Results of our December 2025 Poetry Competition
The judge of our quarterly Poetry Competition is Dorothy Pope, The Society’s Poet in Residence, who also sets the theme for each competition.
Judge’s Report on the December 2025 Poetry Competition themed ‘The Gift’
410 poems were submitted. Several exceeded the line limit of 20 and a title, one even onto a third page. Two people sent in three poems.
A poem consists of what it says and the way in which it says it, usually referred to as the content and the form, with the form suiting the content. Most were interpretations of the gift as love of either a lover or a mother. Almost all were in free verse. As was to be expected with the theme of ‘The Gift’, most were tender in content but the two winning poems spoke with particularly great sweetness and humanity. Both were also superbly well crafted and in free verse.
The winner is ‘To Shame the Wise and Strong’ by John Keane. Here, love is in the form of a tribute to those who are the opposite of wise and strong and whose courage we should admire for keeping going in the face of their being weak, persistently foolish and scavenging on the periphery of society. I endorse this tribute. It takes no courage to be talented high achievers, sky’s hawks, yet they are the praised ones. Rhyme would be inappropriate in a description of the dysfunctional. The extended bird metaphor is very effective in comparing the highflyers to the grey and common. This is a first-rate poem.
In second place I have put ‘Visiting Hours’ by John Davies. Here the gift of love is in staying with and holding the hand of one who is dying. There is a clever distortion here. Writing empathetically, the poet speaks as if he is the dying one, in vivid description. ‘I almost wake, almost grip your hand in more than motor response’, ‘thin’, ‘weak’, ‘perforated vein’, ‘flinch of a ward clock’, ‘Some of us will never wake’. This is the dying ward wonderfully well captured. Here is another poem where rhyme would be inappropriate because of the uncertainty even of the time of dying. The tercets may perhaps indicate the two people and the dying ward. A very fine poem.
All the poems were a pleasure to read. Please note, however, that due to the sheer volume of work, I am unable to provide feedback other than on the two winners.
Dorothy Pope
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To Shame the Wise and Strong
They know the broken kerb,
the spilth of stale pastry, the crumbs
of forgotten bread. They are the grey,
the common, the unremarked. Not
the sky's bold hawk, nor the swift swift
of cottage evenings. No-one watches
their flight for omen.
Their nests shelter in scaffold gaps
behind peeling billboards in concrete
hollows of the underpass. A scatter of straw,
a dropped feather, a place where the wind
does not quite reach. They are urban
dust-catchers, winged symbols of neglect.
They mate, they brood, they scavenge.
Their lives a quiet testament to the stubborn
will of the weak, the uncelebrated,
the persistently foolish. They are the broken
window's loyal tenants, the forgotten
monument's huddled inhabitants.
The ashen guardians of our concrete periphery.
John Keane
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Visiting Hours
Before corridors become desolate arteries,
before windows splinter inwards
and blinding boards are nailed to frames,
you swab my dry mouth,
tease out snagged hair,
cradle my hand like a wounded bird.
Light thin as weak tea, I can hear you
talking for two, the echoing flinch
of a ward clock measuring your gift of time.
A drip bubbles, amber liquid creeps
along its tube bound for a perforated vein.
I sneeze and am suddenly looking at you–
the body still knows what to do, ticking over,
tending its chores – and I almost wake, almost
grip your hand in more than motor response.
Some of us will never wake.
Ward clock stalls between visiting hours.
The last to leave gently closes the door
John Davies
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The next Poetry Competition will be announced here on 1 March 2026.
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