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TEIGNMOUTH POETRY FESTIVAL RESULTS - GRAHAM BURCHELL AWARD FOR DEVON POETS
 
We are delighted to announce the winners of our 2023 competition as below
 
GRAHAM BURCHELL AWARD FOR DEVON POETS – JUDGE SUE PROFFITT
First Prize                 Grizel Luttman-Johnson       - I was a wall
Second Prize            Jan Nicholls                       - Statues
Third Place              Chris Waters                      - Fieldfares, Rising


Highly Commended:  Chrissy Banks, Helene Demetriades, Pat Millner,
 
In addition our judges would like to give a special mention to the following longlisted and commended poets
 
Commended: Claire Berlyn, Terry Dyson, Susan Taylor
 

­
WINNING POEMS
1st Prize Graham Burchell Award

I was a wall - Grizel Luttman-Johnson
 
his tee shirt was a long red bib of blood
he said he only did it to impress me and it did
I hardly knew him then  
                                           
                                             I said
                                                      you’ve got a lot of blood
                                                      about 8 pints he said
 
I knew the basic science
behind skins so thin they blush
 
my fingers had opinions of their own
the magnets in my palms drew all
the metal in his bones to me
 
                                             he said
                                                        the way you feel about me is the way
                                                        a man’s supposed to feel
                                                        about a woman
 
miracles of fishes blossoming
each time I cast my hand across his heart
and hauled
 
he said some other things
 
                                       and he said
                                                        say it
                                                                       
then he took my instrument
and swung it in its black and velvet case
against the iron railings at the end
until the case was splinters and
my better voice lay broken on the road
 
I wore my terracotta suit
high necked and with a patterning of brick
and he was tall to match the railings all in black
a red flag at his head
his long white hands conducting as I ran
 
2nd Prize Graham Burchell Award

STATUES – Jan Nicholls
 
I stand in the shop weighing out lentils
and think of myself at the kitchen sink
looking out of the window at the garden
 
as if I had left that part of me behind
to remain like a statue
until I return to animate it.
 
They're all over the place, these statues,
and I worry that I might forget them.
 
Do they wait for me
or have some of them come to an end,
how would I know.
 
I saw myself in a bright blue scarf
on the other side of  a valley
and didn't shout across
for fear I would make myself vanish,
 
but I no longer sit in that top room
watching the estuary and the light,
I know I'm not there.
 
 
3rd Prize Graham Burchell Award

Fieldfares, Rising – Chris Waters
                   
A day of dwindling December light,
rain-swept and winter-stripped,
 
the road ahead and the far hills
dissolving in a grey wash –
 
so, the dormant heart trips back
to that bare black orchard
 
beneath a blue-frost sky,
where the fieldfares were gathered,
 
in flight from their own cold north,
famished for the last windfalls
 
softening among brittle leaves – and on a rush,
fluttering wing-beats flickering white
 
over white, they lift – and are rising.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Judge’s notes
 
First of all, I want to say that Graham was a dear friend, and what an honour it has been to judge the entries for the Award in his name. I also want to say that I had no idea how difficult it would be. You know how judges always say how difficult the process was; when I’ve listened to their comments in the past I’ve thought it can’t be that difficult, get on with it…. but the truth is that it’s been incredibly difficult, and I only had just over 390 poems to read; how Fiona  managed with all of her entries I don’t know!
So, at the risk of you all thinking get on with it to me, I just want to say something about all the poems that didn’t make it. There was such diversity of subject-matter:  poems about the climate crisis, Ukraine, bereavement, terminal illness, incarceration, childhood landscapes, traumatic memories. There were poems that made me laugh out loud and taught me something new. Many took risks with language and subject-matter. What they all did was touch my heart. And many were really  good: often, in my view, needing more editing, but very close to being included in the shortlist or higher. So I want to say to all of you whose names aren’t going to be read out tonight: thank you, and don’t be discouraged - as poets, we get rejected all the time; keep faith with yourselves.
 
Duck Egg Blues by Chrissy Banks
This poem takes us through the meticulous observation of a broken egg-shell.  We witness the poet’s hands trying to fit the shell together again, having eaten its contents, and it’s so intensely visual it’s like a piece of film, or a meditation.  And then, right at the end, the uncaged thought flies in that this egg is a life with wings unhatched and immediately we face the reality that what we take in to feed ourselves inevitably means the death of something else. I love the way the poem moves from micro to macro in its 6 precise quatrains and how it does this without any pretension or sentimentality.
 
In a World of Newts by Helene Demetriades
A 9-line gem of a poem: a precise, vivid depiction of a newt amongst a flickturn of orange bellies, with its sawtooth crest buttoned up its spine. Such original language that captures precisely the strangeness of newt, and one of those encounters with the natural world that, in being simply itself, transcends itself in the moment of meeting between human and other than human.  The 3 stanzas of tercets hold this meeting perfectly.
 
Murdering the Dead by Pat Milner
This is a small poem: 2 stanzas of 9 and 8 lines respectively, that evoke the devastation happening in Ukraine, through the perspective of one woman. The few words she speaks: My husband / My son?  capture in their brevity the enormity of loss:  for both the long-buried dead and the newly dead. The poem’s language is so spare and precise, conjuring the trauma of witnessing carnage first hand, and it holds the immense emotionality of its subject matter with restraint and compassion.

3rd place:   Fieldfares, Rising by Chris Waters
This is such a beautiful poem of witness. In its spare language and 6 couplets, ending in a single line, it distils a winter landscape held in the memory where fieldfares famished for the last windfalls are in the orchard, feeding on rotten fruit. Then the poem moves effortlessly into its final image of the birds flickering white/ over white, leaving both the orchard and the page. The whole scene, the whole season, is pared down to a few images, perfectly realised.
 
2nd place:  Statues by Jan Nicholls
This poem manages to do something that I think is very difficult to achieve: it evokes a sense of how memories can exist in their own spaces, separate from a central organising consciousness: I saw myself in a bright blue scarf / on the other side of a valley / but didn’t shout across / for fear I might make myself vanish… What do we do with these separate bits of self, these memories that hang in suspension? The poem conjures a feeling of experiences unresolved and unintegrated, but for such an intangible subject, it’s intensely visual, each ‘statue’ described without being explained. They just are, and the reader’s left with a powerful sense of each one, especially the one at the end in the ‘top room’, who’s no longer there but once was there. I love the way the poem asks questions for each of us to answer in our own way.
 
1st place: I was a wall by Grizel Luttman-Johnson
I kept returning to this poem again and again. Its fragmented shape on the page mirrors the fracturing in its story, ending with the destruction of a musical instrument or, as the poet says, my better voice lay broken on the road. This is an extraordinary poem about attraction, violence and trauma. The way it moves between narration and scraps of dialogue brings immediacy and tension into the story and the images that evoke the chemistry of attraction are so potent: the speaker’s palms drew all / the metal in his bones to me and the miracles of fishes blossoming when the speaker’s hand moves across the man’s heart. But the sense of threat is there from the start, with the long red bib of blood  on the man’s tee shirt, culminating in the final chilling image of his long white hands conducting as I ran.  It’s a daringly original piece of writing that justly deserves 1st prize.