Excel for Charity News Blog

Bridgewatcher & Other Poems now shipping

noreply@blogger.com (The Blogmaster) — Sun, 02 Nov 2014 11:50:00 +0000

Bridgewatcher & Other Poems

Edited by Mandy Pannett

We are pleased to announce that Bridgewatcher and Other Poems - the anthology of poems from the Psychiatry Research Trust Poetry Competition 2013 has now been published.

Poets featured include Penny Shutt, winner of the first and second prizes, Desmond Kon Zhicheng-Mingde, the third prize winner, and the highly commended Nick Pemberton and Katelin Farnsworth. Others are Lydia Suarez, Denise McSheehy, Miriam Patrick, Kate Harmond Allan, Pat Borthwick, Daniel Roy Connelly, Anne Hamlett, A.C. Clarke, Oz Hardwick, Christopher Luck, Sheila Hamilton, Chris McLaughlin, Brigid Murray, Gabriel Griffin, Rehan Qayoom, Mark Totterdell, Alex Hamilton-Brown, Charlotte Gann, E.E. Nobbs, Roger Elkin, Valerie Bridge, Maria Bennett, Jenny Donnison, Mary Oliver, Camilla Lambert, Tony Watts, Margaret Wilmot, Pat Bowen, Robin Lindsay Wilson, Mantz Yorke.

This anthology is published by SPM Publications in association with Excel for Charity.

Buy Paperback from SPM Publications here. or from www.amazon.com | www.amazon.co.uk

Buy Kindle version from amazon.co.uk

BRIDGEWATCHER & OTHER POEMS

noreply@blogger.com (The Blogmaster) — Tue, 10 Sep 2013 05:15:00 +0000

The Psychiatry Research Trust Anthology

Edited by

Mandy Pannett

Publication date: 29 November 2013

1. PENNY SHUTT – Bridgewatcher (UK)

2. PENNY SHUTT – Pseudoseizures (UK)

3. Desmond Kon Zhicheng-Mingdé - The Old Schoolyard (Hong Kong)

4. Desmond Kon Zhicheng-Mingdé - Reading Trakl and Wittgenstein in a Barnako Prison

5. NICK PEMBERTON - picture book (UK)

6. NICK PEMBERTON – Message to My Son

7. NICK PEMBERTON – Sorting the Empties

8. NICK PEMBERTON – Poem for a Younger Wife

9. KATELIN FARNSWORTH - Faceless flowers (Australia)

10. LYDIA SUAREZ - The Green Post (USA)

11. DENISE MCSHEEHY – Flood

12. DENISE MCSHEEHY - Addicted

13. MIRIAM PATRICK - Dwelling Place (UK)

14. KATE HARMOND ALLAN – Beginning (UK)

15. PAT BORTHWICK - Vanishing Trick (UK)

16. Daniel Roy Connelly - Simon Magus (Italy)

17. Anne Hamlett - Spinning Time (UK)

18. Anne Hamlett - You should go ...

19. A.C. CLARKE - Wild Peter (UK)

20. A.C. CLARKE – Girl in Bath Street

21. OZ HARDWICK - Saturday Blues (UK)

22. OZ HARDWICK – The Gift

23. OZ HARDWICK – The Mandolin Lesson

24. CHRISTOPHER LUCK - Till the puffling comes (UK)

25. SHEILA HAMILTON - Antscape, Hungary (UK)

26. Chris McLaughlin – Perspective (UK)

27. BRIGID MURRAY - Seeing the Sun (UK)

28. BRIGID MURRAY – Hand-Foot Coordinates

29. GABRIEL GRIFFIN - Web Weaver (Italy)

30. REHAN QAYOOM - Africa Come Back (UK)

31. MARK TOTTERDELL – Niche (UK)

32. ALEX HAMILTON-BROWN - The Garden (Canada)

33. CHARLOTTE GANN - Gordon’s (UK)

34. E.E. Nobbs - Altitudes of Meeting and Parting (Canada)

35. ROGER ELKIN - Patchwork Language

36. VALERIE BRIDGE - I remember leaving

37. MARIA BENNETT – Evening Came and Morning Came (UK)

38. JENNY DONNISON - Memento Mori (UK)

39. MARY OLIVER - The Exploding Horse, 1922 (UK)

40. CAMILLA LAMBERT - Frou-frou at the Panorama

41. CAMILLA LAMBERT – Acting My Age

42. TONY WATTS - Five poets take a walk in the country (UK)

43. MARGARET WILMOT - Bonfire Ashes

44. PAT BOWEN - Taking the Weight (UK)

45. PAT BOWEN – Kelp Stalk

46. ROBIN LINDSAY WILSON - The Cure (UK)

47. MANTZ YORKE – Endurance (UK)

Please direct all enquiries to excelforcharity@easternlightepm.com

The Psychiatry Research Trust Poetry Competition 2013 Results & Judge’s Report

noreply@blogger.com (The Blogmaster) — Fri, 30 Aug 2013 22:46:00 +0000

JUDGE’S REPORT

There was a very strong selection of poems entered for this competition. Maybe an underlying awareness of the chosen charity contributed to the number of poems that came over as both personal and reflective – an overwhelming number touched on the theme of memory, its importance and strengths as well as its transience and loss.

I had no problem choosing my winners. The problems came with the ones I had to leave out. There were many that couldn’t make the final list and I can’t list them all here. I must mention one in particular – ‘The Green Post’. I was sad not to be able to place such an excellent poem.

A quick mention also for the following: ‘Flood’, ‘Dwelling Place’, ‘Beginning’, ‘Kelp Stalk’, ‘Vanishing Trick’ .All these, together with the winning poems and many other strong contenders will, I hope, be in this autumn’s anthology where others may share my enjoyment.

1^ST Bridgewatcher

I have read this piece countless times now and each time it strikes me as faultless, a perfect poem. The reader is led slowly through the situation – a patient who toys with the ‘quivering possibility’ of suicide’ and a psychiatrist/doctor who, while feeling powerless to help except with medication, can empathise with the horror of the childhood experience of seeing a man ‘let go and drop’ from a bridge into the ‘unshimmering depths’. The memory of this shocking event includes not only the actual falling but the heart stopping seconds before, the ‘sickening courage/of that hand/letting go of the rail.’

‘Bridgewatcher’ is an unforgettable poem, well crafted and written with sensitivity and compassion. An outstanding winner.

2^nd Pseudoseizures

This poem is both beautiful and shocking – beautiful in the way it describes the ‘comfort’ in defencelessness of a seizure and shocking in the relentless detailing of the stages of convulsion and the poignancy of the years of endurance since the ‘original undoing’ of the ‘nine year old self’.

There is so much to admire in this brave and important poem, particularly the poet’s careful and delicate use of language to peel back the layers of an experience in which the seizure itself feels almost orgasmic in its reaching the ‘very crux’ of ‘self-abandonment’.

3^rd The Old School yard

This is a poem about the sadness and pain of nostalgia with its overlay of loss and impermanence.

I have particularly selected this poem as a winner for its choice of evocative details, the careful delineation of the four friends and the need they share for dreams and imagined lives and also for the bitter-sweet poignancy of the ‘litany’ of experiences which may be seen as no more than ‘postcards’ or ‘scrawled prattle’ but which, somewhere in the depths of memory, are still ‘precious’.

Highly Commended: picture book

It was a joy to find this poem among the entries – the kind of writing I love that explores and imaginatively plays with language. The repetitions of phrases and images are used so skilfully here, revealing layers and layers of meaning through the subtleties of words.

Highly Commended: Faceless flowers

Here we have an almost unbearably sad poem which I chose for its structure, its back story, its careful selection of details to convey emotions and for such perfect lines as ‘feelings rubbing, battling the days, the sun streaming in, the sky cracking, my words falling like silk.’

A beautiful poem. I wish it could have been placed higher.

My congratulations to the winners and many thanks to all entrants.

Mandy Pannett

THE RESULTS

First Prize: Bridgewatcher – Penny Shutt (UK)

Second Prize: Pseudoseizures – Penny Shutt

Third Prize: The Old School Yard – Desmond Kon Zhicheng-Mingde (Hong Kong)

Highly Commended: Picture Book – Nick Pemberton (UK)

Highly Commended: Faceless Flowers - Katelin Farnsworth (Australia)

These poems together with others selected by the judge will be published in the anthology: Bridgewatcher and Other Poems in October 2013. The full list of poems selected for the anthology will be published on the 10^th of September.

Where the Chicken Pecked

noreply@blogger.com (The Blogmaster) — Sun, 09 Jun 2013 22:45:00 +0000

By Mary Oliver

It occurs to you one day

that your parents,

like your favourite chicken

they slaughtered for Sunday lunch,

will die.

You lie down in the warm grass

of a sunlit field and you cry.

You cry till they find you.

They put you to bed, still crying.

You hear them outside your bedroom door,

What can it be? It’s not her usual grizzling.

They take it in turns

to come in and sit beside you on your bed.

What is it? You must say.

They even begin to get cross.

But of course you can’t tell them.

You don’t want to hurt their feelings.

The next day you put it behind you,

never give it another thought

not until first one dies

then the other

leaving you a few years in which to enjoy

the freedom of a late orphanage.

You’re thinking about it again now, aren’t you?

Death. You think about it a lot.

You’re thinking how good it’ll be

to return to the field where you cried,

where the chicken pecked.

Where the Chicken Pecked was highly commended in the African Prisons Project Poetry Competition 2013

Mary Oliver writes from Newlyn, Cornwall.

Another Story

noreply@blogger.com (The Blogmaster) — Sun, 09 Jun 2013 22:32:00 +0000

after Catherine Smith

By Julie Mellor (UK)

She took a basket and gathered windfalls. Their dead weight

pulled at her shoulders as she lugged them indoors.

She took a bone-handled knife from the kitchen drawer,

the one her father had used to carve the beef.

She sliced the apples clean down the middle, their pips

like tiny wooden lungs.

When the children came home there was nothing to eat

except hard cubes of turnip left over from the lantern

she’d made, the lantern now grinning candle light

in the kitchen window, and slices of apple

sour enough to make them squint.

She removed their squints with the point of the knife,

threaded them with cotton and strung them above the Aga

where they dried like honesty. When her husband came home

she wound the garland of squints around his neck,

told him she was already late, grabbed the bone-handled knife

and fled into the night.

The knife acted like a compass, pointing North.

She followed its lead, walked until the soles of her shoes

wore thin and the wet uppers were soft as cardboard.

Thorns snagged her tights; her white skin shone through the holes

like a scattering of silver coins, or the thumbprints

of her children as they had gripped her wrist.

Another Story won the first prize, African Prisons Project Poetry Competition 2013

Julie Mellor lives in Penistone, near Sheffield, and teaches English at a local secondary school. After gaining a degree in English at the University of Huddersfield, she went on to do an MA in Writing at Sheffield Hallam, followed by a PhD, which she completed in 2003. Her poems have appeared in magazines and anthologies, including Brittle Star, Mslexia, The Rialto and Smiths Knoll. Her pamphlet, Breathing Through Our Bones, was published by Smith Doorstop in 2012.

Mumbue Sonnet

noreply@blogger.com (The Blogmaster) — Sun, 09 Jun 2013 15:47:00 +0000

By John Gallas (UK)

‘the full man knows not the hungry, or the rider the walker’

I’m walkin in my feet to Mumbue.

The sun comes up. I’m crackling like a chicken.

Whoa, I’m happy. Somethin’s comin, kickin

clouds of yeller grit behin me. Hey!

Stop ! It don’t. Who cares ? It whirls away.

I seen inside the flyin cotton curtain –

Business sat with Care. My toes are hurtin.

Whoa, I got to walk another day.

How quick they fly to worry. What I got

the other end improves with ev’ry gleam

along the long horizon, fat an’ hot.

Whyever hurry ? Happiness will keep,

an’ sorrow passes. Sleep, my baby, sleep.

Mumbue Sonnet won third prize in the African Prisons Project Poetry Competition 2013

Not a Third World Country

noreply@blogger.com (The Blogmaster) — Sun, 09 Jun 2013 15:38:00 +0000

By Katelin Farnsworth

I’m going to be honest –

because no one else ever is

my first world problems are totally first world blessings

I had barely been alive when I thought I knew it all, I felt like I was down there with you, that I really understood your dilemma. That even though I had never actually witnessed a war or been a part of any bombing,

I definitely understood your pain.

just let me facebook these feelings first.

oh wait
here I am – I’m not in a warzone at all! Here I am.

putting tulips on the window sills painting my face
I wouldn’t know pain if it hit me boom in the mouth

I actually can’t bear to think about the spiders and scorpions

ear bleeding thoughts

trapped deep

so instead I worry about:
black stockings “pull them up higher”
red lips bleached teeth,
always repeating a little mantra to myself

this is like so totally not a third world country.

Not a Third World Country was highly commended in the African Prisons Project Poetry Competition 2013

A Letter to the Outside

noreply@blogger.com (The Blogmaster) — Sun, 09 Jun 2013 15:31:00 +0000

By Katelin Farnsworth (Australia)

You bang on about feelings,
as if you could have any.

I want you to know that the gentleman

in the long white coat is here again,

and everything you said sits on my skin,
ugly mulberry bruises that ache.

The glass in here loosens itself

in small window frames.

I am forever tracing the dust with my fingers,

imagining that somewhere, another version of me

is circling the skies, saying beautiful things.

Remember those dirty eggs you brought in?

They were the same colour as your eyes.
but what would I do with eggs?
Really, I don’t need your eyes.

Oh, here we go again.
I’d know that slack mouth anywhere.
Please put your tongue away. I don’t want

to see it smack against the front of your teeth.

I don’t feel like hearing your apology
and I’m not going to read your letter.

Don’t write back.

A Letter to the Outside won second prize in the African Prisons Project Poetry Competition 2013.

African Prisons Project Short Story Competition 2013 Cancelled

noreply@blogger.com (The Blogmaster) — Wed, 05 Jun 2013 06:17:00 +0000

We regret that after the extension of entry deadline and hundreds of email invitations to authors to enter the African Prisons Project Short Story Competition, we only managed to receive 14 entries to this competition. This poor response to the competition means that it hardly raised any money at all for the charity and we are not persuaded that there are enough entries to make the competition fierce enough.

We have no option but to cancel this competition and will be refunding all the entrants their full entry fees. We will be in touch with all entrants within 7 days. Speed of contact will depend on whether they entered by e-mail or by post.

If you have any questions about this, please contact excelforcharity@easternlightepm.com

Judge’s Report & Results, African Prisons Project Poetry Competition 2013

noreply@blogger.com (The Blogmaster) — Wed, 05 Jun 2013 06:06:00 +0000

We are pleased to announce the results of the first African Prisons Project Poetry competition judged by Bob Beagrie.

Judge’s Report

It was both a pleasure and as always a challenge to act as a judge for the competition. The entries varied dramatically in subject matter, style, form and tone and upon first reading them all I felt somewhat overwhelmed at the task of narrowing them down to a handful of the best entries. However, after several careful rereads I had shortlisted twenty of the poems that particularly stood out to me, showing originality, flair, a control of form, a clarity of language, which seemed to work on a number of different levels, which played with ambiguity while having something to say, and which also represented a distinctive and compelling voice.

The five poems I finally settled on as the winning three and the two highly commended all continued to surprise and intrigue me, even after multiple readings, all show an awareness of the dynamics and tensions between form and content and play with contrasting discourses, each held something of the common-place experience but transformed it through lyrical compression, striking language, suggestion and implication so that it resonates, gains weight and seems to blossom in the mind into unexpected significances and feelings you recognise but had never before quite manage to name.

To me good poetry opens your eyes, reveals something new, but it is not just the eyes that look out upon the world it opens but the eye that is trained inwards at the ways in which we respond to the world and its circumstances. The five poems all in some way succeeded in this, but I’d like to make a few observations about the three winning pieces:

‘Another Story’s precise ordinary detail of objects and actions is deftly turned by startling touches of abstraction into fairy tale tropes that give it an archetypal bearing, without losing its footing in an identifiable world while we are, before we know it, swept away into the uncanny.

The mix of abrupt conversational, even accusational, address, sharp imagistic detail and the shifts to a more intimate, confessional tone in ‘A letter to the outside’ gives this poem an unsettling and powerful dynamic. The gentleman in the long white coat, the mulberry bruises, the sudden introduction of the image of dirty eggs, their association to eyes, the slack mouth all conjure an uneasy atmosphere we must enter tentatively with suspended faith in the reliability of the language given.

The fine control of form while employing a clear voice in non-standard English in ‘Mumbue Sonnet ‘ creates an exciting defamiliarising effect that brings the reader up sharp and tells us to take note, this is not what we might first assume it to be, and few things ever are. It is full of striking phrases ‘I’m walking in my feet to Mumbue’ ‘ I’m crackling like a chicken’ and the emotions of happiness and sorrow mentioned are all part of the trek.

Bob Beagrie

Results

Ist Prize – Another Story – Julie Mellor (UK)

2^nd Price – A letter to the outside – Katelin Farnsworth (Australia)

3^rd Prize - Mumbue Sonnet – John Gallas (UK)

Highly Commended

Not a third world country – Katelin Farnsworth

Where The Chicken Pecked – Mary Oliver (UK)

The winning and highly commended poems will be published in the Excel for Charity News Blog on Friday 7^th of June, 2013.

Congratulations to the prizewinners.

Excel for Charity Competitions update

noreply@blogger.com (The Blogmaster) — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 11:01:00 +0000

Current Competitions

There are now just 12 days left to enter the African Prisons Project Poetry and Short Story Competitions judged by Bob Beagrie and Alison Lock respectively. These competitions will close on the 20^th of March in aid of this national charity helping to procure justice, dignity, education and rehabilitation to prisoners across Africa.

Why should you be bothered about prisoners in Africa?

- Many inmates in African prisons today have been detained for several years without being charged with any crime, without having been tried or convicted, and many of them don’t even know why they are there. African Prisons Project helps get justice and freedom for such people.

- Many convicted inmates in African prisons did not receive a fair trial and did not even have access to a lawyer. African Prisons Project helps get some of these cases reviewed and convictions overturned if found to be unsafe.

- There are children born in prison to convicted mothers. These children end up becoming prisoners from birth as they often have nowhere else to go. African Prisons Project provides education and skills to these young people as their passports out of jail.

- There are some prisoners who actually committed the crimes for which they have been convicted. Many of these crimes were committed on the back of extreme poverty and lack of direction. No excuse but that is true. They come out of prison and reoffend if they have nothing going for them. By rehabilitating these prisoners, giving them education and skills to get gainfully employed when they leave prison, African Prisons Project is helping reduce crime.

Your poem or short story could help somebody live a safer, fuller life today. Visit http://easternlightepm.com/excelforcharity/current-competitions/

Past Competitions

Results of the Swale Life Poetry Competition, January 2013

THE RESULTS

First Prize

Al McClimens - Puppy Love

Second Prize

Madeline Parsons - Deep Beneath the Waves

Third Prize

Jim Sitch – Nailbow

Highly Commended

Judith Neale – Ties that Bind

Keith Shaw – The Swans

Judge’s report available here: http://excelforcharity.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/swale-life-poetry-competition-january.html

Results of The Tryangle Project Poetry Competition 2013

the two Highly Commended poems are:

MANDY PANNETT - Intruders and Thieves

CAROLINE MALDONADO - The Lost Library of Jesi

Third Prize

CAROLINE PRICE - To Iken and back

Second Prize

A.C. CLARKE - My Private Collection

First prize

CAROLINE MALDONADO - Kite-surfer

Judge’s report available here: http://excelforcharity.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/judges-report-and-results-tryangle.html

Swale Life Poetry Competition January 2013, Judge’s Report and Results

noreply@blogger.com (The Blogmaster) — Fri, 01 Mar 2013 19:20:00 +0000

Judges Report by Derek Adams.

It is a daunting task being faced with a massive pile of poems knowing that you have to pick a few winning poems out of them. In the end of course they pick you.

After reading through all the poems the first time there is a small percentage that can be easily discarded because the poets have not proofread the copy that was sent off, typos, uncorrected spelling mistakes or worse perhaps incorrect ‘spell-check’ corrections that have slipped in! A second read-through weeds those that look like someone’s first attempt at poetry, heartfelt but not a poem. Then there are the poems written by someone who has not read any poems written since the 19^th Century, who write lines in Yoda speak ‘to make rhymes at the end of the line sit’.

By now you have 50% to 70% left of competent, crafted, creative writing. I read these with an increasingly critical eye, looking for: clichés, unneeded adjectives, obvious or over-explained endings, nice poem but so what? It doesn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know. Eventually I ended up with a baker’s dozen of good poems, crafted, honed, not a word wasted, all separated from each other by less than a cigarette paper’s width. Then personal bias starts slipping in, here is a good poem and I like it and here is another good poem and I like it, but for some reason you can’t quite put your finger on, one sings to you in a way the other doesn’t.

When I got down to the top five, it is a bit like trying to say which of my children I prefer! But as a judge it was my job to choose, so here is my final choice and why.

First prize: Puppy Love, this is a dark poem, it starts dark and builds. You can’t call it a slow burn because it is pretty black all the way through, but nothing prepared me for the last two chilling lines. I have now read this poem perhaps twenty or more times and it still makes the goosebumps rise. Apart from that the lines are perfectly judged (note to self, I must make my line endings as tight as this). Each stanza does its job in creating its own little vignette and still moving the whole poem on.

Second prize: Deep Beneath the Waves, is a dream of a dream poem, with pin sharp surreal images. Domesticity is distant and dreaming, but close are dangerous metaphors that rise from the ocean of the subconscious.

Third prize: Nailbow, a poem in the shape of a bow, was a bit of a creeper. I liked it on first reading but it felt a bit odd. The more times I read the poem the more it stood out and I realised that what I had at first found odd was part of its charm. The poem has a good rhyme scheme which is kept consistent without feeling forced. A wealth of intricate detail about the bow’s construction makes everything sound plausible and allows you to accept the fantastic elements.

Highly Commended

Ties That Bind, is the sad story of a mother who attempted suicide four times and is re-reading her suicide notes in her old age, looking back at ‘…yesterday’s sorrow/ like it’s a mouse turd/ found under the sink.’ This poem is spare with not a wasted word and brutally touching.

The Swans, a novel twist on an idea from a familiar fairy tale, engaging and beautifully told.

THE RESULTS

First Prize

Al McClimens - Puppy Love

Second Prize

Madeline Parsons - Deep Beneath the Waves

Third Prize

Jim Sitch – Nailbow

Highly Commended

Judith Neale – Ties that Bind

Keith Shaw – The Swans

To Iken and back

noreply@blogger.com (The Blogmaster) — Fri, 01 Mar 2013 17:04:00 +0000

CAROLINE PRICE

Walk along the Alde’s meanders

from the maltings; leave the concert hall behind

and the sculptures and climb to the thin path

along the dyke: in thirty years

nothing has changed – within minutes

the only sounds are the hush of wind in the rushes

and birds crying. The duckboards tread over

your past, its creeks and channels

trailing their debris, a strong familiar odour.

Go past the field where you picnicked

to where, below a stand of trees

the tides have carved that sudden, surprising cove,

a beach hidden from the by-road

where you left the car, dragging the dinghy down

the slope of dark sand: those are the tracks,

still visible, and there a boat still, moored

and shimmering, just out of reach.

The cove is full now, washed with grey

to a perfect scallop, half-submerged.

How important the tides, how delicate

the timing; you have only a couple of hours

to push between withies into the deeper water,

feeling the lurch and uprighting

of the little vessel, hearing the sharp crack

as the sail tautens, fills. Launch yourself

into the river, beyond its troublesome reaches;

forget for a moment how hard the boat is

to manoeuvre, its capsizes, a sister

doubled up laughing as you cousin in a panic

hurls himself upwards and runs

howling along the flattened mast

like a boy running on water…This is the place,

and here the upturned peeling hull

that was here then, and the old lime pit;

walk far enough and you will pass the kiln

burning again, the Anchor risen from waste grass

Serving the sailors and draymen;

the voices you hear now are theirs, or carry

from the salt works or from Iken church,

alone on its spit, gazing clearly

across reeds to the far side of the river –

Walk back to Iken; you have

forgotten nothing, and it is not sad,

the river narrows and widens again

but everyone you loved is still with you.

‘To Iken and back’ won third prize in the TRYangle Project Poetry Competition 2012.

My Private Collection

noreply@blogger.com (The Blogmaster) — Fri, 01 Mar 2013 15:36:00 +0000

A.C. CLARKE

(Glasgow)

Smells of stuffed birds moulting, mothballs, ether.

I walk the shiny linoleum between cases

where dogfish hang suspended like lifeboats,

enter one room through an aisle of whale-ribs,

a room of narwhal skulls, each rapiered jaw

fineboned as the brow of a unicorn.

Trays of pierced butterflies spread wings whose sheen

dulled long ago, here are corals and sponges

Brittling in the parched air, all colour leached,

sets of teeth on the grin, knucklebones, ox-horns,

tucked in a drawer wadded with packing, eggs

which will never hatch. A second drawer

holds beetles ranged by size, glazed over time

to monochrome brown. I am searching for something

not this timber wolf’s faked snarl, canines gleaming,

against a painted backdrop, nor that tattered bear

propped on hindlegs, claws impotently curved.

The exit, perhaps? It is arrowed in green neon.

Darkness is falling. Through tall windows

trees flail their branches, a strip of road

unwinds into the distance. Christmas lights

swing wildly, roped from gibbet to iron gibbet.

In here the temperature never varies,

nothing moves, or can move, unless in slow

degeneration. I am at home with that stasis,

the hush that coats the rooms thick as dust.

Once outside I might hear on the wind

the voices of rain which are also the voices

of children. I might remember

what I left to wait like clagged boots at the door.

‘My Private Collection’ won second prize in the TRYangle Project Poetry Competition 2012

Intruders and Thieves

noreply@blogger.com (The Blogmaster) — Fri, 01 Mar 2013 14:48:00 +0000

MANDY PANNETT

(Pulborough)

A single bird is awake in a tree

there’s a rasp of crows

a hoot from an owl ...

Two stone owls at the back of the house

look sad in this half-light.

Their feathers are chipped.

Remember that day? That country fair?

We came home with chutneys and jams

and a pair of owls, one each.

At first they stood by the step at the front.

You said they were guardians keeping us safe

from all intruders and thieves.

Now they are under the cherry tree

veiled in every tumbling blossom which drifts

at the end of spring.

Well I don’t care, they can stay there forever –

weathering, grubbier by the day –

since you’re not here

to wash the pigeon droppings off

or tease the grit from their grey-green plumes

with an old toothbrush.

Anyway

they failed to keep intruders out

since you decided to let one in...

Was it in darkness when you did,

silently, like the wing-beats of an owl

and as stealthily?

Beautiful, the hooting owl:

sand and salt in a glow of beige, wings like canopies

of velvet, a long and pausing call –

but vicious, born to kill.

That’s its nature, I suppose, to ravage

and eat hearts.

‘Intruders and Thieves’ was highly commended in the TRYangle Project Poetry Competition 2012

The Lost Library of Jesi

noreply@blogger.com (The Blogmaster) — Fri, 01 Mar 2013 14:42:00 +0000

CAROLINE MALDONADO

(London)

They handled them with cotton gloves. Leather covers

tooled in gold, paper from Fabriano, printed woodcuts

from Bologna: manuscripts, almanacs, books of poetry

and philosophy, science and history; mappa mundi

and the first edition of the Divine Comedy. They lifted

bevelled bookshelves, levered panels from the walls

and as they worked the sun spilled centuries of light

through slits in the shutters across the marble tiles.

Until behind the coffered panels they discovered

fissured stones opening to a sealed room, windowless

and cool, with columns fallen under a hemispheric dome,

shadows curled asleep in empty niches along the walls.

The men crawled inside that chamber’s deepest quiet

where one or two still could hear the beating of a heart.

The Lost Library of Jesi was highly commended in the TRYangle Project Poetry Competition 2012.

Kite-surfer

noreply@blogger.com (The Blogmaster) — Fri, 01 Mar 2013 12:10:00 +0000

Caroline Maldonado

(London)

Oh how you skim the water, lean on air

and twist into wind, how you lift over waves,

your kite above you like a segment of moon!

Watching from the sands, our hearts too are high,

willing you ever further. But now do you fall?

Each of us thinks of what’s failing or failed,

dying or on the brink: we mourn our lost rapture.

A long while you lie prostrate on water until the moon

loops and climbs, lifts you in its shadow.

‘Kite-Surfer’ won first prize in the TRYangle Project Poetry Competition 2012.

JUDGE’S REPORT AND RESULTS, THE TRYANGLE PROJECT POETRY COMPETITION 2012

noreply@blogger.com (The Blogmaster) — Fri, 01 Mar 2013 11:58:00 +0000

JUDGE’S REPORT BY GABRIEL GRIFFIN

The beginning was easy – a handful of poems had the poet’s name below and I had to disqualify them –please remember competition entries must not bear any name or other mark of identification! Then I turned to the bulk of the poems and the selection process proved far more difficult. It is clear that the standard of poems entered into competitions has improved enormously in recent years, due, I guess, to wider reading, to workshops and creative writing courses – or to all three. I read all the poems with interest and at least twice before coming up with a long list.

(One point I wish to make regarding layout – a font that is too large (16 point) is almost as tiring to read as one too small, and double spacing in a poem is usually unnecessary. Ideally use Times font size 12, with 1.15 line spacing and reasonably wide margins.)

Overview

An open theme ensured a wide variety of subject matter, including quite a shocking number of distressing poems relating episodes of domestic abuse. (Very often in these latter poems the strong emotions obviously felt overwhelmed the poetry – it’s understandable.) There were poems about personalities: Edith Piaf, Mozart’s sister, Keats, Mrs Darwin and one referring to Jimmy Saville, as well as lighter ones about dancing, amber, rivers, trees, and the more serious subjects of birth and death. Once upon a washday is a poem likely to be quickly eliminated from most competitions since it is in rhyme and metre and the subject sounds rather old-fashioned, but it was a pleasure to read. I also liked Day Trip, Gap, Building Blocks, Moth, The Honey Times (a comforting poem about old age) and The Seafarer, a poem well-constructed. And others. All made for fascinating reading – but also for difficulty in deciding which to list and which to reject.

Long list (in random order)

By the 0ld Lock-Gate; Not Now, Not Yet; On the Cards; Origami; Recital on the Perfumer’s Organ; Book Louse Lace; On meeting Jean Paul Sartre; At the Barber’s; For love of a burning bush; Swan on the A46; The World Begins at the Kitchen Table;

All these were well-written. By the Old Lock Gate and Not Now, Not Yet, describe episodes of violence, the first in essential language the drowning of a puppy by boys, watched in silent horror by much younger boys afraid to intervene. The persona in the second is a suicide bomber, a monologue reminiscent of Carol Ann Duffy’s Education for Leisure. Another monologue, On the Cards, well-written, with only two long sentences for the 29 lines, begins and ends neatly with the identical phrase. I liked Origami, the folding of paper to produce birds, rabbits, frogs, is beautifully described. A plethora of delicious scents flows from the Recital on the Perfumer’s Organ; Book Louse Lace is a small gem of a poem. On Meeting Jean Paul Sartre describes that meeting in a concise, rather amusing way – loved “Simone de Beauvoir was in the background so we couldn’t say much”. The subject matter of At the Barber’s is just that, a good description of the barbers and of the hair-cutting. More mysterious is For love of a burning bush that reads rather like an admonition to someone seeking a mystical experience. Both Swan on the A46 and The World Begins at the Kitchen Table are descriptions of past happenings remembered. In the first poem the person’s mind shifts the simile she originally employed for the fallen swan (that of an angel) to “a ghost, or soul/that of a child who has left home”. The second is written from the point of view of children witnessing in silence their father’s violence towards their mother and ends with the line “God was Dad’s friend and we knew it”.

Short list (in random order)

To Whom Crime is a Theory; Half-Gone; Squat; The Teacher’s Lot; Meeting Point; The Ghost of Banquo Speaks; Mr Micawber writes to Mrs Micawber, from King’s Bench Debtors’ Prison; What historians, vicars, geographers and mapmakers can’t help being dumb about, but the locals know.

To Whom Crime is a Theory is a political poem, a deeply-felt admonition to those in power to face up to reality and do something about effectively resolving crime, ending “The day approaches when you will ring 999/Only to find yourselves in a dialling queue/Your wait enlivened by mood music”.

Half-Gone is a very well-sustained metaphor for old ideas; a short poem – only 9 lines – but extremely vivid: “The old ideas…held together/dangerously with board and barbed wire”.

Squat is a poem about fear. A woman is alone with her baby in a squat. She has come from another country, doesn’t know the language of the country she is in, daren’t go out and is terrified: “in the night/ the animals and peering faces peeled themselves/from the despairing plaster and/ danced into the air, scurrying dimly around the squat”. This poem makes one wonder how many women are in a similar terrible situation. A note: the poet has capitalized the initial letter of most lines but not all; please be consistent, either all lines are capitalized or only those following a full stop.

The Teacher’s Lot is in rhyme and ‘reports’ children’s speech as the teacher hears it, “I’ve got a calculator like what adds/so I won’t have to do it in me ‘ead”. Notwithstanding the incorrect grammar, the teacher predicts in each case a future profession for the student. An amusing, original, most enjoyable and optimistic poem.

Meeting Point is a fine sonnet, employing the image of a tiger to illustrate the options available to all of us, “One way the grazing herd, one way the gun – “; choices, however, whose desired outcomes may well be annulled by fate.

The Ghost of Banquo Speaks has Banquo ranting in chain-rhymed quatrains against Macbeth, Lady M and the witches, an extremely well-written formal poem.

Mr Micawber writes to Mrs Micawber, from King’s Bench Debtors’ Prison is very enjoyable. Micawber, fearing a pauper’s grave, in his letter to his wife, composes his epitaph: “Here lies Micawber, dead and cold as flint/lived well, loved much, spent more, so perished – skint.” But ends optimistically, just like the figure of Micawber.

What historians, vicars, geographers and mapmakers can’t help being dumb about, but the locals know is about those mentioned in the title not knowing where in that area – a “a coccyx on the Pennine spine” and a “god-forsaken place” – rises the river Trent, and ends, in contrast with the prosaic body of the poem, with the lyrical lines ( employing lots of gurgling ‘l’ sounds) “where the daughter of the water-god/ girds up her loins, lifts her head/and trills till her heart spills out”.

Prize-winners and Highly Commended

Choosing from the final poems – my short-short list - was extremely difficult, they were all deserving to be winners.

The contenders – seven for five prizes: Intruders and Thieves; Kite-surfer; Darwinius masillae; My Private Collection. The Lost Library of Jesi; To Iken and back; Stoughton Church.

Intruders and Thieves has some lovely images: two stone owls “under the cherry tree/veiled in every tumbling blossom which drifts/at the end of spring” act as guardians to keep out intruders. But they failed, the ‘you’ in the poem – the husband? – lets one in. The poet doesn’t explain if the intruder is a betrayal or, perhaps, death.

Kite-surfer is an intriguing poem and every line is delightful, each word chosen with extreme care. It is written from the point of view of observers who see a surfer “lift over waves/your kite above you like a segment of moon” A poem about endeavor and failure, of longings and loss, and ends “A long while/ you lie prostrate upon the water till the moon/loops and climbs, lifts you up in its shadow.”

Darwinius masillae recounts of fossils found in a quarry that the poet sees as “a time-line”, the fossils “entries in a journal of millennia” and one, that of the poem’s title, “ a creature with opposable thumbs/etched on the ancient rock/reaches out, takes our hand.”

My Private Collection is about a museum – or is this really a dream or, perhaps, the poet’s mind – in which the poet searches for something he can’t name through “an aisle of whale-ribs” and rooms with cases “where dogfish hang suspended like lifeboats”. A grim Darwinian-museum ambience with some extremely vivid images; a very disturbing poem, ending “Once outside I might hear on the wind/the voices of rain which are also the voices of children. I might remember/what I left to wait like clagged boots at the door.” (N.B. ‘clagged’: while I understood this word to mean clotted with mud or similar, it is, according to the Urban Dictionary, also used to describe someone who is ‘suffering from symptoms of memory loss or disconnection from society”. Here the latter definition fits nicely!)

The Lost Library of Jesi consists of seven couplets describing men carefully dismantling a library of antique books and papers and finding behind the shelves a sealed room., with “columns fallen under a hemispheric dome/shadows curled asleep in empty niches along the walls.” The poem ends with “the men crawled inside that chamber’s deepest quiet/where one or two still could hear the beating of a heart.” As far as I can ascertain (Google), although Jesi is the name of an actual Italian town, the lost library of the title never existed, so it is a delightful conceit on the part of the poet.

In To Iken and Back the poet returns after thirty years to the cove where she (I’m guessing the poet is a she) went boating as a child. It is told masterfully (in 45 lines with no stanza breaks), the present and recollections of the past flowing easily in and out of the poem like the tides in the cove that is “…full now, washed with grey/to a perfect scallop”. It ends “…you have/ forgotten nothing and it is not sad/ the river narrows and widens again/ but everyone you loved is still with you.”

Stoughton Church, is about going to a church where there had been a function a couple of weeks earlier – a wedding, a funeral? – but now the flowers are faded, the celebration long over. The poet attempts to take a photograph but “cannot find the angle/ to take a picture”. This poem has rather sinister overtones, “clouds chase each other”, “weeds hem the base/ of the tower” and then “a rusty stain/trails down as if it had been weeping blood.” A poem to make one wonder what lies beneath the lines – and to shiver.

These are very different poems, each one worthy of a prize. The final choice must, inevitably be subjective. I chose Kite-surfer for its sense of rapture, a perfect description using the minimum of words, and for the way the poem catches the reader up into the poem itself and incites personal reflection; My Private Collection for its sad, grim undertones, the dream-like atmosphere, the vivid description of the windy winter scene outside the windows and the mystery of what is waiting outside that the poet has forgotten; To Iken and back because the poet takes us with her to Iken, we can almost hear the water birds’ cry, the voices rising from the pub and the child from the past laughing; The Lost Library of Jesi because of the sealed room, shadowed and quiet, in which the beating of a long-dead heart may still be heard; Intruders and Thieves because it is beautifully described and for its terrible, mysterious ending.

So, of these seven, the two Highly Commended poems are:

MANDY PANNETT - Intruders and Thieves

CAROLINE MALDONADO - The Lost Library of Jesi

Third Prize

CAROLINE PRICE - To Iken and back

Second Prize

A.C. CLARKE - My Private Collection

First prize

CAROLINE MALDONADO - Kite-surfer

Gabriel Griffin. February 2013

See all current Excel for Charity competitions

The TRYangle Project Poems raise £117.32 for Charity, off to the Judge.

noreply@blogger.com (The Blogmaster) — Tue, 08 Jan 2013 15:06:00 +0000

The TRYangle Project Poetry Competition 2012 in aid of the charity that supports victims of domestic violence closed on the 31st of December, 2012.

The competition did well with 178 entries. This good level of participation translated into the sum of £117.32 raised for the charity. We can’t thank you enough for supporting this cause with your creative work.

Your pen surely will never lack ink.

The poems have now been sent off to Gabriel Griffin. She will dig into them by the lakeside in Italy and the results will be announced on the 28th of February. Good luck all.

So what’s next?

No break. You go right ahead an enter this quarter’s Swale Life Poetry Competition. Judged by Derek Adams, this international competition will close on the 31st of January. Details here: http://www.easternlightepm.com/excelforcharity/swale-life-poetry-competition/jan-2013/index.html

Helvellyn disqualified

noreply@blogger.com (The Blogmaster) — Tue, 08 Jan 2013 12:43:00 +0000

Following the announcement of the results of Lupus UK Poetry Competition 2012, we received some complaints from our readers who recognised Simon Jackson's Highly Commended Poem 'Helvellyn' as being the same poem as 'The Ice Storm' with which he had won the Slipstream Poets Open Poetry Competition 2011.

We are satisfied with Mr Jackson's explanation that there was no intention to deceive anyone; he had revised the poem since it won the Slipstream in 2011 and entered it in error in the Lupus competition.

Mr Jackson is happy to forego his £10 prize money and is pleased that Excel for Charity will donate the money to the charity.

We hope this brings a satisfactory close to the matter.

Nnorom Azuonye.

Home Leave

noreply@blogger.com (The Blogmaster) — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 02:59:00 +0000

Melissa Lee-Houghton

Your car is pillar-box red.

Nobody will die in it.

I sit by your side and say nothing, my hands

bunched in fists in my lap.

When the lights turn

I feel you breathing.

The motorway gapes.

We are on our way to the hospital

where they greet me like a donor-

like I’m giving away both my eyes.

You are happy

when I come home with something bandaged

it looks like someone has done something.

Some weekends I come home to you.

I fill in the form

that says I don’t feel guilty, hopeless or paranoid.

We watch TV until I fall asleep

and we go to bed

like children after hot milk.

I am filled up with pain,

there’s no room for anything else.

You think you have done something wrong-

I don’t tell you otherwise.

In the morning

you pop my pills into a decanter,

a little pink plastic box

with all the days of the week.

You lock the pills in the safe.

In the heart of a safe those pills

can’t call out to me.

I can’t be tempted and

you will not be to blame.

I write poems in the hospital.

They all bang on about images

but I have nothing-

there are fourteen of us staring at walls

and scratched reinforced windows

that don’t let in the sun.

We put too many sugars in our tea

and don’t listen to anything.

Not anything that you can hear.

I pray to God.

I pray for mercy or a knife.

You come with clothes and I

brush my hair for you,

and for a moment you look so happy

I sit on your knee laughing

until my chest hurts.

Home Leave was highly commended in the Lupus UK Poetry Competition 2012

Before the Fog Lifted

noreply@blogger.com (The Blogmaster) — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 02:09:00 +0000

Julie Mellor

Trees, fresh in bud, lost their leaves,

lichen grew overnight on walls where it would normally
take a hundred years to root. Elderberries blistered,
rosehips blackened, though there was no frost.

Then it rained, and the house that had stood

since the seventeenth century found its roof sagging.
Glass loosened in its small windows,

loosened and cracked.

The river swelled until it skimmed the footbridge

at Thurlstone, carried fertilizer bags, polystyrene packaging,
a fall pipe like a huge stick of liquorice

down the Don valley and into the city

where ochre water spewed over roads, rose up
through drains that could no longer cope,

surged into cellars, front rooms, lifted translations
off bookshelves, swilled them clean of words.

Before the Fog Lifted won third prize in the Lupus UK Poetry Competition 2012.

Julie Mellor lives in Penistone. She read English at Huddersfield University and has a PhD from Sheffield Hallam. Her poems have appeared in magazines and anthologies including Brittle Star, Mslexia, The Rialto and Smiths Knoll. Her pamphlet Breathing Through Our Bones was a winner in the 2011/12 Poetry Business Book & Pamphlet Competition, chosen by Carol Ann Duffy.

Reading Czeslaw Milosz at Mullion Island

noreply@blogger.com (The Blogmaster) — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 01:36:00 +0000

Desmond Kon Zhicheng-Mingdé

Think however you like about this island, its ocean whiteness,

grottoes overgrown with vines, under violets, springs.

~ Czeslaw Milosz

The small boat barely took the four of us.

Its oddly matching loom oar and sculling oar

looking like bony arms reaching in, to sit in John’s hands.

It was a driftboat, had a glass bottom, framed like a window.

Clear cerulean outside, as bitter cold too. One long fish brushed

the length of its side against the glass. Another swam close to it,

hesitated, then placed its lips to the surface, as if it were a mirror.

It was a long, travelling kiss, eyes open until it let go.

There were no Symbolists or Surrealists for miles,

the way Milosz liked it, only the sound of Shane reading a poem.

On the island lived the same poem, with skin like a mermaid’s,

iridescent with blue veins showing, a liquid cyan glistening.

In the light, a slow blinking like lightning bugs in the winter.

The mermaid didn’t have a name, beached herself

until she grew legs, and walked up the hill to make a home.

Her lodge was built within a deep cave. Its roof angular,

following the curves of the low dome, yurt-like. A cliff dwelling

in the back became a balcony, palm stairway rising to meet it.

Vines grew a few yards into the cave before the light went out.

Before the shadows greyed the walls until the inner lychgate,

where three bulbs, hung from rafters, fully lit the room.

The walls were a beautiful greenstone,

kept the air inside cool and dry. Ambient, inviting.

For John, Mersea Island was the taller dream, its ready farms

already tilled into their cycles. In them, pumpkins.

Raised beds of lettuce and cauliflower, peas and cucumber.

One artist had a name for every fish he painted, their scales

shedding into colour trails like drip paintings.

One curator called him an Abstract Expressionist, his index finger

joining the constellatory dots to trace Volans, then Auriga.

The island in the poem was just as imaginary, yet lucid.

These islands seemed to magnify themselves into strangeness,

Ciaran’s housed in its own fortress, made of Caen stone.

It was a churchyard, no pews as if the terrazzo floor was enough.

In the north corner, so it avoided sundown, its dimming horizon.

There were four chairs in the chancel, rusted into black,

the others equally sombre, an antique cherry

with leatherette seat cushions for a long wait, and longer silence.

The lectern was simple, not shaped like an eagle

or the white pelican, but a small gull. Unadorned, half-mast eyes.

Standing on its perch, a mound of sand. Wings clipped.

No words on the hymn board, as if the thurifer had swiped the letters.

The dividers made of limed oak, over the redder sienna.

This time, Shane took the oars, and with a sigh, headed farther.

The Milosz poem wet with seawater, the mermaid under glass.

* This poem was written on 30 June 2011, to mark the birth centennial of Nobel Laureate Czeslaw Milosz. The epigraph is an excerpt from his poem “Island”.

Reading Czeslaw Milosz at Mullion Island won second prize in the Lupus UK Poetry Competition 2012.

Desmond Kon Zhicheng-Mingdé has edited more than 10 books and co-produced 3 audio books, several pro bono for non-profit organisations including Sok Sabay Cambodia, Riding for the Disabled Association, and the National Volunteer & Philanthropy Centre. His work in entertainment and lifestyle journalism at 8 Days magazine took him to Australia, France, Hong Kong and Spain, and saw him writing numerous stories, including features on Madonna, Björk and Morgan Freeman, culminating in the authorship of the limited edition Top Ten TCS Stars for Caldecott Publishing.

Trained in Professional Publishing (Books) at Stanford University, Desmond studied Sociology and Mass Communication at the National University of Singapore, and later received his Master of Theological Studies (World Religions) from Harvard University and Master of Fine Arts (Creative Writing) from the University of Notre Dame. Desmond is the recipient of the Singapore Internationale Grant, awarded to launch at the First Prague International Poetry Festival the anthology For the Love of God, which brought together 35 award-winning religious and literary contributors from across the world. His poetry and prose have appeared in more than 40 literary journals, including AGNI, Confrontation, DIAGRAM, Faultline, Gulf Coast, Harpur Palate, Harvard Review, New Orleans Review, Seneca Review, Sonora Review, and Versal, with work forthcoming in Blackbird, Cerise Press, Copper Nickel, ditch, Ganymede, and PANK.

UDAIPUR BEAT

noreply@blogger.com (The Blogmaster) — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 00:46:00 +0000

Margaret Eddershaw

I thought you had just a bronchial cough,

till the doctor bustled

into our hotel room -

folded in a bright sari -

with two side-kicks,

stiff in white

bearing,

as if in a Hindu ceremony,

the sacred ECG machine.

My skin feels again the hot flush

that engulfed me,

as they wired you

to the oracle:

arrhythmia

they chanted

and swept you away.

I don't remember speaking -

to ask where you were going

or even to say Goodbye.

I felt helpless as Shiva

waving those hundreds of arms

each with its own

unsteady pulse.

And hours later,

when you returned

nonchalantly,

slept naked beside me,

I watched your chest

through the night

rise and fall

rise and fall.

‘Udaipur Beat’ won first prize in the Lupus UK Poetry Competition 2012.

About Margaret Eddershaw.

For 25 years, Margaret was a professional actor and theatre academic (Lancaster University). She had published on Bertolt Brecht and theatre history, and had six plays performed at the Edinburgh Festival and in London fringe theatres.

In 1978, she was a founder member of Lancaster Literature Festival, and up to 1989, Red Rose Theatre Company, of which she was co-director, mounted eleven productions of contemporary plays specially for the Festival.

Margaret took up residence in Greece in 1995, and began writing poems. Since then, she has had over 100 published in magazines (e.g. Seam, iota, Interpreter's House, Envoi, Frogmore Papers, Orbis), in anthologies (from Blinking Eye Publishing, Boho Press, Bluechrome Poets, Ragged Raven Press, New European Poets, Cinnamon Press) and won a number of prizes (Wells Literature Festival, King's Lynn Festival, Petra Kenney Competition, Poetry on the Lake). In 2010 she won third prize in the Build Africa Poetry Competition, an Excel for Charity competition. She has given readings in Athens and London.

Judge’s Report and Results, Lupus UK Poetry Competition 2012

noreply@blogger.com (The Blogmaster) — Sun, 06 Jan 2013 23:38:00 +0000

Judge’s Report by Abegail Morley

What makes a winning poem is one that is complete in itself, one that takes the reader on a journey and surprises them with its ending. A number of poems in this competition succeeded in doing this well, which made the task of narrowing down to three winners and two Highly Commendeds quite difficult. Some of the near-misses who can't take a place, but are worthy of mention are The Stillborns by Terry Jones, with the fantastic final line "the mild unopened flowers of their eyes", Victory in the Louvre by Lynn Roberts with its rich layering of images, and two poems by Christian Ward Aortic Stenosis and Mothing, both beautiful, slightly macabre pieces. I sometimes wonder if being mentioned as "an almost there" can feel quite disappointing, but these poems worked so well and were only just pipped to the post it would have been wrong not to sing their praises.

The overall quality of the entries was high and the subjects varied. There were the usual life experiences: love, loss and death, delicately handled in many of the poems. The dream world came under scrutiny by some poets and there were a number of poems about war, which perhaps came from Remembrance Sunday being within spitting distance of the closing date.

First prize: Udaipur Beat by MARGARET EDDERSHAW (Greece) -

The winning poem is the beautiful and unnerving Udaipur Beat, a tight piece that at the same time splays the page, using the white space to play out the scene. Within a relatively short space the poet has explained and exploded a life. From the ominous first line: "I thought you had just a bronchial cough", through to the repetition of arrhythmia arrhythmia arrhythmia, echoed later with rise and fall rise and fall rise and fall. The reader is under the poet's spell, falling in line with the chanting of the machine.

It is eloquently understated, transformative, and carries the reader over its terrain:

"I don't remember speaking -

to ask where you were going

or even to say Goodbye"

There is a detachment here, no saccharine sweetness, but still it binds us to it. The reader knows just how it feels to be as "helpless as Shiva / waving those hundreds of arms" when a life is lost and found again.

Second prize: Reading Czeslaw Milosz at Mullion Island by DESMOND KON ZHICHENG-MINGÉ (Hong Kong)

This long, dense poem effortlessly builds from its simple opening line: "The small boat barely took the four of us." This is the richest poem in the competition, wonderfully lyrical.

The poet knows exactly what they are doing and expertly guides the reader across water to an island, "On the island lived the same poem, with skin like a mermaid's", to a church, "It was a churchyard, no pews as if the terrazzo floor was enough" and then back to the boat in the final couplet, where "Shane took the oars, and with a sigh, headed farther". The language is exquisite, as if painted by an artist with a plush palette. The poem, written to mark the birth of the Nobel Laureate Czeslaw Milosz has triumphantly achieved its goal.

Third prize: Before the Fog Lifted by JULIE MELLOR (Sheffield, UK)

What I like about this poem is the depth of its images and its specificity. The lines that caught my eye over several readings were the "lichen grew overnight on walls where it would normally / take a hundred years to root". They have a magical quality to them which tangles the reader into this landscape. There is an unhurried pace to the beginning of the poem, "Elderberries blistered, / rosehips blackened, though there was no frost". It then swells, like the river Don in the poem, and tips over its edges, until it re-roots itself in the last lines, where the water "lifted translations / off bookcases, swilled them clean of words." A super ending to a well-honed poem.

Highly Commended:

Home Leave by MELISSA LEE-HOUGHTON (Lancashire, UK)

An honest, lucid insight into a life picked apart by mental illness. It shows how the small

parts of life tick onwards, even when the mind stalls. There is much to like in this poem and it has a momentum that thunders through its cloudscape.

"I write poems in the hospital.

They all bang on about images

but I have nothing".

Helvellyn by SIMON JACKSON (Edinburgh, Scotland)

This poem has been disqualified following a flood of complaints by people recognised it as being the same poem as The Ice Storm with which Mr Jackson won 1st Prize in the Slipstream Poets Open Poetry Competition 2011.

Results

Highly Commended: Home Leave by MELISSA LEE-HOUGHTON (Lancashire, UK)

Highly Commended: Helvellyn by SIMON JACKSON (Edinburgh, Scotland) - Disqualified.

Third prize: Before the Fog Lifted by JULIE MELLOR (Sheffield, UK)

Second prize: Reading Czeslaw Milosz at Mullion Island by DESMOND KON ZHICHENG-MINGÉ (Hong Kong)

First prize: Udaipur Beat by MARGARET EDDERSHAW (Greece)