Results of December 2024 Poetry Competition
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It was interesting and a pleasure to judge this competition in which 277 poems were submitted, the subject being Paper.
No matter what the subject, most entrants contrive an interpretation about love (unrequited or lost) or death. This in no way lessens their chances of winning. This is understandable because, while the extrinsic reason for writing a poem may be the hope of winning a prize, the intrinsic ones are the joy of creativity and the urge to communicate.
The winner of the Β£100 prize is Creana Bosac for Planting Alliums Under Climate Change. The writing metaphor is beautifully sustained in this poem. The structure of the poem, eschewing the regularity of metre and rhyme, captures the unformed things below the soil. Verbs, indicating activity, however hidden, make the lines impressive: print, mark, nib. The word βwritingβ used twice emphasises the message. What is also impressive in the poem is that ordinary language and commonplace description are replaced by the unexpected: crumbs, amber overcoats, another script. But although the new climate has brought about change for humans, giving unseasonal weather and heat, the routine of the plant world stays unchanged. It is business as usual, a fitting conclusion to a well-constructed poem.
The runner-up is Torch Carrier by David Walrond. The deliberate act of burning letters from the past is written in lines that are themselves deliberately metrical and regularly rhyming. A good choice. The fire flames up in the first stanza, from dead branches and twigs, till it wonderfully roars. The simile used is no ordinary one β wind-combed trees.
The fire in question is now about burning the past, as though a lover himself were being burned. Appropriate verbs capture the moments when the letters crumple in the flames: smoulder, darken, shrivel, catch β¦. appropriately placed side by side with no intrusive conjunction. In the concluding lines phrases are burned, as are words and confessions. The smoke heals a hurt heart and the words that were once so much loved are gone for good. The double meaning of βcuringβ is clever. It is a novel way of telling of loveβs heartbreak and makes for a successful poem.
They were both fine poems in my view and also the clear winners.
Dorothy Pope
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Planting Alliums Under Climate Change
Beneath frozen earth, dark crumbs print
December rain on buried bulbs,
mark wispy amber overcoats
of finest parchment with moisture,
writing a spell of spring to come.
Later, brave stems will nib green leaves
from earthβs hold ten days early in
the unseasonal warmth, writing
another script of survival
under business as usual.
Creana Bosac
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Torch Carrier
Late autumn was the time to burn decay.
She torched dead branches, fallen twigs and leaves.
Gusting south-westerlies soon bellowed flames
Until fanned bursts roared like the wind-combed trees.
She fed the blaze his letters one by one,
As they had come, not in their ribboned stash.
She watched them smoulder, darken, shrivel, catch;
Their tale turned to black flakes then powdered ash.
Sometimes the glow would light some precious phrase -
Protests, denials, new confessions, vows -
But only curing smoke disturbed the eyes
That watched the words that burned once burn well now.
David Walrond
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