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Each month, fifteen of our members’ poems are considered for the SecondLightLive Poem of the Month slot on the Home page. The poems in this, the third round, are selected by avoiding the alphabetical orders used previously.
The Judge, a Committee member, chooses the winning poem and commends 4 others to carry forward for consideration again in the next month. At the end of the alphabetical round, when all members’ poems have been included in a selection, all the winners of the round are reviewed and an overall winner selected by Second Light’s founder and organiser, Dilys Wood.
Then we start again..!
Committee Members are not eligible to enter the competition. New pages are eligible for entry from the start of the next round.
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.
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
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.
Mammogram, by Anna Avebury
Oxford United, by Elizabeth Birchall
Golden Rule, by Margaret Eddershaw
Nappies on my Neighbour’s Washing Line, by Sue Moules
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
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.
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.
Mammogram, by Anna Avebury
Golden Rule, by Margaret Eddershaw
Praise Song, by Laurna Robertson
Burst Pipe, London N1, by Vicky Wilson
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.
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.
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.
Burns, by Judith Allnatt
Mammogram, by Anna Avebury
Anniversary, by June Hall
Naming Dusk in Dead Languages, by Gill Nicholson
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.
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.
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."
Burns, by Judith Allnatt
Anniversary, by June Hall
Eurynome, by Judith Kazantzis
The Seamstress at Queille, by Sue Rose
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.
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.
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!
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
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)
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.
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
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…
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.
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.
Commended poems:
Mirror, mirror, by Maxine Linnell
Skin, by Amanda Parkyn
Wells-next-the-Sea, by Kate Rhodes
Praise Song, by Laurna Robertson
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!).
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?
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.
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
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.
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
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.
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
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).
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.
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.
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
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.
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
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…
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
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 …
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.
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".
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
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.
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.
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.
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
Our judge this month is Hylda Sims and we are pleased to announce that the winning poem is Dream Cigarette by Lyn Moir.
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.
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.
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
Our judge this month is Ruth O’Callaghan and we are pleased to announce that the winning poem is The Valley by Mimi Khalvati.
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.
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.".
The following commended poems will be submitted again to next month’s competition:
The Frog’s Princess, by Nadine Brummer
The Pond, by Thelma Laycock
My Cousin, by Merryn Williams
(1 other to follow)
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.
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.
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.".
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
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 will be invited to make a recording of the poem to start off Second Light’s Audio Archive.
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.
Poem published:
in The Desecration of Trees, Hippopotamus press;
Lotte Kramer: Selected and New Poems, Rockingham Press
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)
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.
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.
Burns, by Judith Allnatt
Anniversary, by Jill Bonser
Sculling Skills, by Nancy Charley
Four Spanish Widows, by Jane Fraser Esson
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)
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.
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.
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
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)
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.
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.
City Break, by Janice Fixter
Beyond the Fire, by Alison Hill
Knives, by Maria Jastrzębska
The Valley, by Mimi Khalvati
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)
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.
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.
Dream Cigarette, by Lyn Moir
Salt, by Denise McSheehy
Witch, by Gill Learner
Screen Test, by Philippa Lawrence
... 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)
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.
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.
Is It Now (in St. George’s Hospital), by Daphne Rock
Green, by Eve Pearce
Dream Cigarette, by Lyn Moir
Bridge, by Gill McEvoy
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)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
