TEIGNMOUTH POETRY FESTIVAL 2021 – COMPETITION RESULTS
LOCAL COMPETITION
LOCAL COMPETITION
Local Competition Winners – Judged by Alasdair Paterson
(This year for the first time our Local competition has covered the whole of Devon)
First Prize Sue Proffitt - Bubble
Second Prize Angela Howarth Martinot - Me and Robin in the garden
Third Prize Helen Scadding - Apple Crumble
Commended in alphabetical order
Frances Corkey Thompson - Sly Music
Hélène Demetriades - A visit from my mother
Hélène Demetriades - Chez Madame Frise
Jan Nicholls - Junction
Elisabeth Rowe - Pursuit
Marc Woodward - Grace Notes
Marc Woodward - Heat
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The Winning Poems
1st Prize – Local Competition
Bubble by Sue Proffitt
Evening. Walking by the estuary – its deep greens, its slow filling-up.
I know this I think – the leaching
of light, moored boats un-pinning
themselves from themselves, the soft drapery of an owl’s call over water,
invisible bustle of ducks.
I think. That tinkle of a bell
against glass so clear I don’t see it: the bubble of mind I inhabit
like an astronaut, filtering
everything through its lens,
its unending commentary. Never was prisoner so lulled – its ticking of lists:
evening, Autumn. Checking
the body: all’s well. But
if I turn my head now, everything’s changing. The sea’s returning, flooding
the mud-flats. Water’s rising.
Something churns beneath.
Normal! the bubble chirps brightly but what happens when something
at the edges presses in
and I don’t want to see it –
grief – easy to choke with detritus until it’s only a murmur, an ulcer
I can live with
hardly know it’s there –
birds falling out of the sky in their thousands, a raining of bones, whales beached,
a circle of elephants
slumped around water-holes
another nice evening whispers the bubble
2nd Prize – Local Competition
Me and Robin in the garden by Angela Howarth Martinot
Once the human soul was weighed at 21 grams;
though I prefer to think it is a light-filled,
lightness of life
that leaves dead weight behind.
A Robin weighs between 19 and 21 grams;
though now, out of a whir of wings
you alight
on the edge of my cupped hand
your feet barely palpable
your stillness
a coherence of bone, flesh and feather,
lighter
than a feather
as you levitate on breath,
so the only weight is the look in your eye
as you accept my offering, and with perfect precision
select a sunflower seed, a dried worm,
then lift, off
with your mysterious, intangible, almost 21 grams
and my mysterious, something like 21 grams trailing after.
3rd Prize – Local Competition
Apple Crumble by Helen Scadding
This year we only pick the fallers.
Bramleys the size of two fat fists, sharp with green.
They wait on the lawn like an unfinished game.
There are fewer of us now
so we don’t wrap them for sharing -
we still have last year’s, a frozen harvest.
We bundle them up in your outhouse
with the dead dog’s bowl, the birdseed
and the empty whisky bottles.
You can peel them in one go
neat spirals dropping between your thin fingers
while I cut chunks that crunch like best snow.
We make an apple crumble, caramel soft,
with cinnamon and too much butter
served hot with custard, the way you like it.
I leave early, drive back down the M5,
hands knuckling the steering wheel,
half the crumble on the back seat, growing cold.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Judge’s report by Alasdair Paterson
What a wealth of poetic talent is apparent in Devon, and how variously it presented itself here, in free verse and in rhyme, in shaped poems and in prose poems. We had the careful and the rhapsodic, the wild and the mild, the autobiographical voice and the assumed identity - and much more.
Overall, the entries offered a rich picture of life and preoccupations in Devon in late 2020. The predominant themes were what blighted or succoured our lives in a difficult year: lots of Covid, directly or indirectly; death; dementia; climate change; war and its sacrifices and aftermath (75 years after the end of WWII); family dynamics, good and bad; relationships abusive and nurturing; religion, love and nature as solaces for anxiety or loss; the historic past (not so much the imagined future); and childhood. And a lot of apples, on trees or in crumble. Listed in that way it sounds as if there might have been a preponderance of gloomy, discouraged poems, but in fact the experience of reading them was uplifting – in the redemptive aspects of life poets had discovered, or in their triumphant ability to find words to express and share responses to the difficulties the year had brought.
Overall, in choosing winners, I was looking for something with heft, something newly-minted, free from cliché, that didn’t over-explain, that came at the world slant and led me to see something in a fresh way that resonated, lingered. Our winners, our commended poets and others through the top 20 and beyond, delivered on this.
Of the commended poets, two managed a double commendation. Marc Woodward demonstrated a svelte mastery of two rhyming forms, one a sonnet, but the poems were not dominated by strenuous reaching for a rhyme; rather the rhyme served to surprise or reinforce as the poem got on with its main concern, in the one the failing but valiant rhythms of age, in the other the pace of life lived in wilful ignorance of catastrophe. Hélène Demetriades hit a rich vein with two poems about childhood and powerful adult figures in it, still alive in memory or dreams; the transfer of life knowledge from mother to daughter is expressed in the tightening of a dream-horse’s girth, while the memory of another learning experience in a somewhat rackety environment was conveyed in a few vivid pictures. Frances Corkey Thompson played around with geological time as a kind of slow dance in which partners come and go – libraries, cities, ancient fish and indeed all of us, leaving our infinitesimal traces behind. Elisabeth Rowe conjured up an extreme, indeed life-threatening, race to outpace a snowstorm, a relentless almost-future; the account of a breathless pursuit was cleverly crafted. Finally Jan Nicholls, in brief space, tautly conveyed the complexities of living your own life when it’s also a life shared with someone else, of the rival tugs of independence and partnership that complicate wayfinding.
Now for the prize-winners:
3rd) Apple Crumble: Helen Scadding As I said earlier, a few poems had an apple-picking or cooking theme, and I liked this one best. It’s spare, descriptive, while concealing a few of its narrative cards on first reading. Small hints of the underlying situation build until the final stanza – the early departure, the hands gripping the wheel, the cooling half of the crumble on the back seat - leads us back to the beginning of the poem, to re-examine the cleverly sown evidence of a dwindling of lives and relationships.
2nd) Me and Robin in the garden: Angela Howarth Martinot I experienced this as a latter-day metaphysical poem; there was ample wit (in the older 17th century sense of the word) in the yoking together of two disparate ideas - the weight of the robin and the weight of the soul . The early 20th century proposition that a measurable decrease in weight by a body after death is explained by the soul’s departure, rather than by loss of moisture, is picked up and run with beguilingly; the fact that a living robin’s weight is very similar allows the poet to combine spiritual reflection with a progression of argument as calm and graceful as a mathematical calculation, leading to the magical release of the last line.
1st) Bubble: Sue Proffitt The idea of the bubble is one that has dominated the last year, as a protective social measure to minimize contact with potential infection. Here, the walker’s bubble is a singular, mental one, self-protective and self-deceptive, an unconscious measure deployed to enjoy nature without confronting the truths of this perilous moment in the planet’s history. Those truths are kept at bay until in the end the threatened world breaks through as a series of horrific picture flashes. The bubble is experienced as almost physical, like a transparent glass, an astronaut’s helmet, screening and filtering; messages from the realm of false confidence are whispered in italics, even as the incoming estuary tide triggers the unavoidable vision. Beautifully paced, thoughtfully constructed and a worthy competition winner.
(This year for the first time our Local competition has covered the whole of Devon)
First Prize Sue Proffitt - Bubble
Second Prize Angela Howarth Martinot - Me and Robin in the garden
Third Prize Helen Scadding - Apple Crumble
Commended in alphabetical order
Frances Corkey Thompson - Sly Music
Hélène Demetriades - A visit from my mother
Hélène Demetriades - Chez Madame Frise
Jan Nicholls - Junction
Elisabeth Rowe - Pursuit
Marc Woodward - Grace Notes
Marc Woodward - Heat
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The Winning Poems
1st Prize – Local Competition
Bubble by Sue Proffitt
Evening. Walking by the estuary – its deep greens, its slow filling-up.
I know this I think – the leaching
of light, moored boats un-pinning
themselves from themselves, the soft drapery of an owl’s call over water,
invisible bustle of ducks.
I think. That tinkle of a bell
against glass so clear I don’t see it: the bubble of mind I inhabit
like an astronaut, filtering
everything through its lens,
its unending commentary. Never was prisoner so lulled – its ticking of lists:
evening, Autumn. Checking
the body: all’s well. But
if I turn my head now, everything’s changing. The sea’s returning, flooding
the mud-flats. Water’s rising.
Something churns beneath.
Normal! the bubble chirps brightly but what happens when something
at the edges presses in
and I don’t want to see it –
grief – easy to choke with detritus until it’s only a murmur, an ulcer
I can live with
hardly know it’s there –
birds falling out of the sky in their thousands, a raining of bones, whales beached,
a circle of elephants
slumped around water-holes
another nice evening whispers the bubble
2nd Prize – Local Competition
Me and Robin in the garden by Angela Howarth Martinot
Once the human soul was weighed at 21 grams;
though I prefer to think it is a light-filled,
lightness of life
that leaves dead weight behind.
A Robin weighs between 19 and 21 grams;
though now, out of a whir of wings
you alight
on the edge of my cupped hand
your feet barely palpable
your stillness
a coherence of bone, flesh and feather,
lighter
than a feather
as you levitate on breath,
so the only weight is the look in your eye
as you accept my offering, and with perfect precision
select a sunflower seed, a dried worm,
then lift, off
with your mysterious, intangible, almost 21 grams
and my mysterious, something like 21 grams trailing after.
3rd Prize – Local Competition
Apple Crumble by Helen Scadding
This year we only pick the fallers.
Bramleys the size of two fat fists, sharp with green.
They wait on the lawn like an unfinished game.
There are fewer of us now
so we don’t wrap them for sharing -
we still have last year’s, a frozen harvest.
We bundle them up in your outhouse
with the dead dog’s bowl, the birdseed
and the empty whisky bottles.
You can peel them in one go
neat spirals dropping between your thin fingers
while I cut chunks that crunch like best snow.
We make an apple crumble, caramel soft,
with cinnamon and too much butter
served hot with custard, the way you like it.
I leave early, drive back down the M5,
hands knuckling the steering wheel,
half the crumble on the back seat, growing cold.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Judge’s report by Alasdair Paterson
What a wealth of poetic talent is apparent in Devon, and how variously it presented itself here, in free verse and in rhyme, in shaped poems and in prose poems. We had the careful and the rhapsodic, the wild and the mild, the autobiographical voice and the assumed identity - and much more.
Overall, the entries offered a rich picture of life and preoccupations in Devon in late 2020. The predominant themes were what blighted or succoured our lives in a difficult year: lots of Covid, directly or indirectly; death; dementia; climate change; war and its sacrifices and aftermath (75 years after the end of WWII); family dynamics, good and bad; relationships abusive and nurturing; religion, love and nature as solaces for anxiety or loss; the historic past (not so much the imagined future); and childhood. And a lot of apples, on trees or in crumble. Listed in that way it sounds as if there might have been a preponderance of gloomy, discouraged poems, but in fact the experience of reading them was uplifting – in the redemptive aspects of life poets had discovered, or in their triumphant ability to find words to express and share responses to the difficulties the year had brought.
Overall, in choosing winners, I was looking for something with heft, something newly-minted, free from cliché, that didn’t over-explain, that came at the world slant and led me to see something in a fresh way that resonated, lingered. Our winners, our commended poets and others through the top 20 and beyond, delivered on this.
Of the commended poets, two managed a double commendation. Marc Woodward demonstrated a svelte mastery of two rhyming forms, one a sonnet, but the poems were not dominated by strenuous reaching for a rhyme; rather the rhyme served to surprise or reinforce as the poem got on with its main concern, in the one the failing but valiant rhythms of age, in the other the pace of life lived in wilful ignorance of catastrophe. Hélène Demetriades hit a rich vein with two poems about childhood and powerful adult figures in it, still alive in memory or dreams; the transfer of life knowledge from mother to daughter is expressed in the tightening of a dream-horse’s girth, while the memory of another learning experience in a somewhat rackety environment was conveyed in a few vivid pictures. Frances Corkey Thompson played around with geological time as a kind of slow dance in which partners come and go – libraries, cities, ancient fish and indeed all of us, leaving our infinitesimal traces behind. Elisabeth Rowe conjured up an extreme, indeed life-threatening, race to outpace a snowstorm, a relentless almost-future; the account of a breathless pursuit was cleverly crafted. Finally Jan Nicholls, in brief space, tautly conveyed the complexities of living your own life when it’s also a life shared with someone else, of the rival tugs of independence and partnership that complicate wayfinding.
Now for the prize-winners:
3rd) Apple Crumble: Helen Scadding As I said earlier, a few poems had an apple-picking or cooking theme, and I liked this one best. It’s spare, descriptive, while concealing a few of its narrative cards on first reading. Small hints of the underlying situation build until the final stanza – the early departure, the hands gripping the wheel, the cooling half of the crumble on the back seat - leads us back to the beginning of the poem, to re-examine the cleverly sown evidence of a dwindling of lives and relationships.
2nd) Me and Robin in the garden: Angela Howarth Martinot I experienced this as a latter-day metaphysical poem; there was ample wit (in the older 17th century sense of the word) in the yoking together of two disparate ideas - the weight of the robin and the weight of the soul . The early 20th century proposition that a measurable decrease in weight by a body after death is explained by the soul’s departure, rather than by loss of moisture, is picked up and run with beguilingly; the fact that a living robin’s weight is very similar allows the poet to combine spiritual reflection with a progression of argument as calm and graceful as a mathematical calculation, leading to the magical release of the last line.
1st) Bubble: Sue Proffitt The idea of the bubble is one that has dominated the last year, as a protective social measure to minimize contact with potential infection. Here, the walker’s bubble is a singular, mental one, self-protective and self-deceptive, an unconscious measure deployed to enjoy nature without confronting the truths of this perilous moment in the planet’s history. Those truths are kept at bay until in the end the threatened world breaks through as a series of horrific picture flashes. The bubble is experienced as almost physical, like a transparent glass, an astronaut’s helmet, screening and filtering; messages from the realm of false confidence are whispered in italics, even as the incoming estuary tide triggers the unavoidable vision. Beautifully paced, thoughtfully constructed and a worthy competition winner.