."You scent the quick musk of vixen. / She fills the room".
 

Katherine Gallagher

The following commended poems will be submitted again to next month’s competition:
 
Brittle Bones, by Janet Fisher
Anniversary, by June Hall
Fiery-winged, by Joan Poulson
Wells-next-the-Sea, by Kate Rhodes

Feb 09 – Round 2 – month 3; Judge: Wendy French

We are pleased to announce that the winning poem is Lipstick by Maggie Butt. This is one of the four poems commended in last month’s competition and chosen this month by judge, Wendy French.

Lipstick

In war time women turn to red
swivel-up scarlet and carmine
not in solidarity with spilt blood
but as a badge of beating hearts.
 
This crimson is the shade of poets
silenced for speaking against torture,
this vermillion is art
surviving solitary confinement,
 
this cerise defies the falling bombs
the snipers taking aim at bread-queues,
this ruby’s the resilience of girls
who tango in the pale-lipped face of death.

Maggie Butt

published in collection, Lipstick, Greenwich Exchange, 2007, ISBN 978-1-8715519-4-5;
published in bilingual (English/Romanian) anthology, And the Story Isn’t Over…, ISBN 978-0-9552040-0-5, and on companion CD, And the Story So Far, poetry p f, 2009

Judge’s comment: I chose Lipstick because of the clever way in which the poem opens right out. It starts with the very domestic/personal/evocative detail of lipstick but then the first line takes the reader straight out of comfort zone in to war-time. The poet is not afraid to tackle the huge implications of war and torture but through the child’s colours of a Windsor and Newton paint box. Here the very personal and impersonal marry to create a disturbing but skilled poem. This is a poem that stays with the reader long after it has been read.
 

Wendy French

The following commended poems will be submitted again to next month’s competition:
 
Anniversary, by June Hall
Eurynome, by Judith Kazantzis
Wells-next-the-Sea, by Kate Rhodes
My Shirt, by Martha Street

Jan 09 – Round 2 – month 2; Judge: Hylda Sims

Our judge this month is Hylda Sims and we are pleased to announce that the winning poem is Dream Cigarette by Lyn Moir.

Dream Cigarette

Not the ritual post-coital, languorously passed from hand to hand,
smoke sucked further down than orgasm’s launch-pad: that’s not the one
comes back in dreams. No, I’m doing something ordinary, some daily task
so boring I’ve no idea what it is, and you’re there with me: it’s as I said,
a dream. We do this thing, we talk, we pass the time companionably
or not, depending if we argue, but the closeness never goes. That’s when
I realise I’m smoking, cigarette in hand as normal as the punctuation mark
it often was, marking conversation stresses with a jab. Still in the dream
I know that this is wrong, recall, in parallel with whatever task we’re doing,
that evening forty years ago when as usual I offered you my Senior Service
and you, who always carried Player’s Navy Cut, said "No, let’s give up now."
Asleep, I feel a twist of longing. Awake, I’m made aware it must have been
a real addiction. But then of course, in dreams I only ever smoke with you.

Lyn Moir

Poem commended in the Second Light Competition 2006 and published in Skeins of Geese – The 100 Poets Anthology (2008) (a StAnza publication).

Judge’s comment: It was hard to choose from an excellent bunch – not one duff poem among them – but finally it had to be Lyn Moir’s Dream Cigarette, for its originality, economy, honesty and humour. It reminds us how the cigarette: 20th Century icon of style and sophistication, especially for women; prop and punctuation to conversation; romantic digestif to sex; has, almost at the touch of a government button, become downright offensive. This poem fixes love and addiction in an utterly unsentimental and believable dream about the pleasure of the past. It’s social history in person and it’s a bit wicked – I like that.
 

Hylda Sims

The following commended poems will be submitted again to next month’s competition:
 
The Frog’s Princess, by Nadine Brummer
Lipstick, by Maggie Butt
The Seal Wife, by Nicolette Golding
My Shirt, by Martha Street

Nov 08 – Round 2 begins; Judge: Anne Ryland

Our judge this month is Ruth O’Callaghan and we are pleased to announce that the winning poem is The Valley by Mimi Khalvati.

The Valley

Through a thin spray of flowers from the valley
(and frailer for the shyness you gave them with),
through sprigs of blue, their minute suns, many
and angled to many corners of the earth,
I saw, not the valley or even the hill
that rose in front of me, but half-imagined
plateaux that lay beyond these disused mills:
meadows waist-high, horizons mountain-rimmed.
 
Wildflowers grow there in abundance, so many
you could reap armfuls of them, cauldrons
of colour stoked with their dyes, cornflowers, teasels
snarling your hair and on your headscarf, apron,
shirt and shawl, the whole sky would spill a pinny
studded with seeds. But thank you, thank you for these.
 

Mimi Khalvati

Poem published in collection The Meanest Flower

Judge’s comment: "Khalvati’s delicate phrasing and imagery marks the poem: her subject matter is seen ‘Through a thin spray of flowers’ and is stronger ‘for the shyness’ with which it is offered. Understated rhymes provide supple strength, a wiry core. Repetition, sparing but effective, is enhanced by skilful line breaks. Lesser poets would have exploited alliteration in ‘cauldrons/ of colour’ by placing it on the same line but Khalvati is always restrained, allowing each word to ease its way into the reader’s consciousness before smoothly enhancing the image. Khalvati exploits the space a page offers.".
 

Ruth O’Callaghan

The following commended poems will be submitted again to next month’s competition:
The Frog’s Princess, by Nadine Brummer
The Seal Wife, by Nicolette Golding
The Pond, by Thelma Laycock
My Cousin, by Merryn Williams

Nov 08 – Round 2 begins; Judge: Anne Ryland

The November competition is the start of a new round and new members since the beginning of the previous round have been added for selection. Our judge this month is Anne Ryland and we are pleased to announce that her winner is Zig Zag by Shelley McAlister.

Zig Zag

                                                           You ask me if I’m north

and I don’t know what to say
 
                                                           the landscapes of my life
 
pull up and down
 
                                                           bite into each other
 
like the teeth of a zip
 
                                                           on the one hand I’m viking blood
 
cold as an icefloe
 
                                                           tough as tundra
 
keen and tenacious I scramble up craggy peaks
 
                                                           disappear into the depths of fjords
 
and the halls of mountain kings
 
                                                           but there’s something else in me
 
something sizzling and soft
 
                                                           like the scarred-sand trails of sidewinders
 
I’m tugged towards shafts of bright sunlight

                                                           whiffs of eucalyptus
 
bittersweet drops of citrus on leathered skin

                                                           I edge southwards a step at a time
 
stride barefoot over the border

                                                           into hot scented sagebrush
 
the chirrup of
 
                                                           tantalising tongues of dust

you follow my footprints up and down
 
                                                           through snow and sand
 
ask if I’m finally south
 
                                                           and I don’t know what to say.

Shelley McAlister

Poem published: in collection Sailing Under False Colours, previously in Rewriting the Map, Vane Women Press anthology, 2003.

Judge’s comment: "This poem kept drawing me back for a rereading, partly because of its arresting shape; the lines seem to be tugging at one another. Zig Zag explores the conflict many of us experience about ‘home’ in its wider sense – where we were born, where we live, where we belong, where we gain inspiration… The poem also has rich imagery and fizzes with energy, carrying us on a glorious journey from north to south.".

Anne Ryland

These four commended poems will be submitted again to next month’s competition:
 
From Brechin to Auchenblae, 1897, by Pippa Little
 
Nappies on my Neighbour’s Washing Line, by Sue Moules
 
The Pond, by Thelma Laycock
 
After the Workshop, by Vicky Wilson

Oct 08 – Overall Winner, round 1; Judge: Dilys Wood
Bilingual, by Lotte Kramer
Listen to the poem:    

This is what Judge, Dilys wood had to say:
 
The poems I looked at were diverse, short narratives. All twisted the heart-strings, which could be why they were chosen. I chose Lotte Kramer’s ‘Bilingual’ because it is iconic – speaking for all who find refuge in a new country and a new language. By the initial focus on the sounds of German, "The Rhineland opens its watery gates", Kramer sweeps us into the heart of her subject and into a mini-drama. Someone (husband?) is speaking his native tongue, crossing bridges into ‘a captive’s continent’, the whole force of a culture, ‘strong currents of thought’ behind the words. The same voice then speaks English. The listener hears tentative sounds, but the whole context is soft and non-threatening. The focus then swings to the listener herself, who confesses confusion, ‘unsure in both languages’. Resolution comes with recognition that both tongues are, in fact, benign. German words nurtured, ‘mothering genes’, and English still opens new possibilities "The other, a constant love affair / Still unfulfilled, a warm / shoulder to touch". The poem combines a wide range of reference and great lyric beauty.

Lotte Kramer has made a recording of the poem to start off Second Light’s Audio Archive. (see link below)

Bilingual

When you speak German
The Rhineland opens its watery gates,
Lets in strong currents of thought.
Sentences sit on shores teeming
With certainties. You cross bridges
To travel many lifetimes
Of a captive’s continent.
 
When you speak English
The hesitant earth softens your vowels.
The sea – never far away – explores
Your words with liquid memory.
You are an apprentice again and skill
Is belief you can’t quite master
In your adoptive island.
 
Myself, I’m unsure
In both languages. One, with mothering
Genes, at once close and foreign
After much unuse. Near in poetry.
The other, a constant love affair
Still unfulfilled, a warm
Shoulder to touch.

Lotte Kramer

Poem published:
in The Desecration of Trees, Hippopotamus press;
Lotte Kramer: Selected and New Poems, Rockingham Press

Listen to Lotte reading Bilingual.

Sep 08 – month 6, round 1; Judge: Anne Stewart

This is the last selection in the current round. At the end of October, Dilys Wood will select an overall winner from the monthly winning poems so far. Poets who added their pages after the start of this round will be added to the next.

September selection: Congratulations to Ann Alexander, this month’s winner, with her poem Turning the Hard Ground.

The four commended poems are by
 
Judith Allnatt, Jill Bonser, Nancy Charley and Jane Fraser Esson – Nancy and Jane’s poems were also commended in the August selection. (links below)

Turning the Hard Ground

A back-of-the-hand man, this.
He had survived a childhood Sunday stern,
as wrapped about with rules
as Leviticus. And so no kisses,
no kind words for us.

And the dog fared worse–never walked,
no, not once. Paced the bare yard,
strapped if he did wrong.
I hear him yelping now.

Sometimes he broke out, raced
the alley like a thrown stick.
Once he came home ripped:
my father held a needle in a flame,
stitched his white hide.
The dog lay still as a pool.

Years later, I came back from school
to a quiet house.
The dog was nowhere. In the yard,
a man I did not recognise
turned the hard ground,
tears raining down.

Ann Alexander

Already intimate with many of these poems, I needed a divorce to enable a fresh and unbiased view. I decided in advance what I would ask of the winning poem. It would convince without a hint of doubt. On re-readings, it would reveal its deeper meanings and convince that the poet believes in them utterly. The language would flow smoothly, no suggestion of syllabic hiccoughs. And it would deliver that ‘something fresh’. Ann Alexander’s "Turning the Hard Ground" did all this for me. A tightly-written and beautiful poem that goes in like a knife and doesn’t come out again.

Anne Stewart

Burns, by Judith Allnatt
Anniversary, by Jill Bonser
Sculling Skills, by Nancy Charley
Four Spanish Widows, by Jane Fraser Esson

Aug 08 – month 5, round 1; Judge: Sibyl Ruth

Congratulations to Joanna Ezekiel, the winner of August’s Poem of the Month for her poem She dreams of going to the cinema on her own.

The four commended poems are by
 
Nancy Charley, Clare Crossman, June English and Jane Fraser Esson. (links below)

She dreams of going to the cinema on her own

Buying a ticket for one.
Pronouncing the name of the film correctly.
Waiting with other matinee-goers –
students, tourists,
a woman with her arm
through her mother’s frail arm,
while film-star cardboard cut-outs
wobble, smiling, on the red carpet.
Choosing a seat, its groan
as she pushes it down,
folding her coat, clutching her bag –
thieves are sssilent.
                              She hears a cough.
She hears the crunch of popcorn.
Nobody in front of her
nobody to her left or to her right,
the lights dimming –
a slow eclipse of the world.

Joanna Ezekiel

Poem published: Envoi 142, 2005, as part of the She Dreams sequence of poems

Joanna Ezekiel’s poem is one of those quiet pieces of writing that sneaks up on you, then can’t be shaken off. We never learn a great deal about the subject, beyond what’s said in the title. And yet there’s an almost overwhelming sense of isolation, pathos. I’m particularly haunted by the ending. Are the woman’s hopes fulfilled as the screening starts? Or does it hint at the ‘lights dimming’ as her whole life finishes…? She dreams of going to the cinema on her own is both subtle and powerful.

Sibyl Ruth

Sculling Skills, by Nancy Charley
The Winter Crown, by Clare Crossman
Family Day, June 1967, by June English
Four Spanish Widows, by Jane Fraser Esson

Jul 08 – month 4, round 1; Judge: Maggie Sawkins

The winner of July’s Poem of the Month is: Sophia’s Hand by Carlotta Miller Johnson.

Commended poets
 
Janice Fixter, Alison Hill, Maria Jastrzębska and Mimi Khalvati. (links below)

Sophia’s Hand

When she took mine in hers
as we were giving each other welcome
 
I knew in that instant we were not sisters
although we were.
 
A chasm appeared. It separated me from her.
A movement of heart.
 
How could I claim a connection
across the distances of daily life?
 
Each morning she walked from her sun-baked house
to pump a debe of water, to forage
 
for a bundle of firewood, to quiet a malaria-hot child,
to weed the maize, sweep the compound,
 
tend the three stone fire to cook maharage, ugali
and worry if the rains would come.
 
Her calloused palm
and mine, soft, educated, pampered.
 

*Swahili words: a debe is a 4 gallon bucket, maharage is a vegetable, ugali is a thick porridge made from ground maize.

Carlotta Miller Johnson

I was drawn by the authenticity of this poem. It begins with a simple gesture, the taking of a hand, and leads the reader ‘across the distances of daily life’ into the world of another, into a world of hardship. There is tension in the contrast between the actual and the abstract questioning. The bold statement in the final couplet takes us back to the beginning, to the moment of epiphany, to skin upon skin. The result is the privilege of the poem penned by the soft hand of the poet.

Maggie Sawkins

City Break, by Janice Fixter
Beyond the Fire, by Alison Hill
Knives, by Maria Jastrzębska
The Valley, by Mimi Khalvati

Jun 08 – month 3, round 1; Judge: Katherine Gallagher

The winner of June's Poem of the Month is: Bilingual by Lotte Kramer.

Commended poets
 
Lyn Moir (2nd month in a row), Denise McSheehy, Gill Learner and Philippa Lawrence. (links below)

Bilingual

When you speak German
The Rhineland opens its watery gates,
Lets in strong currents of thought.
Sentences sit on shores teeming
With certainties. You cross bridges
To travel many lifetimes
Of a captive's continent.
 
When you speak English
The hesitant earth softens your vowels.
The sea – never far away – explores
Your words with liquid memory.
You are an apprentice again and skill
Is belief you can’t quite master
In your adoptive island.
 
Myself, I’m unsure
In both languages. One, with mothering
Genes, at once close and foreign
After much unuse. Near in poetry.
The other, a constant love affair
Still unfulfilled, a warm
Shoulder to touch.
 

Lotte Kramer

Poem published: in The Desecration of Trees, Hippopotamus press; Lotte Kramer: Selected and New Poems, Rockingham Press

Carol Ann Duffy is quoted as saying, ‘A poem… is the attire of feeling: the literary form where words seem tailor-made for memory or desire.’ This statement encapsulates the theme and mood of dividedness and fragmented identity underpinning Kramer’s nostalgic, meditative, very moving poem as she juxtaposes the paradoxes in her situation, speaking from an historic and contemporary stance: ‘When you speak German/…’, ‘When you speak English/…’, culminating in the soul-searing admission of ‘Myself, I’m unsure/In both languages…’ – meanwhile, delineating her bilingual voice with exquisite simplicity and authenticity of tone.

Katherine Gallagher

Dream Cigarette, by Lyn Moir
Salt, by Denise McSheehy
Witch, by Gill Learner
Screen Test, by Philippa Lawrence

May 08 – month 2, round 1; Judge: Wendy French

... and our winner is: Sheltering My Mother by Linda Rose Parkes.

Commended poets
 
2 of the 4 runners up from April have also been selected as runners up this month, so will carry forward again to the June selection: Daphne Rock and Eve Pearce. The remaining 2 this month are Lyn Moir and Gill McEvoy. (links below)

Sheltering My Mother

Suddenly you lose the roof
over your head
and the one thing
which will keep you alive
 
is the grey wool coat
you bought me,
reaching to my ankles,
the one I’m wearing now…
 
Blizzard’s lashing into our faces,
up our sleeves.
The sea, the colour of unfathomed ice,
creaks and moans and
 
drowns out thought
other than this one:
how long can you withstand
such cold?
 
But the coat reaches to its full height,
snuggles us from the wind which flays our lungs
and frost-wraps our limbs
before it bites them off.
 
Huddling in our bear-like tent,
we’ll nestle in its pelt
till morning.
 

Linda Rose Parkes

I remember Penelope Shuttle saying she likes poems that are ‘living poems’ and, for me, this poem is very much alive although the poet and her mother are facing an uncertain future. The metaphor and image of the grey coat are strong because the coat is the one thing that can protect mother and daughter as they face the unknown seas and tides of tomorrow. I’m there in the poem facing the blizzard with them. It’s a poem about love, protection and loss.

Wendy French

Is It Now (in St. George’s Hospital), by Daphne Rock
Green, by Eve Pearce
Dream Cigarette, by Lyn Moir
Bridge, by Gill McEvoy

April 08 – the very first Poem of the Month! – Judge: Hylda Sims

This being the first one, we have decided to kick-start it with 2 poems: the winners are My Cousin (Edith Hemp, d. Bournemouth, 1930) by Merryn Williams and Salmon Nude in Olive Trenchcoat (NFS) by Margaret Wilmot.

Commended poets: Vicky Wilson, Daphne Schiller, Daphne Rock, Eve Pearce (links below)

My Cousin
Edith Hemp d. Bournemouth 1930

She came here – not to rest – to sweep the stairs
and empty chamber pots. The gilded chairs
still stand here, the enormous mirrors throw
my face back as they did hers, aeons ago.
Down these plush corridors she moved, her feet
not echoing – dusting, leaving all things neat.
Somewhere her midget room, a great way up
these stairs. Invisible beneath her cap
to Bournemouth’s guests, but I know who she was;
my flesh, my blood, thrown early from the nest.
A small skimped woman when she was alive,
all siblings lost, unmatched at forty-five.
No trace, not one. Still stands the Grand Hotel
but now she rests. Somewhere in Bournemouth still.
 

Merryn Williams

My Cousin (Edith Hemp d. Bournemouth 1930): A beautifully crafted sonnet of couplets with an important theme – compassion for the hard-working minions unsung by history, unnoticed by the pompous, their ‘feet not echoing’. What a precise, sad picture she draws of dusty, dusting Edith. I love the way she writes, ‘still stands the Grand hotel’, an old-fashioned inversion entirely suitable to its subject and enabling the repetition of ‘still’ to memorably close the poem.
 

Hylda Sims

Salmon Nude in Olive Trenchcoat (NFS)

The nude flashed her intention to step off the canvas
with a salmon blush. The artist thoughtfully scratched
his beard with the tip of his best brush – sable, a present
from his estranged wife, curiously untainted by rancour –
before painting a door, and a man with a beard opening it.
 

Margaret Wilmot

Salmon Nude in Olive Trenchcoat (NFS): This brief and delightfully whacky poem with its tactile internal rhyme ‘blush’ & ‘brush’ and its oily colours ‘salmon’, and ‘olive’ has a properly painterly quality. Hints of bohemian behaviour occurring off canvas set the scene somewhere between Impressionism and Surrealism, Degas and Dali. Though, perhaps ignorantly, I don’t recognise the painting, that doesn’t seem to matter.. ..a door has opened.
 

Hylda Sims

Daphne du Maurier at Ferryside, by Daphne Schiller

Is It Now (in St. George’s Hospital), by Daphne Rock

After the Workshop, by Vicky Wilson

Green, by Eve Pearce