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Jackie Kay, as this year's Poet in Residence,
has judged the competition and the results are listed
below. As ever there were a large number of entries, and our congratulations go not only to the winners, but also to all those who sent their poems.
Competition Winners
Category 1 (Adult section)
First prize
Being Fourteen – Barry Taylor (Stowe, Staffs)
for Alice
Being Fourteen
The girls slump, demoralised
at their desks, aching,
through literally endless
afternoons, for each other's
brilliance. Uncaged by the bell,
they squeal in ecstatic heaps
like piglets seeing off
a cartoon wolf. On Saturdays,
they stand inspecting their hands
on street corners, at a loss
as to left and right. They have
dressed themselves in truths
from Sylvia, Oscar, Morrissey:
permanent marker, thick
as theatrical blood, down the seams
of their pre-stressed jeans.
They will roam till twilight
on two pounds seventy, brought up
short at shop-fronts, car-windows,
in lifts and loos, by reflections
harbouring answers to ferocious
questions. They hole up from storms
in trolley parks, packed warm
as new-baked loaves. Dinner
confounds them, and with one blank
look, they turn kid brothers
into glass, stare through them
at distant skinny boys descending
library steps. They shuffle,
wounded, to their rooms, and fall
into bed like dynamited buildings,
burying secrets. Winter nights,
they spoon in starlit fields,
and plot the perfect venue
for their funerals: Berlin,
Manhattan, Prague. In dreams,
they will ransack their mothers'
cast-offs, dressing retro
for their next wild flight
to the future.
Second prize
Eyes Shut - Candy Neubert (Dartington, Devon)
Eyes Shut
Each house has its own tiny front garden
and a name like Bel Air or San Souci.
She reads them to me, pushing the pushchair
while I find magic, down in a crevice,
learning to feel for it with my fingers,
keeping myself still, keeping my eyes shut.
There are high walls I walk along the top
and pointy ones I can't, running my hands
over their surface between the railings,
racing ahead to where the pavement ends
and then she calls out to me sharply, stop.
We must go on. I leave her, I grow up,
I'm hurrying in the same direction
back to the burrow like a crazed rabbit.
I took off with the map unravelling
in my head, one land after another,
one more bloody field, one more damn valley,
crossing the entire length of the island
with my lungs on fire to find out how,
keeping myself still, keeping my eyes shut,
I could have something so incredible
it would save me for the rest of my life.
Third prize
Mort-Safe - Elizabeth Speller
Mort-Safe
By Fairford church my grandmother lies on her back, waiting for the resurrection.
Plus ça change she might have said. Or even c'est la vie.
Under a rose, the name of which she knew and I do not; it is one of those new varieties: scentless, reliable and discreet.
You might think it strange if you had known my grandmother, years ago, while she was still in the flesh.
And my wild dark uncle, broken-boned, tipped into his grave.
Forty winters above, thirty below, spinning into the night and the rain, said to have dropped off at the wheel.
No mending his ways now. He is not sleeping, he is dead.
Clustering round the church my ancestors, once illustrious, currently picturesque, come to nothing under table tombs,
Edged round with the stumps of railings marking them out from the rest, asserting, as they did in
life, some superior right of territory.
Resisting any premature call to account.
And others, still, in eastern sarcophagi, rejecting the local stone as rustic, turn to dust with their
litters of infants under a meaty sort of granite.
Tapered at the end.
As we shall be, tapered at the end.
And in the church I have lit candles for them and made promises, few of which I kept and held
sleeping or furious babies safely through rites I only half believe.
My mother, come lately to the newer part, rests close to the river, the mill and the celebrated view.
Down by the waters, bearing the dead away, taking nothing with them.
Somewhere I have an important certificate
In gothic print it gives me or my nominees the right to lie with her in Plot 97b.
One up on my mother for all time, weighing heavily upon her,
My years now greater than her years. How long, how long?
Picture it, capture them: the stone, the spire, the little bridge and the churchyard
Where the older dead are arranged so much more prettily, more haphazardly, than the recent ones,
Who cope with the surprise in regulation plots.
But then the newly dead have visitors, who come in love or obligation, not curiosity,
Sprucing up their graves with a fresh bunch of dahlias
Or watering cut sods of turf, keeping them alive.
Cheerfully greeting other morning grave-tenders who have become familiar;
They are coming up in the morning and in the evening they are cut down.
There are dustbins for the rotten flowers and the cellophane and
the saturated cards with their inky sentiments rained into something that is no longer even
writing.
Young persons' section
First prize
Nanny's Dirge – Matthew Magee (Barnet, Herts.)
Nanny's Dirge
Eighty years old.
At forty her love went awry;
Soon her ageing spine did too.
She sat lamenting, like a pitiful mourner,
In the old rocking chair that sits in the dusty corner.
Seldom visited by loving ones who felt they ought to,
They'd say,
"Look, nan, look, nan;
See what we've thoughtfully brought you?"
Those grapes, they withered away, but she stayed;
They withered - turned to dust - yet she stayed,
Rotting alive, she knitted tapestries of the yore and prayed.
As her mind and her frail hands did writhe,
She did fade...
The anticlimax of a once dutiful life;
The ignored remains of a once beautiful wife.
She spoke in the past tense 'cause the present brough tears;
Spoke proudly in the past tense and the future blindly sneered.
The future, her own blood; her beloving grandchild:
He ignored her like she was a boring TV!
She spoke of past romances and, with wisdom, advised,
While he mirrored his dumb mum: nodded and patronised.
Alas! after a stroke (though it would've taken a mere choke)
Their ears opened wide like greedy mouths.
They rushed to her with wish death wishes, not grapes,
And crowded her little house...
The anticlimax of a once dutiful life;
The ignored remains of a once beautiful wife.
She spoke in the past tense 'cause the present brough tears;
Spoke proudly in the past tense and the future blindly sneered.
Her room grew hot with people,
But within her it was only cold.
As the Grim Reaper sat by her bed,
The faith-gamble began to fold.
The hand she was holding seemed worse now death hung over the game,
Holding up a pallid card, on which was written her name.
Second prize
Runaway - Matthew Rodger (Chesterfield, Derbyshire)
Runaway
That house - it throbbed and had a life;
A fearful pulse, the sound of fist on flesh.
'Happy Home' became an oxymoron
Its walls, a web to hold my soul enmeshed.
My father fuelled his blind and baseless rage
With booze - and bled us of our bread.
And when his anger faded in the light
My battered mother nursed and held his head.
In turn, his pleadings and his wrath
Mutated love and poisoned what was dear.
Each night his wildness broke my dreams
Injecting loathing, dread and fear.
Stuttering street lamps punctuate the night,
Try, but fail, to soften - dull the pain.
Weeping clouds cry sympathetic tears -
My collar turned to shield against the rain.
No laughter, life or liking dwelt within
And even darkness whimpered in the rooms;
Pathetic pleadings echo in my head;
I long to find some glow within my gloom.
I face the road and stare and hope for gold -
To leave the past, I have to find the will.
But only raindrops glisten on my path;
I fear the future yet will hold more ill
Third prize
Breaded Bliss - Faye Lipson (Watford, Herts.)
Breaded Bliss
For my brother
Baby, you are not a basket case,
crumbling to a wicker base.
Oh no - you're as pliant as the dough
which forms the face I knead,
the tilted and full face, rising, greeding
for a kiss. Our batch has little need
of seeding. Sealing in our moistures,
we grow fat with leaven;
two loaves, contenting in a tin,
the size and shape of heaven.
Children's section
First prize
Moonlit Night - Charlotte Quant (Turnford, Herts.)
Moonlit Night
Suddenly, it turns dark, she rolls up her blind
She looks through the window and fills your mind
She lights up the sky and makes sneaky robbers visible
And makes sure you're not quite so miserable.
She spreads shiny icing over the lake
And makes the little children want to stay awake
The the sun, he takes over instead
And everyone gets out of bed.
Second prize
My Piggy Bank - Miss Shayahi Kathirgamanathan (North Harrow, Middx.)
My Piggy Bank
My piggy bank
waits for a pound
he makes a sound
at the coin's clank.
My piggy bank stands
on stumpy legs.
He waits and begs
for the coin in my hands.
By his side
my brother's pig
is just as big
and fat and wide
but mine's got more
money inside.
Third prize
Death - Kai Austin Dean (Southsea, Hants.)
Death
Death is black and dark red
It smells of rot and decay
It tastes like mould
It sounds like rasping breath
And lives in the darkest corners of the earth
2007 WINNERS
2006 WINNERS
2005 WINNERS
2004 WINNERS
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