TEIGNMOUTH POETRY FESTIVAL RESULTS – OPEN COMPETITION
We are delighted to announce the winners of our 2023 Poetry Festival Open competition as below
OPEN COMPETITION – JUDGE FIONA BENSON
First Prize Maria Isakova-Bennett - Laparotomy
Second Prize Heidi Beck - Big Me Talks to Little Me for the First Time in a Poem
Third Prize Mary Mulholland - confession
Highly Commended: Jonathan Edwards, Susan Taylor, Roy Cockcroft
LONG LISTED
Martin Reed, Sara Nesbitt Gibbons, Robin Knight, Kathryn Bevis, Oliver Morris, Alexandra Corrin-Tachibana, Sue Johns,
Giles Goodland, Nick Grundy, Cian Ferriter, Liz Diamond, Sharon Black, Victoria Gatehouse, Tim Waller, Joe Cheesman,
Deb Burch, Howard Wright, Partridge Boswell, Grizel Luttman-Johnson
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
WINNING POEMS
1st Prize Open Competition
Laparotomy - Maria Isakova-Bennett
aside from major surgery, there is no reliable screening test for ovarian cancer
Cancer Research UK
When she wakes at five she will have no choices. The sky
will be pink, the birds already singing. The park gates,
open when she went to bed, will have been locked
and re-opened. She will shower and dress. Her bag is packed.
There will be no food, a few sips of water, two kisses
from her daughters, who, still warm with sleep,
will promise to see her later. She will traipse to the car,
and from the window take in the flinching birch.
There will be nothing to say. Being driven, she will not know
how time will move, but that it will, and that her body
will be passed from hand to hand to the other side
of those hands, and that she will be cut and stitched.
She hopes she will wake, but for months she has doubted.
If she does wake, she does not know how many tubes
will enter and leave her, and whether she will be allowed
to go home. She knows that nobody can give her answers.
Not yet Not soon Later
Afterwards, all of me is laughter because I am alive
laughter like the day I landed in Limassol after a storm
to gulp lungfuls of jasmine, filling me to burst.
I am wheeled white along grey corridors, singing
to no one and everyone a cough of words.
Swooshed past my daughters and husband, I scribble
a stupefied wave, and the sideways thumbs-up
of a drunk, and try to reassure them while oxygen
shushes through me. The ward is a gurney-park,
curtains swishing, clipboard-doctors coming and leaving,
lockers squealing. I am trying to iron my thoughts,
and make my hand up straight, but the morphine
is dancing me nonchalant. Under my covers are tubes,
and over my covers are tubes, and the stand is steady
but the pouches are moving fluids down and into me
Most of me is here.
2nd Prize Open Competition
Big Me Talks to Little Me for the First Time in a Poem - Heidi Beck
Big Me sees Little Me sitting in a pine tree.
Oh, be careful of the pine pitch, Little Me,
it sticks to your hands and clothes.
Little Me checks her hands,
wipes them on her Toughskins jeans,
stares down the trunk impassively.
I’m really tired, Little Me,
and you’re tired too.
Little Me has the eyes of a Little Owl.
Thank you so much, Little Me,
for keeping us safe all these years,
all those times, even on that day,
but you can rest now, Little Me.
I can keep us safe, all on my own.
I don’t believe it.
Neither does she.
I put the poem in a pile.
She stays in the tree.
3rd Prize Open Competition
confession - Mary Mulholland
On a whim I open the door, sit, then kneel,
it's been so long I can't remember the rules.
Trapped air. Dark. I'm scared. Through the metal
mesh a white-haired man watches benignly.
After a pause I say, I don't know where to start.
In New York twang he says, take your time.
My mind spirals back to catechism class
when I confessed, I stole a zebra,
and the priest said lying was a sin.
I think of all the other bad things I've done.
We sit listening to our breathing.
I say, I think I don't know how to love.
His long inhale makes me regret my words.
He'll say open your heart. I want to be out
in the street, with shoppers, people clutching
coffee as if life depends on it, pushing past
with buggies. What possessed me to enter
a world of polish, frankincense and flickering
candles, my footsteps on stone attracting eyes
of regulars, shuffling hymn books and charting
the minutes I'm in here against sins committed.
What made me shut myself in a cupboard
with a veil for a window when I could be free,
in fresh air. Except it never feels fresh or free,
and I'm most alone in a crowd. Then I think
I hear him say, you just sound very hurt.
TEIGNMOUTH POETRY COMPETITION 2023
Judge’s Report
you know the old analogies prose
is a house poetry a man in flames running
quite fast through it
[‘Wife of Brain’, Anne Carson, Red Doc> ]
I will tell you honestly that during my first read through there were a great many poems that I set aside easily, because they were not really poems. Maybe they were memories of a loved and lost grandma, or rants about our travesty of a government, or poems in praise of a sunrise – all of which I sympathised with whole-heartedly, but which didn’t quite become poems. But after that first brutal sift, I was left with around two hundred poems, real poems, crafted, glorious things of deep magic, all of which I was deeply attached to and could hardly bear to winnow down.
I was reminded of a Marie Ponsot poem I have loved for a long time, ‘To the Muse of Doorways Edges Verges’. When her wayward Muse speaks “Each word ravishes, / bright with the sciences / she practices / in the music business” – and so many of these poems were bright with music; gorgeous happenings that still remain with me. If they didn’t find a prize place, I still expect to meet them again one day, in the pages of a poetry magazine, or on my Instagram feed, or on another prize list. They were that good.
I treasured those glimpses into other people’s lives and souls and thought-processes. There were gorgeous poems about slugs, and Greek buzzards; the mending of organ pipes and rain in perpetuum. There was a lazy sunbathing poem, a poem about choosing a superpower, a bittersweet poem of separation, and a poem about a man walking on his hands. There was a strange séance of a poem in which impressive dead aunties materialised in a matter-of-fact manner to nurse their loved ones. There were disturbing poems about flashers, strange American pastorals, and extraordinarily moving poems about addiction and miscarriage and maternal death. There was a poem about working in an ICU during the pandemic that had me close to tears, and a story of loss told backwards with incredible aplomb.
I was attached to every one of these poems, and I carry them with me in a way I cannot explain. Reading a poem is surely some kind of touching of souls. Thank you for trusting me with them.
Winning Poems
1st : Laparotomy
I think this poem is astonishing. I love the movement of it, from the numb pre-operative state of the first half, through a sort of hinge stanza of anxiety into the middle, through into its euphoric post-operative stanzas. I love that sweep, the diction changing from the details of preparing to leave the house – that excruciating flinching birch – to the rush of not knowing “how many tubes will enter and leave” with its sense of disempowerment and panic, and then the gorgeous singing diction of relief, “the lungfuls of jasmine” the woosh, “the sideways thumbs-up / of a drunk”. There is also the beautiful strangeness of its post-operative disassociations “morphine / dancing me nonchalant”, those wonderful otherworldly moments of language. It’s a fabulous poem: deft, humane and ambitious.
2nd Big Me Talks to Little Me for the First Time in a Poem
I found this poem intriguing; it lingered with me as all good poems should. The poem calls down a child from a tree – an inner child, in fact, from a figurative tree – with bewitching detail; I loved the pitch pine, the Toughskins jeans, the gently phrased plea. How she wipes her hands. Its use of voices is exquisite. I also love how open ended it is: “I put the poem in a pile. / She stays in the tree.” It’s a magical poem whose emotional resonance belies its simplicity.
3rd confession
This poem is both amusing and wounding. I loved the zaniness of the speaker remembering that she’d ‘confessed’ to stealing a zebra as a child, but I also felt great sorrow at the panic and aloneness of the speaker, and the priest’s gentle insight: “you just sound very hurt”. The whole poem feels both timeless and contemporary, and has a lovely music to it, which really presses in to describe the rush of the outside crowds, and the church regulars shuffling hymn books. There is an enviable management of line, tone and pace throughout.
Highly Commended
My Grandfather’s Piano
I adored this poem for its family lore and its acute observations – the coveted piano taking up all the space in the front room so that the diners sitting at the table barely have room to breathe, the poignancy of his grandfather’s dream to play the thing, the soft devastation of finding his fingers without tune… to my ear, I wanted it to end “her enthusiastic, well-meant, caterwaul”; but perhaps its clumsy overextended ending is a fitting tribute to its beloved, unmusical protagonists. It manages somehow to feel like a family tease – affectionate, respectful, and intimate.
Fast Track Cancer Pathway
I loved the very original voice of this poem - it’s tonal swerves between the matter-of-fact (“such a common condition”), the wry (“my cut and come again breast, if you will”), and the slightly surreal (“There’s a caterpillar working in there”). Again this seemed to me a human experience conveyed with imagination and empathy, that held my attention and wonder.
Weights and Measures
This poem seemed to me a traditional poem, both in terms of its content and the way it tells its story, and it makes no experiments, but I savoured and valued the accuracy of its language, its tactile detail (the spuds in the silver pan), and it’s devastating account of a dream’s undoing. I found the brutality of that final stanza after the pride and attention to detail portrayed to the early stanzas utterly crushing.
We are delighted to announce the winners of our 2023 Poetry Festival Open competition as below
OPEN COMPETITION – JUDGE FIONA BENSON
First Prize Maria Isakova-Bennett - Laparotomy
Second Prize Heidi Beck - Big Me Talks to Little Me for the First Time in a Poem
Third Prize Mary Mulholland - confession
Highly Commended: Jonathan Edwards, Susan Taylor, Roy Cockcroft
LONG LISTED
Martin Reed, Sara Nesbitt Gibbons, Robin Knight, Kathryn Bevis, Oliver Morris, Alexandra Corrin-Tachibana, Sue Johns,
Giles Goodland, Nick Grundy, Cian Ferriter, Liz Diamond, Sharon Black, Victoria Gatehouse, Tim Waller, Joe Cheesman,
Deb Burch, Howard Wright, Partridge Boswell, Grizel Luttman-Johnson
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
WINNING POEMS
1st Prize Open Competition
Laparotomy - Maria Isakova-Bennett
aside from major surgery, there is no reliable screening test for ovarian cancer
Cancer Research UK
When she wakes at five she will have no choices. The sky
will be pink, the birds already singing. The park gates,
open when she went to bed, will have been locked
and re-opened. She will shower and dress. Her bag is packed.
There will be no food, a few sips of water, two kisses
from her daughters, who, still warm with sleep,
will promise to see her later. She will traipse to the car,
and from the window take in the flinching birch.
There will be nothing to say. Being driven, she will not know
how time will move, but that it will, and that her body
will be passed from hand to hand to the other side
of those hands, and that she will be cut and stitched.
She hopes she will wake, but for months she has doubted.
If she does wake, she does not know how many tubes
will enter and leave her, and whether she will be allowed
to go home. She knows that nobody can give her answers.
Not yet Not soon Later
Afterwards, all of me is laughter because I am alive
laughter like the day I landed in Limassol after a storm
to gulp lungfuls of jasmine, filling me to burst.
I am wheeled white along grey corridors, singing
to no one and everyone a cough of words.
Swooshed past my daughters and husband, I scribble
a stupefied wave, and the sideways thumbs-up
of a drunk, and try to reassure them while oxygen
shushes through me. The ward is a gurney-park,
curtains swishing, clipboard-doctors coming and leaving,
lockers squealing. I am trying to iron my thoughts,
and make my hand up straight, but the morphine
is dancing me nonchalant. Under my covers are tubes,
and over my covers are tubes, and the stand is steady
but the pouches are moving fluids down and into me
Most of me is here.
2nd Prize Open Competition
Big Me Talks to Little Me for the First Time in a Poem - Heidi Beck
Big Me sees Little Me sitting in a pine tree.
Oh, be careful of the pine pitch, Little Me,
it sticks to your hands and clothes.
Little Me checks her hands,
wipes them on her Toughskins jeans,
stares down the trunk impassively.
I’m really tired, Little Me,
and you’re tired too.
Little Me has the eyes of a Little Owl.
Thank you so much, Little Me,
for keeping us safe all these years,
all those times, even on that day,
but you can rest now, Little Me.
I can keep us safe, all on my own.
I don’t believe it.
Neither does she.
I put the poem in a pile.
She stays in the tree.
3rd Prize Open Competition
confession - Mary Mulholland
On a whim I open the door, sit, then kneel,
it's been so long I can't remember the rules.
Trapped air. Dark. I'm scared. Through the metal
mesh a white-haired man watches benignly.
After a pause I say, I don't know where to start.
In New York twang he says, take your time.
My mind spirals back to catechism class
when I confessed, I stole a zebra,
and the priest said lying was a sin.
I think of all the other bad things I've done.
We sit listening to our breathing.
I say, I think I don't know how to love.
His long inhale makes me regret my words.
He'll say open your heart. I want to be out
in the street, with shoppers, people clutching
coffee as if life depends on it, pushing past
with buggies. What possessed me to enter
a world of polish, frankincense and flickering
candles, my footsteps on stone attracting eyes
of regulars, shuffling hymn books and charting
the minutes I'm in here against sins committed.
What made me shut myself in a cupboard
with a veil for a window when I could be free,
in fresh air. Except it never feels fresh or free,
and I'm most alone in a crowd. Then I think
I hear him say, you just sound very hurt.
TEIGNMOUTH POETRY COMPETITION 2023
Judge’s Report
you know the old analogies prose
is a house poetry a man in flames running
quite fast through it
[‘Wife of Brain’, Anne Carson, Red Doc> ]
I will tell you honestly that during my first read through there were a great many poems that I set aside easily, because they were not really poems. Maybe they were memories of a loved and lost grandma, or rants about our travesty of a government, or poems in praise of a sunrise – all of which I sympathised with whole-heartedly, but which didn’t quite become poems. But after that first brutal sift, I was left with around two hundred poems, real poems, crafted, glorious things of deep magic, all of which I was deeply attached to and could hardly bear to winnow down.
I was reminded of a Marie Ponsot poem I have loved for a long time, ‘To the Muse of Doorways Edges Verges’. When her wayward Muse speaks “Each word ravishes, / bright with the sciences / she practices / in the music business” – and so many of these poems were bright with music; gorgeous happenings that still remain with me. If they didn’t find a prize place, I still expect to meet them again one day, in the pages of a poetry magazine, or on my Instagram feed, or on another prize list. They were that good.
I treasured those glimpses into other people’s lives and souls and thought-processes. There were gorgeous poems about slugs, and Greek buzzards; the mending of organ pipes and rain in perpetuum. There was a lazy sunbathing poem, a poem about choosing a superpower, a bittersweet poem of separation, and a poem about a man walking on his hands. There was a strange séance of a poem in which impressive dead aunties materialised in a matter-of-fact manner to nurse their loved ones. There were disturbing poems about flashers, strange American pastorals, and extraordinarily moving poems about addiction and miscarriage and maternal death. There was a poem about working in an ICU during the pandemic that had me close to tears, and a story of loss told backwards with incredible aplomb.
I was attached to every one of these poems, and I carry them with me in a way I cannot explain. Reading a poem is surely some kind of touching of souls. Thank you for trusting me with them.
Winning Poems
1st : Laparotomy
I think this poem is astonishing. I love the movement of it, from the numb pre-operative state of the first half, through a sort of hinge stanza of anxiety into the middle, through into its euphoric post-operative stanzas. I love that sweep, the diction changing from the details of preparing to leave the house – that excruciating flinching birch – to the rush of not knowing “how many tubes will enter and leave” with its sense of disempowerment and panic, and then the gorgeous singing diction of relief, “the lungfuls of jasmine” the woosh, “the sideways thumbs-up / of a drunk”. There is also the beautiful strangeness of its post-operative disassociations “morphine / dancing me nonchalant”, those wonderful otherworldly moments of language. It’s a fabulous poem: deft, humane and ambitious.
2nd Big Me Talks to Little Me for the First Time in a Poem
I found this poem intriguing; it lingered with me as all good poems should. The poem calls down a child from a tree – an inner child, in fact, from a figurative tree – with bewitching detail; I loved the pitch pine, the Toughskins jeans, the gently phrased plea. How she wipes her hands. Its use of voices is exquisite. I also love how open ended it is: “I put the poem in a pile. / She stays in the tree.” It’s a magical poem whose emotional resonance belies its simplicity.
3rd confession
This poem is both amusing and wounding. I loved the zaniness of the speaker remembering that she’d ‘confessed’ to stealing a zebra as a child, but I also felt great sorrow at the panic and aloneness of the speaker, and the priest’s gentle insight: “you just sound very hurt”. The whole poem feels both timeless and contemporary, and has a lovely music to it, which really presses in to describe the rush of the outside crowds, and the church regulars shuffling hymn books. There is an enviable management of line, tone and pace throughout.
Highly Commended
My Grandfather’s Piano
I adored this poem for its family lore and its acute observations – the coveted piano taking up all the space in the front room so that the diners sitting at the table barely have room to breathe, the poignancy of his grandfather’s dream to play the thing, the soft devastation of finding his fingers without tune… to my ear, I wanted it to end “her enthusiastic, well-meant, caterwaul”; but perhaps its clumsy overextended ending is a fitting tribute to its beloved, unmusical protagonists. It manages somehow to feel like a family tease – affectionate, respectful, and intimate.
Fast Track Cancer Pathway
I loved the very original voice of this poem - it’s tonal swerves between the matter-of-fact (“such a common condition”), the wry (“my cut and come again breast, if you will”), and the slightly surreal (“There’s a caterpillar working in there”). Again this seemed to me a human experience conveyed with imagination and empathy, that held my attention and wonder.
Weights and Measures
This poem seemed to me a traditional poem, both in terms of its content and the way it tells its story, and it makes no experiments, but I savoured and valued the accuracy of its language, its tactile detail (the spuds in the silver pan), and it’s devastating account of a dream’s undoing. I found the brutality of that final stanza after the pride and attention to detail portrayed to the early stanzas utterly crushing.