Year 2008/09, Pulsar Poetry Competition Winning Poems
Pulsar Poetry Competition Results
Thank you for participating in the year 2008/2009 Pulsar Poetry Competition, (the competition closed on 30th April 2009). Another interesting and greatly varied collection of poems to read through. As usual I agonised over the poems but appreciate that everyone has a different point of view, what I like others may not - it was ever thus. Many thanks to Neil Brooks for his help in choosing the final five poems from the ten poems I had selected.
Once again, your kind support is appreciated. By entering the competition you have helped to keep the printed version of Pulsar going, at least until the September 2009 edition! David Pike.
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Winning Poems are:
First Prize: £125
Ink and Wash Painting With Cormorants by
Margaret Eddershaw of Nafplion, Greece
Photograph above - Margaret Eddershaw
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Second Prize: £75
Near Penrhyncoch by
Leah Armstead of Aberystwyth
Photo to follow
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Third Prize: £50
The Wolf at the Door by
David Tross of London
Photograph above - David Tross
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Recommended Poems, in no particular order:
Typing Class by
Valerie Morton of Wheathampstead, Hertfordshire
Photo to follow
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Living by the Sword by
Gemma Wildman of Chesham, Buckinghamshire
Photo to follow
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The winning poems, and two recommended poems will be published in the September 2009 edition of Pulsar Poetry Magazine – free copies to all poets published within. Winning and runner-up poets have also been notified individually.
Winning / recommended poems may be viewed below:
Many thanks for making this competition a buzz. It was a pleasure to view your poems. Best wishes.
David Pike, (Judge), Editor, Pulsar Poetry Magazine.
Pulsar Poetry Competition – Year 2008/2009 Winning Poem
(All poems are centred to avoid presentation anomalies)
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Ink and Wash Painting With Cormorants
Yangshuo’s mountains protrude
into starless dark
tenebrous tongues
lick the lake
raindrops printing wrinkles
on its leaden skin.
A silhouette poles a bamboo boat
dipping a brush in ink.
Beside the fisherman
seven cormorants in a line
corded necks bent like hoses
wings in dry-brush black
stretched wide
chalky backs
speckled with charcoal.
Pen-nib heads glide
slip into ebony silk
streak apart like water
on a speeding windscreen.
Moments later
each bird surfaces
in a shower of grey pearls
silver fish aslant its beak
eyes glinting like jet
before shadowing down once more.
The old man’s pole collects them
time and again
he grasps each sheened throat
to shimmer its catch into his basket.
At some unseen signal
fishers return to their perch
shake drowned feathers
over the lake mirror
utter harsh cries at the night
until they are fed.
Pulsar Poetry Competition, Year 2008/2009 – Second Prize
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Near Penrhyncoch
You and I stalked a muddy field
which bore a Roman fort.
We searched for stories of mushrooms,
telling the poisonous from the good.
Hungry cows grazed nearby,
suspicious of our wandering.
I kept slipping on the wet hillside
that failed to daunt deft-footed sheep.
It’s easy to feel wedded to this land,
as if somehow it belongs to us.
We are hooked by
it. Like crows and rooks
it feels like we could nest here endlessly.
Passion’s nature is to possess,
yet our link to this place is feather-thin.
Really we belong here as much as our echo
belongs to the valley that lets it pass.
Pulsar Poetry Competition, Year 2008/2009 – Third Prize
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A Wolf at the Door
The wolf is well-dressed for a wolf and speaks with a Geordie
accent.
Asks me how I’m doing today.
Please call me Darren.
It rips out the fridge and then flings the plasma onto the
patio outside
Where it shatters.
And don’t forget, you’re still a
valued customer.
With us you get to keep your face.
It takes a hatchet to the pipes and says that if I have any
complaints
or even comments, this demolition is being recorded.
You have a good one now.
Pulsar Poetry Competition, Year 2008/2009 – Recommended Poem
Photograph above - Valerie Morton
Typing Class
A budgie lived in our classroom –
the only thing that wasn’t afraid
of the teacher with the red hair
who’d lost her airman in the war.
She made us stand up every morning
out of respect, as she whipped the blanket
away from the cage
-
“Good morning Bert – repeat after me:
“good morning Bert.”
At rare moments, she opened
his door, narrowing her green eyes
as he autographed our books.
One day he crash-landed
on Molly Pouter’s keyboard –
it was a swift burial outside,
under the window.
She found another to take his place;
kept him locked up,
covered at night
Living by the Sword
He had
a look of the illicitly serpentine about him
could
summon a home like Caligula in Rome,
as he
lifted his foot the ground would rise to meet it
and so forth.
Of course,
the
pendulum must swing
and
the old tree will bear the most rings,
an
abstract print
shapes
and squares of solid hues
gained
ill repute, grey city workers and mud stuck views.
If I
had dared to ask,
where
he had been, where he was and where he started from
and
algebraic conundrum of x to z
a man
of education might meet the end
or the beginning.
But not he,
destined to be the alien stray
he’ll
always leave but somehow stay
pollen
carried on the wind to foreign shores
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Year 2007/08, Pulsar Poetry Competition Winning Poems
Thank you for participating in the year 2007/2008 Pulsar Poetry Competition, (the competition closed on 30th April 2008). This probably has been the most difficult competition I've had to judge to-date, poets have obviously studied Pulsar and are hitting the nail right on the head regarding preferred poems and editorial style. I agonised over the poems but appreciate that everyone has a different point of view, what I like others may not - it was ever thus. Once again, your kind support is appreciated. By entering the competition you have helped to keep the Pulsar press turning. David Pike.
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Winning Poems are:
First Prize: £125
English Riviera by
Michael Newman of Bishops Cleeve, Cheltenham
Photograph above - Michael Newman
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Second Prize: £75
Bones by
Andrew Frolish of Layham, Suffolk
Photograph above, Andrew Frolish
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Third Prize: £50
Breaking Point by
Maureen Anne Browne of Newtownards, Co. Down, Northern Ireland
Photo to follow
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Recommended Poems, in no particular order:
Masinko by
Chris Hardy of London
Photograph above - Chris Hardy
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I don't know why . . . by
Steve Breese of Kelsall, Cheshire
Photo to follow
The winning poems, and two recommended poems will be published in the September 2008 edition of Pulsar Poetry Magazine – free copies to all poets published within. Winning and runner-up poets have also been notified individually.
Winning / recommended poems may be viewed below:
Once again, many thanks for making this competition a buzz. It was a pleasure to view your poems. Best wishes.
David Pike, (Judge), Editor, Pulsar Poetry Magazine.
Pulsar Poetry Competition – Year 2007/2008 Winning Poem
(All poems are centred to avoid presentation anomalies)
*
English Riviera
South. To the south
Always the south.
Lanes lead from English Easter
Towards a Mediterranean Mystery,
Indigenous trees give way to exotics,
While the sun draws caravans
Across the Steppes of Central Cornwall.
I watch as boats
Take on outboard motors;
Oilskin-clad, children work up
A modern shanty; Far Harbour,
Parents mutter below-decibel.
The bay growls with two-stroke tuning.
Beach talk. Tide turn. Tide Town.
Wagtails amaze, picking away
At wet sand,
Their low loping flight characteristic.
But the smew that bobs on waves
Could be rubber duck,
Up and down a turbulent bath.
Far-out, ocean liners balance
On the earth’s rim,
Defy identification.
I attempt to focus binoculars,
Name my own inadequacy.
A dozen turnstones fly in,
Stand sentinel over shingle,
And work their patch.
I stealth a presence
Across the rocks, but am seen.
A dozen turnstones fly off,
Leaving emptiness.
Now the boats return from day-long Odyssey,
And the faithful tractor waits.
Michael Newman
Bishops Cleeve, Cheltenham
Pulsar Poetry Competition, Year 2007/2008 – Second Prize
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Bones
We return to the clearing night after night
expecting to see that white glow
peel itself off the moon again:
the owl swooping between spiny trees
and the slick currents of polluted clouds.
At night, when we stoop silently
under low boughs and heavy skies,
the earth comes alive with crackling
and the scratching of prey finding cover,
shivering through pauses in the hunting.
On the third night, we find the owl’s perch,
a tree stump, rotting in its coat of fungus.
Pellets litter the dirt below: little furry sacks
of indigestible waste, the undesirable
aspects of the lives consumed the previous night.
Poking through the compressed fur,
delicate bones, like wooden splinters,
snag the earth. Imagine the retching,
the coughing, the mouthful of unwanted
bitterness spat in a fury in the clearing each night.
Stumbling our way home down unlit paths
where the fingernails of nightened trees
scrape the flesh from our cheeks,
I look at you as the moon slips from your face
and I feel the bones catching in my throat.
Andrew Frolish
Layham, Suffolk
Pulsar Poetry Competition, Year 2007/2008 – Third Prize
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Breaking Point
His tendency to complain
Remained after he’d gone to work:
A shadow, hovering
As she tackled a mountain of ironing
And headed towards dusk.
From where she stood
She could see Benevenagh
Drowning in mist
And felt,
Her sense of self drowning with it.
She reached for the last shirt:
Meticulously ironing
Around buttons
The colour of pearl barley,
Collar, pockets, pleats, placket, cuffs.
She wished she’d done his first –
He was fussy about his shirts.
She hurriedly put the ironing-board back.
Left nothing to chance:
Gave the mirror a quick look,
For reassurance:
Her lipstick was fine.
Used to concealing things
She deleted the dark bits under her eyes,
Downed a glass of wine,
Then – scrutinised:
All those things that shouldn’t be there
She removed,
For the last time.
She felt him closing in,
Just like the night,
Heard the crunch of rubber on stones
And knew
Something, definitely, wouldn’t be right.
Maureen Anne Browne
Newtownards, Co. Down, Northern Ireland
Pulsar Poetry Competition – Recommended Poem
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Masinko
When she says this city
is cold and sad
I know she makes it so
wishing she was back
in the city
without shops or money
hawks at the window
where she’s from.
They play a violin
with one horsehair string
sing to you your own song
of welcome and faith
nothing else but the song
is always new
made by two musicians
one plays, makes the words
both make the tune
until they stop, take a coin
and go, with a staff
across their shoulders
to loop and rest the arms
walking home uphill
in the dark finding the way
like swallows.
At night
the cold black sky
flows in the unlit streets
like glass, you see
between the stars
where God might be
if you choose to look
and silence offers all
you’ll ever need or get,
dawn, the singing
of the fire, birds,
feet at the door.
Chris Hardy
London
(Masinko – Ethiopian violin)
Pulsar Poetry Competition – Recommended Poem
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I don’t know why . . .
There on the restaurant table beside me
A recently cleaned table
A discarded empty ketchup sachet
I don’t know why this is worth mentioning
It just feels important to me
My wife sits opposite
Both of us are coming to terms with the difficult news we’ve just heard
Words are non-existent when hope is asked for.
I look around the restaurant
In hope of some respite
Egged on by his friends
A man goes to the counter for a second helping of caramel apple pie.
He returns to his seat and consumes it as though the world is ending
A child repeatedly bangs a can of lilt loudly on the table
His parents ignore this, immune to the crescendo
Looking further I see a woman’s face
Skin a deathly white
A small clump of hair on the rear of her scalp is all that’s left
The cancer is beating her.
She looks straight back at me,
Her eyes a brilliant blue and within them courage and fear.
Hope is still there.
She smiles
I try to smile back but I am embarrassed of my staring.
A there on the restaurant table beside me
A recently cleaned table
A discarded empty ketchup sachet
I don’t know why this is worth mentioning
It just feels important to me.
Steve Breese
Kelsall, Cheshire
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