Year 2009/10, Pulsar Poetry Competition Winning Poems
Pulsar Poetry Competition Results
Thank you for participating in the year 2009/2010 Pulsar Poetry Competition, (the competition closed on 30th April 2010). I sifted through the poems and found it to be an interesting and exacting time, often picking up and re-reading poems on several 'dithering' occasions. The poems were so varied they made for good reading with a generally high standard throughout. Many thanks to Neil Brooks for his help in choosing five poems from the final poems I had selected. Thank you to all persons who participated, your kind support is appreciated. Poetry publishing, in whatever form, is a tenuous affair where budgets and shoe strings are often mentioned. The competition helps to cover web hosting costs and the peripheral expenses relating to Pulsar 'live' events. Basically, you've helped to keep Pulsar Poetry Webzine going. David Pike.
Final Adjudicator: David Pike - Editor, Pulsar
Assistant Judge: Neil Brooks
Administrator: Jill Pike
Winning and recommended poems are shown below
Winning Poems are:
First Prize: £125
Do survivors dream of the polar bear by
Lynn Roberts of Tunbridge Wells, Kent
Illustration above: Lynn Roberts
*
Second Prize: £75
Felis silvestris catus by
Sarah J. Bryson of Kirtlington, Oxfordshire
Photograph above: Sarah J. Bryson
*
Third Prize: £50
The Stone: by
Mark Stopforth of Stroud, Gloucestershire
Photograph above: Mark Stopforth
* *
Recommended Poems, in no particular order:
Barflies by
Graham Weaver of Canterbury, Kent
Photograph above: Graham Weaver
*
Don't let me die a comical death by
David C Johnson of Bristol
Photograph above: David C Johnson
*
Pulsar Poetry Competition – Year 2009/2010 Winning Poem
Do survivors dream of the polar bear?
Grandmother told me stories of our land:
swaddled in soft white, varnished in hard white;
colder than pebbles from the dark sea bed,
and no trees anywhere. Great monsters trod
the cold hard soft white, wearing hand-deep fur
coloured like thick cream from the milking urn
and teeth like lobster’s claws. Sometimes we find
their fangs and bones, washed paler than their fur.
Then there were lands like this one, bright with grass,
stretching around the globe’s round skin down to
a mirror of our land then, empty of men,
colder than sea caves, whiter than wavetop foam,
growling with savage life . . .
But the sea rose.
The bright lands sank, the sun burned; only
the humped highlands stick like arid coals
out of the lukewarm sea. We’re very few;
we sit upon the warm shore, under the
heavy sky; we watch waves licking
each day higher, unburying the bones.
Lynn Roberts
Tunbridge Wells, Kent
*
Pulsar Poetry Competition, Year 2009/2010 – Second Prize
Felis silvestris catus
Look under the chestnut tree
where the Spring bulbs have faded
and the grass has grown lush, shaded
by the new flush of Summer leaves
and the uncut lawn
imitates the meadow beyond.
And through the shadow let your eye follow
the flattened grass path, to the long rope swing,
hung low over the patch where no turf grows
scuffed back to soil by children’s shoes.
Here in a slant of evening sun rests the cat,
satiated, stretched out
blended into the tree’s sheltering skirts
disguised as nature intended
while the birds shout their warnings.
Sarah J. Bryson
Kirtlington, Oxfordshire
*
Pulsar Poetry Competition, Year 2009/2010 – Third Prize
The stone:
You dipped your finger into the river.
Light fragmented and splintered
at the point of your touch,
the water’s surface bent like mercury in retreat.
Without asking you forced your way
into the green flowing bed,
and it swallowed you up to the elbow.
You became the primitive angler,
fishing in the eye of heaven, panning for gold.
Finally a stone, the right one,
filled your cold fist,
numbed your senses,
whilst the river rolled around you,
corralled by your paddling palms.
With a shout you landed the catch at my feet,
and I lay down, with my ear to the ground,
listened for a heartbeat,
watched it shine.
Mark Stopforth
Stroud, Gloucestershire
*
Pulsar Poetry Competition, Year 2009/2010 – Recommended Poem
Barflies
Bob’s at the bar talking bollocks, something about
meat hooks, piano wire and paedophiles.
Ray and Ivan are swapping stories of the grey funnel
line and nights on the slash in Maltese bars.
Marion, three pints of Stella downed, is loudly
complaining about her line manager.
Beside her Joe isn’t listening.
He hasn’t listened for thirty years.
Stuart is hunched over his crossword, slapping
the bar when he solves three down.
Tom is explaining existentialism to a tattooed
hairdresser called Julie.
I walk to the bar.
Penny, who’s
studying law at the uni, places
a pint before me.
‘It’s in with Pete.’
I raise my glass and salute the back of the
man shovelling coins into the fruit machine.
I smile at the reflection in the mirror
behind the bar.
Sip my beer.
It’s good to belong.
Graham Weaver
Canterbury, Kent
*
Pulsar Poetry Competition, Year 2009/2010 – Recommended Poem
Don’t let me die a comical death
Oh! Don’t let me die a comical
death.
Spare me the headlines in the local press:
Crushed in the folds of a mechanical bed;
Gnawed to oblivion by gerbil at night;
Choked by the gift in a cereal packet;
Drowned in a vat of organic blancmange;
Strangled by wife’s frilly suspenders,
As he reached up to hang them out to dry.
Spare me the headlines in the Evening Post
And the photo of a loved one pointing
To the cause “of her devastating loss.”
Let me pass in my sleep at nine-two
Or trying to stop a runaway bus.
Don’t let me die a hilarious death:
Frozen to a lamppost by private parts;
Victim of explosion sitting on loo;
Flattened by ironing board tossed from window;
Floored by stack of Work Safety leaflets;
Gulped by python, whilst dozing after tea.
Spare me the film clip posted on You Tube
Or “must see,” e-mail rippling the web.
Let me slip off quietly at a good age
Or attempting something impressively brave.
But don’t let me die a comical death.
Spare me the headlines in the local press.
David C Johnson
