Winners 2008
To read the winning entries from our second competition just click on the links below and scroll down to view judges' comments.
The 2008 Competition
1st Prize - Visually-speaking by Emily Hinshelwood
2nd Prize - Polyfiller by Clare Ferguson-Walker*
3rd Prize - I don't do hugs by E J Williams*
Photograph by Andrew Davies
Specially Commended:
4th
On deck with Alun Lewis, the secret sleeper by Owen
Lowery
5th
Trout by
James Gower
6th
Forget-Me-Not by Leah Ebdon
7th
Hide by
Jane Galletly
8th
Learning from Buzzards by Roger Elkin
9th
Watching Layers Form by Jenny Adamthwaite
10th
Pen-y-Fan Revisited by Christopher Rogers
11th
Barry Island revisited by Emyr Jones
12th
Boireann by Graham Burchell
13th
Show me the money by Amanda Weeks
14th Union Cat by Patricia Bellotti
15th
Flies on Coke by Ellie Maden-Crosby
16th
on Davaar Island by John Gallas
17th
Mad Mike: he’s a motorbike manual by Merv Read
18th Tower by John Watkins
19th
Birthday Lunch by Pip Smith
20th
His greatest fear by Leah Armstead
Special mention:
The Milky Way by Megan Vaughan (aged 10)
*Disclaimer: It should be mentioned that some of the content of 2008's second and third placed poems may offend some readers.
Note: Poems open in a new browser window.
A prize giving evening was held in Clwb-Y-Bont, Pontypridd, Rhondda Cynon Taf, South Wales on Wednesday 20th August, 2008.
Photograph by Andrew Davies
The winning poems will be sent to the Welsh Academi's Literary Magazine A470 and will hopefully appear on their website too. We have also informed the local and national press.
Judges' comment:
Visually-speaking, by Emily Hinshelwood
A wonderful poem with fine lyric qualities and a worthy winner.
It cleverly highlights the dilemmas we now face in relation to
global warming and the need for sustainable energy – and the
fact that the poem focuses on those issues here, Wales, now,
today, makes it all the more relevant. As the poem suggests,
there are no quick fix, easy answers – if there are any at all –
and it is filled with that frustration. The poet cleverly uses
the repetition of reported and direct speech, with slight
changes, to build and build momentum, urging the reader
forwards: “yes wind farm, / no wind farm and don’t wreck a speck
of my grass / or the planet will shrink to pea-sized piss”.
While the use of line-breaks, one word lines, and excellent
imagery (“towers puking clouds up and outwards”) in the middle
stanza’s skillfully slow the pace and perception, allowing the
reader to pause for breath and reflect. History is here too, as
the poet cleverly weaves the past with the present: “And today I
walk / St Non’s Bay / – she who cured the eye...” The rhythm
quickens again as frustration grows, and form skillfully matches
content, until we reach a breathless flourish: “wind farms look
like bog brushes – kill our birds, sheep / horses, fish and
children”; “with wind farms fizz our brains and bring the
psychos out”. No pastoral idyll. No romantic seascape, this. The
natural landscape has become a challenger rather than a
comforter. A nice “view” has become an environmental,
ideological, and aesthetic, conundrum. NIMBY vs. Planet Earth.
“I'll crack my balls before I let them step / an inch towards my
precious fossil fuelled, polluted palace on the hill”.
Congratulations to Emily Hinshelwood, a poet Highly Commended in
last years competition, on producing a topical work of such high
quality.
Polyfiller, by Clare Ferguson-Walker
This poem reminds me why, of all the art forms, poetry is
perhaps my favourite. No film, painting, or piece of music could
really do this – could really adequately convey the mixture of
the concrete and abstract, interior and exterior, of yesterday
and today.
Pollyfiller, is poetic form teetering on a precipice.
Language stretched to the limit. The shifting syntax reveals,
and brings into consequence, the various orders of experience,
allowing each to arise from and transform what came before it.
In this manner no position remains static or gains ascendancy
and none controls the direction of what follows. Life: “A
pinioned point held between then and tomorrow”; flickering on
walls; “in a paint peeling doorway”; “under dad’s bed”; “down
the local”. The poem is dark, dangerous, gritty, and
unpredictable. An open sore. A wound. A “knife point sharpened
on a lonely stone”. It affects the reader on a physical level,
making them uncomfortable – and that’s always a good thing. “A
glass submarine though, cracked with too much depth, / washed up
in a cell, padded with some shit crust on the wall. / All
technicolour dream coat and no knickers,...”.
In a world of samey-sameness, and poor imitations of the
past, this is a fresh, original, and truly inspirational piece
of work.
So, Polyfiller, then. Like last year’s winning entry, another
poem which may upset the Arts Council and our self-appointed
poetry elite. Thank fuck for good art, then. Thank fuck for
Clare Ferguson-Walker. Vive la resistance.
I don't do hugs, by E J Williams
Excellent poem. Excellent title. “I don’t do hugs”. Very, now.
Today. A love poem for the disaffected, disconnected, SMS
messaging, Wii exercising, iPod generation. Lust over love.
Fetishism over flowers. “You suck your fingers in readiness /
though some holes can never be filled”. The poem is very
skillfully laid out on the page, with very well thought out use
of line breaks. Each word hangs in the air for a moment. Each
line abrupt, a slap in the face. “Twat. / Dry. / Uncooperative.
/ The body shuns the head.” Every word used in this poem was
given an impressive amount of consideration. Every punctuation
mark, every line break, every time the poet has chosen to use a
new stanza... counts. The staccato rhythm of the piece, forces
the reader to pause, forces them to consider, forces them to
contemplate, and draws them in physically, and emotionally, to
the dark and unsettling side of human relations today. “Naughty
girl. / Half heartedly. Embarrassment hangs on the air.” The
poet ‘s use of imagery is also very well crafted and executed.
Again, not a single word wasted. No unnecessary adjectives.
”Mouth stretching to odd angles. / Wept oceans for your smile.”
The poem drags the reader along, through this world of “How to
be Dirty...”, until they reach it’s moving and powerful
conclusion: “Bruise around my nipple. / Proof that I belong. /
Human detritus. / Ravaged / in a sea of sweat and spunk.”
A great poem in a world of bland, meaningless, versification,
and another top three entry from the talented, Eloise Williams.
John Evans, August, 2008
Photograph by Dave Lewis
See also our links page for details of poetry websites in
Wales and beyond.
