We present the winning entries to the 2009 Cannon Poets Poetry Competition 'Earth'.
Last updated: 26th December 2009
| FIRST PRIZE | | Rambling the Peak District and finding ourselves in Bosnia
Fallen stone-walling
springing to attention in the militia
of Srebrenica's coffin-lid headstones:
so many mounds, graves, names
so much stone.
Hushed cabalas of foxgloves
behind walls and in gateways -
the huddled mothers of Banja Luka living out
numbness and grief at street corners.
Sad-eyed rams out-staring our trespass
with all the incomprehension
of Sarajevo butchers juggling
bloody guts through slipping fingers.
Red-dyed sheep-head -
blood flash against grass -
the shorn flanks thinned to iridescent skins
like blood-letting limbs in Mosta’s bazaars.
This copse is makeshift mosque
where larks call from sky's tall tower
with plainsong, ancient and eastern,
while high on the hill-ridges there crackles
the ack-ack-ack of magpies
Kalashnicoughing at raiding neighbours.
Not homes, but buildings gutted and
shattered, windows gone missing, roofs hanging
in air, rooms outside in, and doors spanning
space in wreck of brick, bone of stone,
the folks vanished away, fields being idle, abandoned
tractors and rusting ploughshares, the land
surrendered to nettle, ambushed by weed,
strafing rain and wind's ricochet -
so much spoil in brambles barbing ditches and trench.
In the graveyard stillnesses –
the seed in the ground
seed in the ground -
old earth is growing new owners.
Consider, then,
this country, too,
has bridges to build.
Roger Elkin | | | ____________________________________________________ | | | SECOND PRIZE | | First Born
The house is washed discoloured white
with its name chalked up in gothic script
on the beam above the door.
I turn to the right past the overgrown shed
full of gardening tools and bikes,
the smell of oil and decaying fruit;
I move toward the open porch
where, angled out of the sun, hooded
in navy gabardine, is a chrome-handled
high-wheeled pram. In it is my sister,
her face bunched in sleep,
the first girl after four boys in a row.
I stare in at the latticed windows.
My mother is clearing dishes, my father
asleep, his hand-knit pullover
swarming over his chest, an unruly
yellow growth. So this is it.
This is home. This is how it looks.
By the pond at the end of the garden
my brothers are playing
with bamboo sticks and string.
They do not see me. They do not know me.
I became earth before they were born
and now spy on things
that were meant to be mine.
Giles Cole | | | ____________________________________________________ | | | THIRD PRIZE | | Hednesford Hills
Shrapnel ferns where grass snakes bred,
it didn't take long to climb. A few strides
and you were up. Not very far, high enough
to see where your life hadn't reached yet;
another slow afternoon's demolition derby
of clouds reversing into cloud shadows.
I liked it best mid week, when it was quiet,
no-one around, just drizzle on roads below;
unemployed kestrel shadows flitting
over the lost chaff of buried coal mines;
Cannock Chase sunk into its hangovers;
the A5's low articulated rumble of thunder;
muffled yelps of dogs and glue sniffers;
the woodpeckers joyriding silver birch trees.
This was Hednesford Hills, a purple bruise
of unexpected beauty absently rising
from rows of houses into gorse and heather.
Seen from the sky? A green ;cup brimming
with yellow, purple, mixed browns;
the chipped white tooth of a memorial
asleep under wounded scrubs of Scot's Pine.
We circled the archive of our initials
on its dying benches. Magnified by winter,
we thought we could see to Wales,
a dancing white ribbon of Celtic frost.
Summer afternoons, the sour tinge of landfill.
Over there, Walsall's square tower blocks
and Birmingham, the dark star of gravity.
Below us lay the spreading carcass of town.
We stayed, watching the satellites glow.
Then after kestrels seized their day,
we walked home, unlocking the ghosts
of skylarks from their deepfreeze coffins.
Sparks of earth drifted upwards to heaven.
Dismantled landscapes fell away at our feet.
Andrew Green |
|
