Buzzwords Poetry Competition2013: Results
with congratulations to the prize-winners thanks to
all who supported us by entering and by publicising the competition. For your
interest, we had about 600 entries.
1st Prize (£600): The Five Petals of Elderflower
by Angela Topping
Runner-up (£300): A Psalm for the Act of Falling by
Kim Moore
Commended (£50):
Fetch by Josephine Haslam
Mother Pheasant by Tony Watts
Gathering by Ruth Wiggins
Kittiwake by Lindsey Holland
Below the Bancal by
Wendy Klein
The Gloucestershire Prize (£200): Speaking Raven by Deborah Harvey
*Scroll down for the
winning poems*
“The final filtering of poems produced a rare
and remarkable glitter. I found I had to refilter and refine and review again
and again before the choices became clearer. Given that so many good poems were
competing to get through 'this singing mesh' I would like to give highly
honourable mentions to :
(Please note: I have not included the poem titles on the short list so
that they will still be available for other competitions. Poets in the list who
would like to know which of their entries got so close may email me – Angela
France)
Jennie Farley
David E Oprava
Princess Ayelotan
Bethany Pope
Graham Burchell
David Mohan
Catherine Edmunds
Mark Totterdell
Mantz Yorke
Josie Turner
“Congratulations to the
winners and commended poets, and my deep and abiding thanks to Angela France
for asking me to judge such a wonderful competition that gave me the
opportunity to read and re-read so many excellent and rewarding poems,
David Morley.”
Winning Poems
1st Prize
The Five Petals of Elderflower by Angela Topping
With the odd number five strange nature’s laws
Plays many freaks nor once mistakes the cause.
John
Clare
I
Enter through its centre
of five petals
past the crown of stamens
like matches
slide down the green stem,
landing with legs
either side of the
junction between stalks.
Now you are surrounded by
flowers.
Soak up the hum – you are
at one with lace.
Sleep now, as in fresh
sheets, soothed
by the sun, head in
blossom, a perfumed lullaby,
leaves far below to catch
you if you fall.
But you will not fall: the
petioles enmesh.
Your cheek is on your
mother’s breast,
the flowers are sweet
milk. Rock-a-bye.
II
This tree is elder. It’s
safe. With the blossoms
we can make elderflower
champagne
with the berries,
elderflower wine.
Put your nose into it.
Yes, it’s a good scent.
If it smells like cat’s
pee, so will your champagne.
So we don’t pick those.
This tree is fine.
Hold this bag open while I
cut some.
We don’t want to drop any
–
see how easily each flower
head can come away.
There’s lots of stories
about this tree. Some say
it’s Faerie, but your mum
knows more about that.
I say it’s very good to
use. But we mustn’t
take all the blooms from
one tree or there’ll be
no berries, neither for us
nor birds.
III
The smell is buzzing in my
head, as we walk
down the night lane, away
from the heated air
of the pub where friends
spilled onto the car park.
We whisper as we pass
sleeping cottages –
can’t even see the elder,
just smell it, as the lane
becomes a funnel of scents
and fuzzy leaves.
I’m giddy, stumbling; now
there is no-one to see
you take my hand. We
cannot even see each other.
The flower s smell of sex,
of lust, foreign tongues to us.
Too soon the lane opens
out into streetlights,
pavements, cars. You drop
my hand. The scent
is left behind, pollened
on memory.
IV
Elderflowers sing jazz,
each petalled phrase
plays another variation on
the last.
Its saxophone voice rises
above twanged strings
of cello and double bass,
holding the melody
as it flies high. Notes
dance round our feet:
we wade in sound. It’s a
five bar blues,
scrolls of baroque, rising
like smoke, tasting champagne.
White is not white, is
green and cream and ivory.
And it sings the blues.
V
By its five textures: the
rough underside of leaves
and the smooth front, the
strong stem, thinner wands
of stalks, and cobbly lace
of blossom like slubbed silk.
By its green taste, its
umbrella canopy,
by the cushion of blooms
each with five petals.
By these things, I swear
to remember you.
Runner-up
A Psalm for the Act of
Falling by Kim Moore
A psalm for falling which is so close to failing
A psalm for falling which is so close to failing
or to falter or fill; as in I faltered at the news
of your coming; as in I filtered you out
of my life; as in I've had my fill of falling:
a fall from grace, a fall from god,
to fall in love, or to fall through the gap,
snow fall, rain fall, falling stars,
the house falls into disrepair,
to fall in with the wrong crowd,
to fall out of love, to fall like Jessica
who fell down a well and watched
the bright disc of the sun and the moon
slowly passing, for twins who start
so close together they must fall
apart for the rest of their lives
or be damned, to fall from a wall
like an egg or to fall down a hill
like a brother, to follow like a sister,
to be a field and fall fallow,
for vertigo, the cousin of falling,
for towers and stairs and pavements -
the agents of falling, for the white
clifftop of a bed, for climbers
and roofers and gymnasts,
the house falls into disrepair,
to fall in with the wrong crowd,
to fall out of love, to fall like Jessica
who fell down a well and watched
the bright disc of the sun and the moon
slowly passing, for twins who start
so close together they must fall
apart for the rest of their lives
or be damned, to fall from a wall
like an egg or to fall down a hill
like a brother, to follow like a sister,
to be a field and fall fallow,
for vertigo, the cousin of falling,
for towers and stairs and pavements -
the agents of falling, for the white
clifftop of a bed, for climbers
and roofers and gymnasts,
for the correct way to
fall,
loose limbed and floppy,
to fall apart after death,
for ropes and fences and locks
which carry the act of falling inside,
for fall which over the ocean
means autumn, which means leaves
like coins of different colours
thrown from the pockets of trees,
which means here darker evenings,
which means walks with the dogs,
to fall apart after death,
for ropes and fences and locks
which carry the act of falling inside,
for fall which over the ocean
means autumn, which means leaves
like coins of different colours
thrown from the pockets of trees,
which means here darker evenings,
which means walks with the dogs,
which means walking alone
and not falling apart at
the sound
of your name, which god
help me, sounds like falling.
help me, sounds like falling.
Five Commended poems
Fetch by Josephine Haslam
The dog comes with me to
sniff at the cold
out in the dark both of
us, the first snow
of the year. He barks
one sharp bark
and snuffles his
nose in the strange white stuff
and hark I think hark, like a
girl in a story
out at night with the
dog in a story
though this dog’s just a
pup and the bark only heard
by the two of us as we
step outside
the lighted door. Eight
o clock. The cold stings
our ears. Nothings begun; path untrodden.
snow untouched, yet to
be crossed
or scored with foot
marks and paw marks.
But who’s to say where a
story starts-
maybe the dog’s one way
to begin
inextricably caught as
he is, with the one
we both have in mind,
the early good bits
and the troubled time-
let’s follow him;
his coat’s black and
white, his pricked up ears
tail aloft in the night,
the moonlit night that shines
not on the woman after
all but on her son
or sons whose dog he
was. Here they are
throwing a stick or
ball, a snowball that is
or racing each other; boys and dog over the sand
on a northern beach, or striding
uphill
into the wind, One boy
is singing under his breath
the way he’ll sing years
later than then,
between the now and the
done or not done
in the story we’ve come
to the middle of –
which was the son who
ran out in the snow
the night you thought
he’d never come home
the night you came
downstairs to find
the door swung open,
snow blown inside
and caught up with him
in the road, frightened
and lost , the dog in
tow: a grey muzzled dog
who came to you young ;a
dog who’s long gone
though sometimes you’re
sure, you hear his whine,
the click of his paws,
the gusty sigh as he dozed
and dreamt, or think you
feel a rush
of warm air and at your
side the brush of his fur
as you make the rounds-
river, last farm
at the end of the woods,
sloping path, railway track;
a woman alone, stopping
to look at a frozen field
and the moon just up and
no dog behind
with a snowball or
stick he won’t put down
till she calls him on,
and hark she thinks
as he comes to heel with
a soundless bark,
in a flurry of sand or
snow or wind
and the push of his cold
nose in her hand.
Mother
Pheasant by Tony Watts
1
Mother Pheasant has no concept
of private property. She’s claimed
a corner of this iris bed to be
her middle of the world. The squashed flower stems
that line her slicked out bowl
will cause her no remorse. She is a plump
fortress, magnetised to the earth,
guarding her precious dozen.
We tiptoe past or stand and watch
from a respectful yard or two. She takes
no notice, though her round unblinking
eye
tells us there are more important things
afoot than tending flowers.
I’m
thinking twelve young pheasants running
ransack
in the garden
(I’m
thinking twelve deep yellow egglets
fluffling
in the pan).
Her night-dark pupil draws me in, but
yields
no clue to my dilemma, holding nothing
but the immeasurable pheasant
moment. I
teeter on the brink of her abyss.
2
Thanks to the universal deference due
to a mother and her babies, Lady
Pheasant
and all surviving chicks are hereby granted
the freedom of the garden – to parade
amongst its seed-strewn plains of grass,
its canopied forests of flowers.
Disdaining path and stepping stone, she
threads
the intricacies of her queendom, head
held high, transmitting as she goes
a constant signal to her straggling
brood
(tuned to no other wavelength, they’ve
no choice
but to stumble in her wake -
tumbling down steps and into ponds
that bear up their balsa bones and fluff
with ease
while their clockwork legs keep running
underwater
until the Hand of God in rubber
gardening glove
scoops them up and gently sets them down
beside their baffled mother.)
When jackdaw or magpie threaten
she explodes like the clappers in
furious levitation
and they wheel off into the trees
then calls her offspring under her wing
and sits
immovable on the lawn - a tent of
feathers
gently pulsating. But beyond the hedge
are fields alert with foxes, while above
buzzard and kestrel swing in their arcs
like searchlights
and by the fourth day half her chicks have
gone.
Unfazed, she stalks the garden, still
purrp-purrping to her lucky five –
‘Keep close’ it says - that muted
mother-call -
like someone sobbing in another room.
Gathering by Ruth Wiggins
The windows give onto a
second room
that's been tacked onto
the first; this second
room is a room of glass, a
swanky green-
house in effect, and when
the weather
becomes a room filled with
things like fine
and bright and the heat becomes too much,
or when there is a need,
as there is now
(for it is Bunny's
eighteenth) for the flood
of words, of guests, to
find a way into
something more than the
sway of chat,
we swing the windows out
and into
what once was garden, what
now is not,
and the second room
becomes all angles
and reflection. Light
pings on repeat recede
and Auntie's crystal on
the corner desk
trills – get me, in my
multi-facetedness.
And Lucille strips down to
her Jugendstil
rack, twists green feints
across the walls.
And eyes darting, and
words leaping –
this is us, we have become
something.
And heat swoons at the
unveiling –
the bone-white,
perspiration-beaded
shoulder blades. And my
niece shades
her eyes with dimpled
fingers tipped with
five neat paddles, on each
of which dance
nuns...in wimples. Only
she is witness
to gulls (in glimpses)
opening casement
after casement, thickly
bordered with
white against the blinding
revelation –
everything hinges. And the
old girl, who
is fighting fit on talc
and tonic, thick
with gin, swears down that
there's a storm
coming. Her joints are
singing – eggs
is eggs, there's thunder
in the postbag,
the correspondence is all
wet. And deep
inside the unlit quarters,
beyond the rooms
both second and first, the
kid that cannot
ride the heat, pads about
on reluctant feet,
gathering, gathering
strength to leave
the fans and shutters and
space to be
in his pants and skin, to
join the glittering.
The chink of glass, the
iconic cutlery.
And it's all a-tilting,
the incline of the cheek,
the nose to ceiling, the
Darling! the clink
of green. The tart
spumante of the pear tree,
around which wasps just
fizz and bitch,
each gagging for a hit on
this year's vintage.
And the North Atlantic
Drift staggers
in its sleep, its lullaby
of coast, climactic;
croons – hey niño, better
run for it, kid.
Kittiwake by Lindsey Holland
He
called her his chou-fleur, for the
pleated hems
and
frills she stitched in the palpitating light
of
a porthole. At twenty-two, in half a gale
she
barely tilted. When he put up bulkheads
she’d
slip up to the jib, her tiny feet concealed
by
layered folds of ochre. Near to port,
her
headscarf’s tartan slumped across her shoulders,
she
watched for gulls, her black-gloved hands
small
birds on the rail. ‘There’s too much machinery’
she’d
murmured once, her jaw against his collarbone
and
warm limbs heavy as they entered the troughs
of
Irish waves. ‘I wish we were kittiwakes
with
nary a struggle but sea and shrimp’. At harbour
she
waited by the gates. Discharging cargo
bought
a couple of hours. They’d stray down vennels
to
streets that dripped with whisky and tobacco,
the
judder of engines, an airborne oil
that
soaked through fabric, that licked her skin.
Below the
Bancal by Wendy Klein
…and Abuelo sold that good piece of land; “put the money on
the
maquinista…build an olive press…”
i. Maquinista
Gonzal hasn’t planned to star in his own film; a maquinista,
a machine operator, isn’t prepared for the rigours
of
method acting, but he finds he’s a natural; his
Goya cheekbones
are the stuff of matinee idols, his aquiline nose,
quintessential
machismo – the way he can hold a cigarette in one
hand,
operating the machine with the other, narrowing
his eyes against the spiralling column of smoke as
he admires
the glistening golden oil seeping through the
cylinder,
a cascade that streams faster than honey from a
comb, the Toledo
granite cones of the press setting off his pale
indoor skin,
his black, black hair cropped close to his skull
with the casual
sexiness of a young Dean Martin. His shirt sleeves
rolled up, reveal sinewy forearms as he peels the
rich pulp
from the straw mats, stacks them, one-by-one,
but the hand-held camera skims too fast over his
flat belly,
lean buttocks…
…dancing on the oil-soaked floor,
with a torero’s skating steps…
His screen debut was filmed just days before his
maimed body
was pulled from under a tractor, bundled onto a
stretcher,
carried down from the bancal. Years later, his widow will not
watch the film: prefers to remember him leaning
in the doorway of their kitchen, pouring a second glass
of wine,
drinking deep, soaking the bread in his own virgin
oil.
ii. La Viuda
The dawn chorus wakes up his widow as early as four
on summer mornings when her window is open wide
so she can breathe. Sometimes she misses the first
hesitant notes of the hungriest, which she knows
to be the smallest; birds, who like her smallest
babies,
cannot store enough sustenance to hold them
through even the shortest nights. She remembers
how they’d wake with a sharp cry – ravenous,
but here, as soon as the birds broadcast their
empty
bellies, the tractors start up: the roar
and belch of their diesel engines, the thrum
of their tires, basso profundo on the cobbled
street,
blotting out the avian food song, the avian gossip,
as they start their daily run to the risky slopes
of the bancales.
Too often she cannot find sleep
for remembering Gonzal – his tractor’s plunge
from the terraces that scale the hillsides in lazy
ripples, ready to topple the most macho men
…like olive berries--trapped,
crushed, coughed up
in shiny, oily blood-- back to the
soil…
She turns over in her bed to where the curve
of his naked back is not -- the spine outlined
in sweet dark hair – prays for a few more minutes
of blesséd rest, for the selective deafness
ear plugs have failed to provide, listens again
to the growl of the engines before she swings her
feet
to the floor, pushes her greying hair off her face
--
Ave MarÃa PurÃsima sin pecado concebida --
flicks the switch on her television,
tunes in to its colour,
its volume, loud enough to drown out
the street.
The Gloucestershire Prize
Speaking Raven
I Grwyne Fawr
Sheep have spread their
shrunken
woollens on barbed wire fences,
wisps bleached white by winter sun
imitating lichen
hung on blackthorn twigs to dry.
Delighted by pattern
the wind sends a pair of
ravens overhead.
It thinks they sound like frogs
but to me it’s clear that they are
deep in conversation
their topic a worsening in the weather,
the move of the livestock market
from Abergavenny to Raglan.
Or so I imagine,
not speaking raven.
II
Light-Bringer
Black with repentance? Me?
Everything you see I created –
these hills and rivers, those distant
clouds
that might be mountains
I circled the world, my feathers shed
forests
With my beak I mined diamonds and gritted
the slippery sky
While you were blindfolded and
stumbling
I shoved the sun up the chimney
giving birth to Day
My dirt-dark laugh regurgitates morning
Nights, I spread my wings, my iris
the tireless moon
III Thought and Memory
Once there were gods
and we served them. Now
we are masters of four winds
Feathers
and bone, we are the fearless,
tumbling
funambulists
stepping
on air
There’s more than one darkness.
We are the dark of the shortest day
falling through spring
Mornings
our
wings make sooty marks
across
the camber of the sky
In our feathers all things are
mingled. We have four and sixty
changings of the voice.
We
love to bark like happy dogs
rolling
in cloud
waggling
our tails
We’re not the souls of fallen soldiers.
We don’t act as omens,
foretellers of doom
Flapping rags and blackened paper,
we are debris at the edges
of the storm
Closing date 17th August 2013
Sole
Judge: David Morley
who will
read all entries
Closing
date for entries. Midnight, 17th
August 2013.
1st prize-£600.
Runner-up- £300. 5 x commended-£50 each.
The Gloucestershire Prize- £200. (for Gloucestershire residents
only).
Entry fees: Postal entries; £4 per poem or 3 poems for £10.
Email entries will carry a surcharge for PayPal & printing
costs:
One poem £4.35, two poems £8.70, three poems £11 - please go to the bottom of this page for how to enter by email.
Proceeds of the competition will be used to fund ‘Buzzwords’,
which is the longest running and most respected regular poetry gathering in Cheltenham .
"A
warm, intelligent - and going on the evidence of the floor readings - a very
talented group, Buzzwords was a great venue for reading and listening." -
George Szirtes
Rules of Entry.
1.
Poems should be no longer than 70 lines.
2.
No translations are accepted.
3.
Poems must not have been previously published
in print or on the internet.
4.
Entries must be clearly typed on single
side(s) of A4 paper in a clear font i.e. Arial 12 point. No curly or obscure
fonts please.
5.
Handwritten entries will not be considered.
6.
Entrants’ names should not appear
on the poems. An entry form or covering letter or email should accompany all
entries and contain name, phone number, address, email address and titles of
poems entered.
7.
Entries for the Gloucestershire prize should
mark their poems with ‘GL’ in the top right hand corner.
8.
Gloucestershire, for the purposes of the
competition, includes South Gloucestershire
9.
Entrants may enclose an s.a.e. marked
‘Results’ for postal notification of the prize-winners or state in their cover
letter/email that email notification is preferred.
10.
Results will also be published on the
Buzzwords Competition Website.
11.
Prize winners will be contacted by October 2013; winners will be welcome to read their poems at the next ‘Buzzwords’
12.
The judge’s decision will be final and we
regret that no correspondence will be entered into.
13.
Copyright will remain with the competitor,
but Buzzwords reserves the right to publish the winning poems on the website,
or to use them in publicity, for 12 months after the results are announced.
14.
Poems may not be altered after entry.
15.
Cheques should be clearly made out to
‘Cheltenham Poetry Cafe’.
On-line entries: Please pay for your entry by the paypal button below.
Your entries can then be emailed to us at:
Please send all the poems you are entering in a single file, with each poem on a separate page (use page breaks).
Please attach the poems to a covering email giving:
a) name, address, telephone number
b) number of poems submitted
c) your Paypal email address if different.
d) the titles of your poems
e) please make sure the attached file has just your poems and their titles, but no identifying information.
f) please send the email to buzzwords.poetry@gmail.com
Your entries can then be emailed to us at:
Please send all the poems you are entering in a single file, with each poem on a separate page (use page breaks).
Please attach the poems to a covering email giving:
a) name, address, telephone number
b) number of poems submitted
c) your Paypal email address if different.
d) the titles of your poems
e) please make sure the attached file has just your poems and their titles, but no identifying information.
f) please send the email to buzzwords.poetry@gmail.com
Sorry for the mistake. The email to send the entries to is buzzwords.poetry@gmail.com
ReplyDeleteWhat are the conditions in terms of 'subject' for this contest? (I'm sorry, I may be missing the blindingly obvious...)
ReplyDeleteThere is no theme or subject - completely open.
DeleteIs this competition open to people who live outside the UK? I couldn't see anything about that in the rules, sorry if I overlooked it!
ReplyDeleteYes, it is open to anyone, anywhere!
DeleteHi, if we apply for the Gloucestershire prize, will we still be considered for the others?
ReplyDeleteThanks
yes, you will - you'll be considered for the main prize first, as that is the higher value one
ReplyDeleteI've successfully completed the transaction at PayPal but their confirmation email says that you (the merchant) have not provided any dispatch details yet. Do I send you the poems yet or not?
ReplyDeleteWhen it says deadline is midnight on the 17th, does that mean 0:01 or 23:59? Thanks
ReplyDeleteGoodness, I am puzzled, are you? About the recent competition I mean.
ReplyDeleteGreat the poets do well and get publicity for their work in the competition. But what happened to the musicality of poetry? What happened to proper poetic rhythms and rhymes? Is it me, did I miss them? It just seems to me this poetry of marvellous ideas, themes and lots of flow, is nonetheless, really a version of prose I am afraid.
I'd love to see a modern sonnet win a prize, or a strict technical form; these really are difficult. The sorts of forms that won, well, well done of course, but I am not sure these really have great technical nor musical merit. Sorry, you will all be cross with me now I am sure...well, maybe it is best to have more than one judge on the panel maybe?
You will be even more cross with me now I am sure - but what about a modern ironic wit or ascerbic humour? Perhaps there is a slight vein of that in the winning poems, but I would like to see some really funny and/or satiric ones. There is so much to write about. Modern politics, the urban jungle etc. we don't just have to have rural imagery do we? Maybe we could have a comic verse category in the competition?
ReplyDeleteElizabeth - not cross at all. Every competition is different and there are judges who will look for formal qualities while others look for other things. We have a different judge every year and they bring, I hope, different sensibilities to the task.
ReplyDeleteAt the moment, we could not have more than one judge as that would mean another fee to pay and the point of the competition is to bring funds into Buzzwords so that we can pay guest poets
A comic verse category is a good suggestion and one we can think about for the future - though I always have to consider the enormous amount of work entailed in processing entries (all done by volunteers)
Thank you very much, Angela France, for the highly honourable mention. I appreciate.
ReplyDelete