SWALE LIFE INTERNATIONAL POETRY COMPETITION (JULY 2012)

CLOSING DATE: 31 JULY 2012
7 days left to enter the 7th quarterly Swale Life Poetry Competition.
Prizes: £100, £50, £30, and 2 x £10
Entry fees: £3 per poem, £12 for 5 poems
Judge: N Quentin Woolf
http://www.easternlightepm.com/excelforcharity/swale-life-poetry-competition/july-2012/

Excel for Charity Competitions Bulletin

You are welcome to the Excel for Charity Competitions Bulletin 17/07/2012. This issue gives you up to date information on our writing competitions.

 

First of all, the results of The Psychiatry Research Trust Poetry Competition 2012 were announced on the 9^th of July. The winning poems have been published in the Excel for Charity News Blog in these locations:

First Prize:

‘Fish’ by M.V. Williams http://excelforcharity.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/fish.html

Second Prize:

‘Massacre in Houla’ by Lynn Roberts http://excelforcharity.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/massacre-in-houla.html

Third Prize:

‘The Poltergeist’ by Max Hawker http://excelforcharity.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/poltergeist.html

Highly Commended:

‘Illusion’ by Elin Lewis http://excelforcharity.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/illusion.html

‘Gold’ by Tim Lenton http://excelforcharity.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/gold.html

The adjudication report by Derek Adams can be read here http://excelforcharity.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/results-and-judges-report-psychiatry.html

 

Swale Life International Poetry Competition 2012

Closing Date: 31-July-2012

#7 in the quarterly poetry competition in aid of Diversity House, a charity based in Sittingbourne, Kent, publishers of Swale Life magazine. This competition is for previously unpublished poems in English Language, on any subject, in any style, up to 50 lines long (excluding title). Poems entered must not have been posted to any website or blog, and must not be under consideration for publication, or accepted for publication elsewhere.

First Prize: £100.00, Second Prize: £50.00, Third Prize: £30.00, High Commendation Prizes: 2 x £10.00. Judge: N Quentin Woolf

http://www.easternlightepm.com/excelforcharity/swale-life-poetry-competition/july-2012/

 

Build Africa Poetry Competition 2012

Closing Date: 15-August-2012

We have had to extend the closing date of the Build Africa Poetry Competition to the 15^th of August. The competition was originally scheduled to close on the 15^th of July. If you have not yet entered this competition, please do so now. This competition is in aid of a charity doing great and worthy work empowering young Africans through education and helping them escape poverty. Just one young person in Africa who beats poverty makes the entire world richer. Don’t forget that as you help this charity, you also stand the chance to win one of the cash prizes of £150, £75, £40, and 2 x £10. Judge: Afam Akeh

Enter Online and pay securely by PayPal or print off an Entry Form (for postal entry) at http://www.easternlightepm.com/excelforcharity/buildafrica-poetry-competition-2012/

 

Lupus UK Poetry & Short Story Competitions 2012

We mention a few months ago that we would be running a new competition for Lupus UK to raise funds for the charity which helps people living with the debilitating illness. These competition will be announced on Monday 23^rd of July and will run until the 30^th of September. In 2011 our competition raised £180.65 for the charity. Hopefully we will do better this year.

 

 

Gold

By TIM LENTON

 

Back in the day, she said,

they found gold here,

where the river bends, tightens,

then hurtles through,

tickling the silver salmon

 

It seems like bear country:

I see them scooping fish from the stream,

juggling and swallowing,

blending into the background bushes,

black as berries

 

But that is just a drifting, disappearing dream:

meanwhile you walk head down on the bonnie boulders

turning over stones like memories

looking for that fine line

 

that will carry you deeper in

and deliver everything

 

as if in the sun-soaked evening

you did not already hold it all

in your innocent,

unsuspecting hands

 

 

‘Gold’ was highly commended in The Psychiatry Research Trust Poetry Competition 2012

 

About the poet

         

Tim Lenton is 66, married and lives in Norwich. He is a founding member of InPrint, a poetry and visual arts collaborative group, and has published three short collections of poems, starting with Mist and Fire in 2003, followed by Off the Map and Running with Scissors. His work has also appeared in various anthologies, as well as in books published by the Paston Heritage Society. He won the Fish International Poetry Prize in 2007 and the Norwich Writers' Circle Open Competition in 2010. He is a former journalist and wrote a commentary page in the Eastern Daily Press for 11 years. 

www.inprintartsandpoetry.co.uk

 

Gold / Illusion / The Poltergeist / Massacre in Houla / Fish

Illusion

By ELIN LEWIS

 

Frozen, you finger the pills

like a rosary.

Clutched close,

chucked up to your chin.

Shivering like a star-string.

 

A silver drop bombs towards you;

bloated with royalty,

exploding on a whitened cheek.

 

You lift your hands in worship.

Hysterical hands,

clawing at the richness of feeling,

feet dancing on the fanatical flood.

Your head tilts back,

guzzling glittering elixir

down that ruby throat.

 

But the silver rain cuts quick,

And stars explode in ebony.

 

The Kingdom is breached!

The vision of sky

fractures, fractures...

And the immortal brights dissolve into

Nothingness.

And the illusion is eclipsed like a sun.

 

In the dark,

the broken rosary falls from forlorn fingers,

now nothing but dull beads,

scattered on a hard floor.

 

And day,

day comes with swift severity,

screaming like a maniac.

 

 

‘Illusion’ was highly commended in The Psychiatry Research Trust Poetry Competition 2012.

 

About the poet

 

Elin Lewis has had her work published in numerous Forward Poetry anthologies and at the online poetry magazine, The Pygmy Giant. In 2012, she won the adult category in the Stratford-upon-Avon Literary Festival Poetry Competition and was consequently published in the competition’s anthology, Words Paint Pictures.

 

Gold / Illusion / The Poltergeist / Massacre in Houla / Fish

The Poltergeist

By MAX HAWKER

 

Last night a poltergeist came

in curtain-tracing breaths

piano chimes and foggy photo frames.

She asked me for the keys

to my children's lockets

to tamper with their lungs

and re-adjust their clocks.

I did not comply.

She railed at me

with lampshade rattling

hot growls and door thrashing,

then painted my face in reds and pinks.

I asked her for the meaning of it,

to let me see the reason

she reserves so well.

She could not reply.

 

This morning I found her debris

caught her reflection

in dances with mirrors

and wine glasses—

it's been this way since 1978.

She sang with Floyd a long time ago

but that was another life.

The kids have grown

and she knows their rooms are dusty,

this house is now the changeless watcher

charting her ungluing.

There's a stranger in the hall,

show her around, make her coffee,

accommodate—it's your job,

just keep her hostage

until you work it out.

 

 

‘The Poltergeist’ won third prize in The Psychiatry Research Trust Poetry Competition 2012

 

About the poet

 

Max Hawker is a Croydon-based writer who has had a number of poems published, as well as a few short stories; he has also been long and shortlisted in several competitions, most recently Poetry Lostock 2012 and the Fermoy International Poetry Festival. He is proud to have his work feature here as he is a long-term sufferer of OCD, and applauds the work of the Psychiatry Research Trust as well as Excel for Charity.

 

Gold / Illusion / The Poltergeist / Massacre in Houla / Fish

 

Massacre in Houla

By LYNN ROBERTS

 

In the blue hour of the evening

Herod has come to watch his sleeping son,

flung on the mattress like a peony,

no angles, only curves; his eyelashes

arcs of fine stamens and his fingers curled.

Water pats glassily on turquoise tiles

and honeysuckle breathes the scent of night;

the dark red rose relaxes, weeping

arterial petals on the marble floor.

What can the king be thinking as he sees

the round wrists and the plump feet flex and twitch,

the fingers grasp and stretch? and as he hears

the little snuffling moans? What’s in his heart?

A nightingale cries from the orange tree

over the drifts of petals on the stone.

 

 

‘Massacre in Houla’ won second prize in The Psychiatry Research Trust Poetry Competition 2012

 

About the poet

 

Lynn Roberts is an artist and an art historian specializing in the history of picture frames.  She is the co-author, with Paul Mitchell, of A History of European Picture Frames and Frameworks (both 1996). Her poetry has been published in Outposts, Envoi, The Frogmore Papers, GRIST, The Shit Creek Review, The Tablet, Pulsar, Red Poets, Transparent Words and Agenda. She won the 2009 Listowel Writers’ Week Poetry Collection, and has won and been placed in numbers of other competitions; in 2011 she published Rosa Mundi, a sequence of poems, and Pandora’s Book, a collection of light verse.

website: www.lynnroberts.co.uk 

 

 

Gold / Illusion / The Poltergeist / Massacre in Houla / Fish

Fish

by M. V. WILLIAMS

 

These are the half-dead fish,

stargazy mouths agape,

all washed up in white wrappings;

their stiff and soundless jaws are moving,

flashing their hazardous teeth.

 

They thrash sometimes, in extremis.

 

These fish have swallowed hooks

that tear at their gills' lining.

Their thin, white, what-were-hands,

are useless fins now, clutching the soil of sheets,

beached on the beige lino.

 

Drip-fed and drain-emptied, there they lie,

filletted on the gurney's slab, under a bright light;

under a notice saying: 'Nil By Mouth' and

'Do Not Resuscitate.'

 

These poor fish once had names,

mouths filled with love and wonder,

swam nobly with the stars,

lest we forget.

Lest we forget.

 

 

‘Fish’ won the first prize in The Psychiatry Research Trust Poetry Competition 2012.

 

About the poet

 

Mary Valentine Williams has worked in Mental Health and allied fields most of her life, having failed to keep order as a teacher and bored to tears by banking, her first two career choices. Always a scribbler, Mary gained a late MA in Creative Writing at Edge Hill and was then commissioned to write two self-help books for Sheldon (SPCK).  This helped her to decide to pursue writing as a career, but in filling in the gaps she has also been a foster parent, market trader and craft worker. Her last proper job was as a University staff counsellor.

Published in many poetry anthologies and winner of several prizes last year, Mary keeps tabs on the Liverpool poets she met while on her MA, and helps run a writers’ and poets’ group in her home town. She is a member of the Keele Poets’ Group at Silverdale. When not at her computer or kitchen sink, she can be found on her allotment or in the local flea market. Married with four adult sons, she and her husband now live in Shropshire in an inconvenient cottage full of paintings by friends and family members, with a well under the living room floor, and try valiantly to stop the garden getting into the house.

Mary has also published three novels, numerous short stories in the ‘dark fiction’ genre, erotica and memoirs. She also writes under her middle name of Valentine Williams.

Gold / Illusion / The Poltergeist / Massacre in Houla / Fish

 

Results and Judge’s Report, The Psychiatry Research Trust Poetry Competition 2012,

Highly Commended:

‘Illusion’ – Elin Lewis

‘Gold’ – Tim Lenton

Third Prize:

'The Poltergeist' – Max Hawker

Second Prize:

'Massacre in Houla' – Lynn Roberts

First Prize

‘Fish’ – M V Williams

 

Judge’s report.

 

It was enjoyable reading so many interesting poems, but it was hard work judging the competition, there were a lot of very good poems entered, and getting it down to a shortlist of 20 was hard, let alone the last 5.

I read the short listed 20 over and over again, they were all good poems, technically proficient and with their own merits. It was difficult to choose the winners but in the end the same poems kept catching my eye, there was something in each of these poems that touched me; so here they are with an idea of what it was that drew me to the winning poems.

 

First Prize:  Fish

The extended metaphor is a dangerous card to play, it can be all too easy to trip yourself up, but this poet handles it perfectly. From the image of the ‘stargazy mouths’ this poem had me hook, line and sinker! The poet carefully builds the picture of these ‘half dead fish’ then hits us with ‘thin, white, what-were-hands, / are useless fins now’ and leads on a downward slope towards the terrible scene, where de-humanised bodies in hospital beds await death.

Old people who ‘had names, / mouths filled with love and wonder’. This poem has a good rhythm built on alliteration, internal rhymes and assonance.

The poet broaches a difficult subject in this both shocking and touching, but very memorable poem.

 

Second prize:  Massacre in Houla

From its arresting first line to its heart-renderingly simple final sentence, this poem tackles its emotive subject, the massacre in Houla, full on by avoiding it.

Instead of showing us the modern day horror, it takes us back in time to the Massacre of the Innocents where Herod the Great ordered the execution of all young male children in the village of Bethlehem. But the poet doesn’t even show us the horror of this incident, instead we get Herod the loving father watching ‘his sleeping son’, we are shown the beauty of the child and the night. We have comparisons to flowers: peony, stamen, honeysuckle, that suddenly become dark omens ‘dark red rose relaxes, weeping/ arterial petals’. We realise he is watching over his son as the boys of Bethlehem are killed. The poet asks ‘What can the king be thinking’, and we can’t know what he is thinking, or indeed what President al-Assad thinks when he looks at his children.

 

Third prize: The Poltergeist

This poem is full of clever images, ‘curtain-tracing breaths… foggy photo frames’. The poltergeist of the title comes in the night with ‘hot growls’ and banging doors, painting her face with menopausal ‘reds and pinks.’ In the morning light she sees reflected in ‘mirrors/ and wine glasses’ an unwanted ghost, whose former life has departed, she feels herself a stranger in her own home.

 

Highly commended:

Illusion is a poem in which the highs and lows of drug dependency are explored. The poet uses some wonderfully fresh images: ‘Shivering like a star-string’,  a raindrop ‘bloated with royalty’. The illusion of the title broken with the come down of morning ‘screaming like a maniac.’

 

Gold. Great use of its title to draw you in to the first stanza & also to the ‘sun-soaked evening’ of the last stanza and the treasure you ‘already hold…

in your … hands’ I loved the description of the river that ‘bends, tightens,

then hurtles’ and the imaginary bears ‘juggling and swallowing,

blending’. A perfectly paced little treasure of a poem.

 

 

Derek Adams, July  2012

 

Gold / Illusion / The Poltergeist / Massacre in Houla / Fish