TEIGNMOUTH POETRY FESTIVAL 2018 – COMPETITION RESULTS
OPEN COMPETITION
OPEN COMPETITION
Photo - Ian Chamberlain
Joanna Lowry, Graeme Ryan, Pascale Petit (Judge) and Sue Proffitt.
Joanna Lowry, Graeme Ryan, Pascale Petit (Judge) and Sue Proffitt.
Judge’s comments:
What a meticulously organised competition, and fascinating to read all the entries, some very local and some from far afield. The sea was a frequent presence. I love reading poems unaccompanied by their authors, just encountering the art. Trawling through them was like a treasure hunt, many adventures with words had along the way, through various and enthralling worlds. Thank you to all who entered and entrusted your poems into my hands. I am impressed and thrilled with the ten that were shortlisted.
1st Place
Graeme Ryan - The Homeless Man Thinks of Ancient Egypt
2nd Place
Sue Proffitt - My Mother’s Eyes
3rd Place
Joanna Lowry - Golden Lily Feet
Shortlisted (in alphabetical order)
Frances Corkey Thompson - River
Patricia Millner - Dii kihi dyang k’aaysgid
Patricia Millner - Search and Rescue
Caroline Price - Chamber Organ
A K S Shaw - The Lie
Isobel Thrilling - Flamingo-Fugue
Tom Woodman - Marking Time
The Winning Poems
1st Prize – Open Competition
The Homeless Man Thinks of Ancient Egypt - By Graeme Ryan
I pray to the sun on these temple walls,
the shifting angles and blaze of it,
the way it melts the pavement ice
mid-morning near the cashpoint –
I imagine them as merchants, astronomers and viziers
sitting at the window of the coffee-shop opposite
then they become slaves and slave-owners,
baboons manoeuvring the flow and current
of glinting windscreens,
tax-collectors with the snapping heads of crocodiles
that cancel me with an eye-blink;
asps and hawks and chattering ibis.
I am sore beggar and heretic
but Horus shares the sun’s strength with everyone
and for moments He lets me stop time
freezing the figures in KFC and BetFred the Bet-King,
jamming the screens inside Lloyds Bank
so that Ra makes a gong-bath out of the street-roar.
The Gas-workers toil in their jack-hammer clatter
on the banks of the traffic-river.
One squeezes the life out of a cigarette,
the vapour of his breath in a shaft of sun
like the frost of my breath in the aching air,
this midday moon I take for divination and augury.
The sun’s transit takes the blaze
behind high roofs; there is a trapezium of light
I shuttle to at the corner, it forecloses.
Someone has bought me a coffee, her glance has a smile.
I open the lid and take a careful sip. A packet of crisps too.
The moneylenders have not quite taken over the temple.
Anubis looks out through the eyes of a jackal-headed dog
that walks up to me, just out of reach. It sniffs.
Weigher of souls, tomb-guardian, am I fit for Paradise?
2nd Prize – Open Competition
My Mother’s Eyes -- by Sue Proffitt
When I opened my mother’s eyes
I expected glazed windows.
Deep fog through windscreen glass.
It was a troubling thing to do.
They weren’t completely closed
but even if they had been
I’d have done the same
in those hours just after -
that terminal silence
when clocks still go
and the medicine trolley rattles
its mad monologue down the corridor
but in this room, nothing
but the dead-bird body
of my mother
I think I did it to make sure
No. I knew
But the one unbroken line was between our eyes -
when everything else had snapped
one look - tiny isolated spark -
still jumped a connection,
Wordless, nameless,
Memory-less.
Was it still there?
With one finger, gently,
I pulled each eyelid up.
There they were -
Blue still, clear, fluid.
Were they empty?
No. They held the look of someone
Leaning back into the body of a mountain
Looking down
3rd Prize – Open Competition
Golden Lily Feet - by Joanna Lowry
The photograph shows a young Chinese
Woman, perhaps a hundred years ago.
I know because the print is small and silvery
And it has the quality of fine sand, and because
She is dressed in beautiful brocade robes
And because her feet are bound.
Her face holds my gaze like a vice,
So perfect, like an oval moon, with only
The faint calligraphy of fine eyebrows
And the traced contour down the bridge of the nose
To her small mouth, and her glass eyes that look
Fiercely down the years into mine.
It might be porcelain, her skin, and she herself
A vase, and the tapestry folds of her dress
Might be a cloth draped around a piece
Of furniture, for beneath them her
Embroidered feet peep out: small carved castors
That she might be rolled around on,
Or tiny hard buds: tightly folded flowers.
What a meticulously organised competition, and fascinating to read all the entries, some very local and some from far afield. The sea was a frequent presence. I love reading poems unaccompanied by their authors, just encountering the art. Trawling through them was like a treasure hunt, many adventures with words had along the way, through various and enthralling worlds. Thank you to all who entered and entrusted your poems into my hands. I am impressed and thrilled with the ten that were shortlisted.
1st Place
Graeme Ryan - The Homeless Man Thinks of Ancient Egypt
2nd Place
Sue Proffitt - My Mother’s Eyes
3rd Place
Joanna Lowry - Golden Lily Feet
Shortlisted (in alphabetical order)
Frances Corkey Thompson - River
Patricia Millner - Dii kihi dyang k’aaysgid
Patricia Millner - Search and Rescue
Caroline Price - Chamber Organ
A K S Shaw - The Lie
Isobel Thrilling - Flamingo-Fugue
Tom Woodman - Marking Time
The Winning Poems
1st Prize – Open Competition
The Homeless Man Thinks of Ancient Egypt - By Graeme Ryan
I pray to the sun on these temple walls,
the shifting angles and blaze of it,
the way it melts the pavement ice
mid-morning near the cashpoint –
I imagine them as merchants, astronomers and viziers
sitting at the window of the coffee-shop opposite
then they become slaves and slave-owners,
baboons manoeuvring the flow and current
of glinting windscreens,
tax-collectors with the snapping heads of crocodiles
that cancel me with an eye-blink;
asps and hawks and chattering ibis.
I am sore beggar and heretic
but Horus shares the sun’s strength with everyone
and for moments He lets me stop time
freezing the figures in KFC and BetFred the Bet-King,
jamming the screens inside Lloyds Bank
so that Ra makes a gong-bath out of the street-roar.
The Gas-workers toil in their jack-hammer clatter
on the banks of the traffic-river.
One squeezes the life out of a cigarette,
the vapour of his breath in a shaft of sun
like the frost of my breath in the aching air,
this midday moon I take for divination and augury.
The sun’s transit takes the blaze
behind high roofs; there is a trapezium of light
I shuttle to at the corner, it forecloses.
Someone has bought me a coffee, her glance has a smile.
I open the lid and take a careful sip. A packet of crisps too.
The moneylenders have not quite taken over the temple.
Anubis looks out through the eyes of a jackal-headed dog
that walks up to me, just out of reach. It sniffs.
Weigher of souls, tomb-guardian, am I fit for Paradise?
2nd Prize – Open Competition
My Mother’s Eyes -- by Sue Proffitt
When I opened my mother’s eyes
I expected glazed windows.
Deep fog through windscreen glass.
It was a troubling thing to do.
They weren’t completely closed
but even if they had been
I’d have done the same
in those hours just after -
that terminal silence
when clocks still go
and the medicine trolley rattles
its mad monologue down the corridor
but in this room, nothing
but the dead-bird body
of my mother
I think I did it to make sure
No. I knew
But the one unbroken line was between our eyes -
when everything else had snapped
one look - tiny isolated spark -
still jumped a connection,
Wordless, nameless,
Memory-less.
Was it still there?
With one finger, gently,
I pulled each eyelid up.
There they were -
Blue still, clear, fluid.
Were they empty?
No. They held the look of someone
Leaning back into the body of a mountain
Looking down
3rd Prize – Open Competition
Golden Lily Feet - by Joanna Lowry
The photograph shows a young Chinese
Woman, perhaps a hundred years ago.
I know because the print is small and silvery
And it has the quality of fine sand, and because
She is dressed in beautiful brocade robes
And because her feet are bound.
Her face holds my gaze like a vice,
So perfect, like an oval moon, with only
The faint calligraphy of fine eyebrows
And the traced contour down the bridge of the nose
To her small mouth, and her glass eyes that look
Fiercely down the years into mine.
It might be porcelain, her skin, and she herself
A vase, and the tapestry folds of her dress
Might be a cloth draped around a piece
Of furniture, for beneath them her
Embroidered feet peep out: small carved castors
That she might be rolled around on,
Or tiny hard buds: tightly folded flowers.