Poetry ’26 Results
Judge’s Report – Kemal Houghton
It has been an honour and a pleasure to adjudicate this year’s Southport Writers’ Circle Poetry Competition. I read all of the poems through once I received them to give me some idea of the task ahead. Then I cracked on with a few other things before printing them out to study them in more detail. I read each poem aloud and then scrutinised it further before deciding on its place in a rough sort of pecking order. This saved giving arbitrary marks that might prove too constrictive. Things were able to move about in the pecking order quite freely until I settled on the top four followed by four more Commended poems.
1st Prize
Luigi Marchini
Old man shuffling across the chess board (after Marilyn Hacker) came out as a clear winner. This unashamedly allusive poem had me reaching for Google, but I couldn’t find which particular Hacker poem it was referring to. I had to look up a few other things but it was worth it. To know ‘that chess game’ from The Seventh Seal is where the medieval knight plays against Death for his life, certainly adds weight to the poem. However, we don’t need to know everything as the picture emerges of these dysfunctional characters playing for life itself. The mark of a good poem is that it grows on you and the more I read this poem the more I like it –
‘if only
that move had been more polished…
if only, if only…’
2nd Prize
Gareth Roberts
The Hiking Boots’ Prayer grabs your attention with a strong opening line “I will weave myself a weather”. This is a visceral poem brought home to us by the clever use of alliteration. The boots, of course, are a pathetic fallacy; it is the hiker who cherishes every mile and, ‘will pray for the miles that come.’
3rd Prize
Peter Devonald
Contortions of the Breathing Dead has an unusual format in that each line starts with a slash (/). This presented a staccato rhythm and implied that there was some sort of choice going on between each line. This comes through in the second half of the poem where, having lost everything, the narrator chooses to
‘/live in the present
/even when it’s misery’
HIGHLY COMMENDED
Coral Dranfield
A Toast to the Sun has occasional rhyme and a final couplet to glue it all together. I liked this technique as it is more subtle than having a constant rhyme throughout. The story of a couple separated by dementia is all too familiar, but the poet manages to capture the sense of anger of the one left behind to face their own health battles alone.
COMMENDED
Pauline Hawkesworth
The Pigeons are Waiting presents us with the wonderful image of pigeons as a metaphor for all the things that will fill our days. I love the idea of them coming from the sycamores ‘…continue into other tomorrows.’
COMMENDED
Alan J. Carter
Intercourse with Euterpe I enjoyed the classicism of this poem which is also reflected its layout without falling into the trap of becoming unnecessarily archaic. The final couplet ending ‘For the lover which I wish to have is thee’ is in keeping with the subject matter.
COMMENDED
Roger Elkin
Freewheeler has a standout stanza in,
‘and hoping to God he wouldn’t hit
the grit-stone walling, falling, falling,
left leg sprawled backwards beneath him’
where the alliteration and assonance give a vivid sense of space and falling. This was a life-changing event and so it is right that it should be the pinnacle of the poem.
COMMENDED
Jacqueline Woods
Mars 1 Project 2012 is an interesting poem on a subject more often explored through prose. I particularly liked ‘the tremble of new skin/touching…’ The poet has been careful to choose line endings that add tension as well as rhythm to the poem.
HUMOUR PRIZE
Tony Oswick
I was pleased that the humorous poems were marked with an ‘H’, it saved me the embarrassment of choosing a poem that might have turned out to be about someone’s dead cat. All six poems in this category relied heavily on rhyme and rhythm and all were good at it. This made choosing a winner difficult and probably came down to which poem I liked most and thought the funniest. Reasons to Retire came out on top with its clever use of management jargon that has made us all feel at some time or another that it must be time to go. The trick with this sort of poem is to make it long enough without being too long. All of the poems managed to save their punchlines to the end and, if this was often predictable, it was no bad thing. In the case of the winning poem, the punchline is given away by the title, but it is the anticipation of the end from which much humour is derived. Well done all and especially well done to our retiree!
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