The Wigtown Poetry Competition 2008/2009

The results of this year's competition have now been announced and are as follows:

1st   Dancing for Monsieur Degas by Victor Tapner

You didn’t see the blisters

on my heels,

the blood in my ballet shoes,

or later, my body shaking

as I coughed

in a tenement bed,

the rented rooms where I

unlaced

to the glint of a monocle,

stroked beards browned

by tobacco

and breathed sour absinthe,

or when I slipped a wallet

in the tuck

of my skirts, the alleys

where I grazed my back

against the wall

when the top hats stayed away.

To you I was just a girl

from the opera,

a face to shape, a posture.

You tied a green ribbon

in my hair

and called me your daughter,

and though I was a dancer,

you made me

so I never moved another step.

2nd  The Scold Bridles by Barbara Smith

She waits with her head in the optician’s cage:

a scold’s bridle for those with frown lines

from not seeing far enough through the future.

The non-contact tonometer whirrs into position.

An expected pneumatic wheeze still surprises air

into each wide-open eyeball, pushing lashes

lightly apart. This is the glaucoma check made,

breath held tight, a stay against future diagnoses.

She imagines each iris flexing in shock, not just

narrowing her pupils, but browns, greys flocking

across a clear blue eye and thinks of iridology.

Is that a science, or the art of the inferred

from tiny flecks? Is there correspondence

with a broken arm, or mind; a scar checklist?

Once a man broke an owl’s leg, to set it

again; ten thousand hours of practice on the dumb.

How could he, later, think those dark specks

put there by his acts, his arts of Hippocrates?

Was it like the day a strange photographer

came to image blue-grey irises; intense focus

blurring into tears, murking the past; marks

that reeled in a story whole from a broken life-line?

The chin rest frames a jaw set against these scenes.

There is a slight adjustment: the test now completed.

3rd= Examiner 192 by Mora Maclean

You’ll have spotted those little flat full moons I leave -

that dot the insides of unstuffed new shirts, one lingering up a sleeve;

emblazoned with my bold, black stamp, sometimes coming in clusters

of two or three; like those deep in the feet of your cotton socks,

that can come off, stick to a heel, the wearer still feeling he walks

on air oblivious I was there. Deciding what passes muster

takes an expeditious eye, a no-nonsense sleight of hand, the focus to not

be dazzled by the sequences of spermatozoa and eye-popping polka dot

that, by the blunt end of the shift, come to waltz their way by:

never losing a thread, I run each razor gaze along the seams

of hems and cuffs, knowing dog-tooth will turn up in my dreams-

the price of never missing a quirky snip or stitching gone awry.

Bent on spotting where a seamstress let things slip, even catching

her on an off-day I must be my own overseer – always watching,

from the back of my mind, for the looping lapse that might hook

me into pondering, (quick as noticing its same, repeating kink),

an ailing child, a whirlwind affair – and bring myself back from the brink.

As detachment becomes my passion, I keep seeing off the latest look

with a keen eye never on fashion; and though many’s the collar I’ve felt

and I’ve many a fingered inside leg and waistband under my belt,

though feeling I’ve had a hand in every ensemble, and viscose

- hanging so – simply makes for vicarious fingers, I’ll not let

myself fancy we’re in some small way intimate, or that we’ve ever met;

a lifetime okaying his workaday wear won’t lead me to suppose

I have passed the man in the street; but sometimes, in the dark,

an age after I’ve clocked off, the replays of leaving my mark

beginning to gain on my wits, (as self-censoring winds to a stop),

my mind, taking stock of all the stickers I’ve thumbed off down the years,

turns over and over at the thought: whether one still adheres

3rd= Black Cart by Jim Carruth

“Time’s wagon ever-onward driven”

                   Alexander Pushkin

The stook building had finished early that day

so all of us jumped a lift on the miller’s big cart

discarding thin shirts in a pile behind the driver.

Harvest’s favourite sons bronzed and bawdy,

we stood at the back shouting on passers by,

toasting our handiwork with sickly warm beer.

Under a big sky Johnny sang something coarse

and we bellowed along proud of our own voices,

confident of tomorrows, as if we owned the sun.

Some cursing an old Clydesdale’s slow rhythm  

raced ahead of the cart impatient for the ceilidh

while others stayed on through a sunset’s glow.

Beyond Harelaw the mare laboured on the brae,

strained on its breast strap; the dray shuddered 

and empty bottles rolled across its wooden floor,

boards stained with the dry blood of dead beasts.

We crouched down quick, clung on to the sides,

felt then a first shiver and reached for our shirts.   

Passing those unmarked crossings and road ends,

the horse slowed on its journey but never stopped

so Johnny, his song long silent, must’ve slipped off 

unnoticed, and the others too when their time came,

like orchards’ ripe fruit, dropped soft to the ground,

disappeared fast down dirt tracks and narrow lanes.

Those of us that remained pulled our knees up tight, 

our thin joints stiffening in the moonlit glint of sickle,

our whispers drifting away on a winnowing breeze.

Storm clouds rolled in to snuff out every dead star

until there was just me huddled by the driver’s back

the darkest mile left to go and too late for the dance.

Commended Poems

Grey by Andre Mangiot   

Poor Clares, East Lothian by Paul Groves

Teeth by Christopher Simmons

The Ink Ribbon by Neil Campbell

The Bridle Path by Bill Greenwell

Acting Blackbird by Roger Elkin

Gowdenhair by P N Cameron

Earning your Art by A C Clarke

Gaelic Prizes

1st Rathad Dhuncreige by Tormad Caimbeul

‘ Seall a bhalaich , ‘ ars an duine fraoich,

 a’ leigeil a thaca ri craobh,

‘ tha an t-aite seo air a ghleiheadh gun mhor-atharrachadh

o linn a ‘reile’s do chousins chac, fad as,

Clann ‘Ic a’ Mhathanaich.’

An dithis again air frith-rathad Dhuncreige;

na sruthan na steall

nan dean ri creag is carraig,

a-measg na rhododendrons ; agus drisean biorach agus droighean,

a’ dol gu taigh Charlie Lachie

‘s an caisteal uamhraidh ud , fuaraidh falamh

‘S a dh’aindeoin ‘s na thachair ‘s nach thachair

chaidh a nt-aite seo chumail:

leis gach saibhear agus dreana chaneil sgeul air aona leig ann,

an t-uisge bith-bhuan brais na leum

seachad sios gu Ceann an Uib

far a bheil an corra-ghritheach stobach eadar da lunn.

An sin labhair e le guth ard; ‘Chaneil a-nis a dith oirnn

ach faicinn fhathast ri muir-traigh

fear dham b’aithne mair Seonaidh Bogles, buain mhaorach, trusadh fhaochag

‘s leis a’ chroman , dusgadh shrupain.

No gun tigeadh na ar coinneamh cailleach bheag a Braigh Loch Carainn-

cota-dronnaig oirr’ ‘is beannag,

dranndan aosd aice fo h-anail:

sgiodar a h-aon, sgiodar a dha-

a lamhan luideagach

a’ sgudalaich ann am basgaid sgadain.’

Ach och an uair sin gur a truagh learn aithris,

thainig glambar cruaidh air a ghaoith o’n bhaile;

nuallanaich a chuir a ruaig air cailleach bheag na lannan,

‘s a chuir fear a mhaoraich gu luath a cladach,

‘s a tharraing an duine fraochanach sios gu grad , sios le brag

air a spagan-spiad gu talamh.

‘Duda ‘n diabhal a bh’ann?: dh’ fheoraich e dhiom le greann.

‘S ged bu bhrochanach mo cheann

Fhreagair mi e gun dhroch chainnt’:

‘Jill , arsa mise, ‘agus Jim , Tim agus Nadine.’

O gur ann aca-san a bha spors

‘s a righ! nan cluinneadh tu an gloir

Upon the Village Green.

Commended Poems

Iargain by Meg  Bateman

Air na Barraich by Aonghas Macngacail

Best Love Poem - The Burns Federation Prize

The Dark Time of the Year by Rob Foxcroft

for Joyce

He says, “There are five images

that sweep across the mind,

and fake the haunting of the house

like workings of the wind:

the harlot and the infant

and the virgin undefiled,

the eagle in the heavens

and the lion in the wild”.

But now the moon swings through the skies,

enormous, bright and clear,

her darkest shadows casting

in the dark time of the year,

and lovers’ hearts are trembling

and our skin is wet with fear,

for the moon destroys all mind and sense

like drowning in a mere,

and body cleaves to body

in the dark time of the year;

the lion and the lioness,

the eagle and his mate,

in blind and shadowed passion,

driven on by time and fate,

the bow that flies the arrow

and the cresting ocean flood,

the harlot in her hunger

and the life that’s in the blood, 

the poignancy of meeting

and the hush when all is done,

when the honeyed moon is setting

and the glowing ember’s gone,

and we lie like little children

in the dark time of the year,

in the tenderness of loving

and I love to feel you near, 

in the tenderness of loving

in the dark time of the year.

Congratulations to all the winners from everyone at Wigtown Book Festival and many thanks to our Judges Douglas Dunn and Kevin MacNeil for their hard work.

Judge: Douglas Dunn
We are thrilled to present Douglas Dunn as this year’s judge. Douglas’ first collection of poetry, Terry Street, was published by in 1969, and was awarded both a Scottish Arts Council Book Award and a Somerset Maugham Award. Love or Nothing (1974) was awarded a Scottish Arts Council Book Award and the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize in 1976. His other poetry books include St. Kilda’s Parliament (1981), winner of the Hawthornden Prize in 1981, and the acclaimed Elegies (1985), written after the death of his wife, winner of Whitbread Book of the Year. Secret Villages, a collection of short stories, was published in 1985. More recent publications include a collection of short stories, Boyfriends and Girlfriends (1995), and three poetry collections, The Donkey’s Ears (2000), The Year’s Afternoon (2000) and New Selected Poems 1964-2000 (2002). Dunn has also edited various anthologies and critical works, written several television and radio plays and has published a translation of Racine’s Andromache (1990).

Gaelic Judge: Kevin MacNeil
We are also delighted to present Kevin MacNeil as the Gaelic Judge. Author of The Stornaway Way, Kevin was born on the Outer Hebridean island of Lewis (Scotland) and writes in English and Gaelic. He was educated at the Nicolson Institute, University of Edinburgh and Sabhal Mòr Ostaig. He is the first person from Scotland to win the prestigious Tivoli Europa Giovani International Poetry Prize. He is a poet, novelist, lyricist and playwright, and has been the recipient of a number of national and international literary honours and awards. MacNeil has held Writing Residencies in the Scottish Highlands, Uppsala University, Sweden, Edinburgh and Bavaria. He is a founder member of the trip-hop poetry band Tomorrowscope. His publications include: Love and Zen in the Outer Hebrides. Zen and the Art of Poetry, Be wise, Be otherwise.

Rules

1. All poems are judged anonymously and the name of the poet must not appear on the manuscript.

2. Each poem must be typed on a separate sheet of paper.

3. For postal entries please include two copies of each poem.

4. Poems must not exceed 40 lines (not including title).

5. All entrants must be 16 years of age or over.

6. Entries may be in English, Scots or Scots / Irish Gaelic.

7. The competition is open to anyone throughout and outside the United Kingdom.

8. Poems must not be previously published, accepted for publication or currently entered into another competition.

9. There is no restriction on the number of poems submitted by each applicant, provided the appropriate entry fee is included.

10. Competition entries cannot be returned.

11. Alterations cannot be made to poems once they have been submitted.

12. All poems will be read initially by a team at the Scottish Poetry Library prior to the final judging process.

13. Winners will be notified by Monday 6th April. Winning poem and runner up entries will appear in the Scotsman and winners will be listed on the Wigtown website from Monday 11th May. No personal correspondence will be entered into regarding notification of results.

Fees

The first poem submitted costs £6.00 and three poems costs £15.00. Subsequent entries cost £6.00 each or an additional £10.00 for every additional 3.

Copyright

The copyright of each poem remains with the author. The authors of the winning poems grant the Wigtown Book Festival Company the right to use the poems in publicity material for one year from 3 April 2009.

Please note: No employee or board member of Wigtown Book Town Company, Dumfries and Galloway Arts Association, or the Scottish Poetry Library may enter the competition. The judge’s decision is final and no correspondence can be entered into.

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