Wigtown Poetry Competition 2012

The 2012 Wigtown Poetry Competition will be launched early in the New Year. Full details will be published here as soon as they are available.

Poetry Competition Judges 2012

Main Prize Judge: George Szirtes

Gaelic Prize Judge: Màrtainn Mac an t-Saoir ~ Martin MacIntyre

Scots Prize Judge: Sheena Blackhall

 

 

The 2011 Prize Winners

The 2011 winning and commended poems, judged by Brian Johnstone, Angus Peter Campbell (Gaelic section) and Rab Wilson (Scots section) are published here:

First Prize: Sean Martin

Chop Wood, Carry Water

I'm brushing up needles of pine

when it begins to darken.

Hail on its way, maybe, or rain. It’s July

and the bees are working in bushes

more black than green,

a darkness I’d seen in paintings,

a light I'd call ‘Dutch’,

master and pupil in Delft

following a line across blank canvas

as I’m following pine,

Pieter de Hooch in his yard,

studying screes of leaf or water,

mercury-like after being drawn from the well.

He could sense thunder in the way

charcoal darkens, ageing paper under heavy light,

how the quiet epiphany leadens

as a light breeze brings the first rain,

the Westerkerk’s bells a dirge

in the middle distance

.

There is nothing more than this.

Nothing. Stand still. Listen.

Runner-up: Sharon Black

Sabotage

I want to capture the spirit of you

              hold it down gently

trace its contours in soft lead

              to frame by my bed.

I want to record its smallest sounds

              lean my microphone in close

to catch its blips and scratching

              over the amplified hiss.

I want to swaddle it in cotton

              warm it in my pocket

pull it out in the sudden swoon of day

              like smelling salts.

I want to feel it struggle in my fist

              to know its strengths, its limits

the precise moment

              at which it begs for air.

I want to gather the tiny bruises on my palm

             the bite marks on my fingers

that I will pick and pick

             into a permanent scar.

I want to grind its wings

            to a luminous powder

to hang in a locket

            around my neck.

I want to whisper

            that everything will be all right

that it has no need to lie here trembling

            that the pin in my hand is just to hold it

nice and steady.

Gaelic Prize-winner: Meg Bateman

Aig a’ Ghailearaidh Nàiseanta

A nighean a dhìreas an staidhre le do sheanmhair, 

a dàrna làmh na do làimh-sa, a bata san tèile,

saoilidh tu gu bheil i cho sean ris a’ cheò,

gun smuain air do làmh fhèin a’ fàs preasach

no do dhruim crotach…

ach tha sibh nur co-aoisich

’s sibh a’ siubhal an t-saoghail seo còmhla.

Treòraichidh i gu dealbh thall san oisean thu,

“Fèin-dhealbh a’ pheantair aig fichead bliadhna ’s a trì”,

le Dàibhidh Màrtainn (Albannach, ochdamh linn deug),

seallaidh i dhut tuar lus nam ban-sìth na ghruaidh,

na sgàilean na shùilean, a ruisg fhada bhàna,

is cha dad nas treasa do chòir-sa seach a còir-se

air a bheul cumadail glacte fo gach lì.

Scots Prize-winner: Sheena Blackhall

Incomin

I’m saxty three years auld.  It’s Februar
Snell wins an blin-drift’s forecast, roch an coorse,

Wi icy roads an peely-wally sun,

Somelike a slice o lemon,weety, wersh

The gairden’s crined, the flooers hae dwined awa

The haar rowes up the river frae the sea

Fin I wis wee, the fog-horn eased tae blaw

A maen as dreich’s the deid-thraa o a bull.

My laddie’s in the hoose, expectant faither
His wife is near her time, the bairn is kickin

She’s wabbit, deintie craitur, hyne awa

Frae scents an sichts o Saigon, silks an rice

Chinee New Year’s jist by, nae temple gongs

Or firecrackers brichten up her day
She trauchles back an fore, a faithfu wife

Chappin the veg I canna even name

She’ll nae forget the time her first-born cam

The howdie roarin English in her lug

Her bairn will haud  twa cultures in each neive

I mynd ma ain first born’s sair doon drappin

Booin ma back inby the jizzen bed

Watter, swyte an bluid his first libation.

Sae short a whylie back, this lassie’s merriege

Rose petals skittered fur her passin feet

Noo she’s bin pued an wheeched  ootower the ocean

Intae the trauchle o the wifely darg

Her een are calm an smilin like Auld Asia

Born tae thole fitiver weird she’ll dree.

Commended Poems

In no specific order

Barracuda by Russell Jones

Face down in the cool seas of some heaven,

armoured in the faint moonlight on our skin,

our spines faced the flicker of hot stars. In

mid-drift we found barracuda. Seven

swords hovered like birds of prey in the shreds

of shadow, between rubble and long weeds.

Stumbling among the pack, we watched them feed

an ancient hunger. We watched. We shuddered

at the buoyant flesh, how the red clouds spread,

spelled and natured their ferocious intake.

They swam against us before we could shake

the paralysis they placed in our heads. Dread

was a comb of teeth, a dark eye, the shape

of their display, the seas of heaven, the dead.

 

Dead Weight by Bill Greenwell

And of course what gives the risk its edge

is the indistinct possibility

that while we are raiding each other

like larder thieves

in search of the perfect meal

that one of us (me, you suspect)

will come to a sudden end

and keel into your opening and closing arms.

Thoughtless of me, it would be,

but despite the privacy of love, you might have to

call an emergency friend

who’d give you strength

to fold me into my clothes

after lugging me to the shower

washing me tenderly (but speedily)

and towelling me within an inch of my death.

Perhaps as you tipped me

into the boot of your car, you’d see me

smiling up at you, eyes like milk,

my last words still inked

on chalk-white lips. And out of breath –

like me, it goes without saying –

you’d touch my forehead once or twice

and whisper what used to be my name.

 

Entropy and the maiden by Lynn Roberts

I remember when things were small, neatly

constructed: puffed sleeves, seams oversewn, rows

of little pearl buttons, tucks; completely

perfect, sugared with smocking, lace and bows.

Later they began to relax: T-shirts

bright with pictures, graphic with words, logos;

denim-blue jeans and jackets, tiny skirts

patterned with sequins; and then grown-up clothes,

neutral and smooth, with architectural shoes.

Now that time is unwinding, unsticking,

fraying, I’ve detected stains like a bruise

on the fabric, threads where life is unpicking

itself, where seams and hems are coming loose,

holes gape and Hades hides in the ticking.

 

Mouche Volante by Sharon Black

It slides and jerks at the shift of your eye. Skirts

the edges of your gaze. Absorbed

in the view, or obscured by your mental

leaps, it rarely hooks your attention

as it sinks, drifting downstream

until tugged by an invisible line.

Behind closed lids under a bright sky you toy with it:

look to the right and it’s a hare in action;

to the left and it’s a toddler on a tiny tricycle,

pedalling to keep up. You hold it still

by concentrating just beyond its perimeter,

skewering it to the spot, before

nudging it along the tropics of your globe

with minute quivers of your ocular muscle.

By your bedside lamp you excavate its outline

-skinny rectangle, capped head-

And picture it when asleep: in REM

swimming Olympic-style from one side of your eyeball

to the other- until settling, dropping

exhausted to the silt of its bowl as you wake.

 

My Schiehallion by Jo Bell

‘There’s a Schiehallion anywhere you go. The thing is, climb it.’ – Norman MacCaig, Landscape and I

At the top of Margery Hill

is a lean, eroding  barrow made of peat.

Under the lumpen barrow

is a man who knew this hill by an older name

and had another name than ours

for the valley two miles away, where

on a Bronze Age day the peat was dug;

and had a name which we will never know

for the need to carry peat

two miles uphill for a dead man.

That man is gone. His tracks and woods

and ways are gone 

and even his technologies look simple

from a distance.

The names, the armies pass like rain

on Minninglow and Shutlingslow,

on Bosley Cloud and Thorpe Cloud,

Shining Tor, Chrome Hill and Lantern Pike,

on Win Hill and Lose Hill.

Their names and mine will pass like rain

but we will cling a little to each other

when I fall.

 

Still Life by Pippa Little

For Louise     

You found a bee

stunned from the cold

in your garden grass

and sliding your left hand under,

cupped it like a brooch,

thought you’d like it for the microscope

for it lay on your skin

as if upon clouds

summoned by its Maker

but then it shuddered

in the bowl of your hand,

exhausted,  alive:

you opened your mouth

put your face close

and breathed.

With every warm breath

the insistence

‘Live. Live.’

And slowly it began

with a twitch, uncurling,

puffing out its dandelion fur,

coming back

to your out-breath, to a damp nest,

coming back into this world

it could leave now,

lifting into  morning

without looking back.

 

Talking to Myself by Jo Bell

When he comes back from the bathroom in ten minutes

buttoning his old black Levi’s, and sits

like a tired grace in your half-sprung chair:

When he touches his dark and silver curls

bemused, and looks at you full-on

as if you were the answer to the question:

when he laughs, so that the pleasure of his laugh

is like a whetstone for your needs

his skin a scent that you’ll remember like a dog

for twenty years: when you notice the spot

of blood on his sleeve: when the penny drops

like a bomb into the loading bay

do me a favour:

leave.

 

Spring Trade by Heather F Reid

When the time comes you

shoulder the rocking-horse ribcage

of the sledge onto a shelf,

exhume the greening carcas of a seat;

an act that says it’s not so much

a change but more a trade off

between seasons: eggs for trees,

sandals for skis,

this arrowing of greylags

for that tumbling display

 of lapwing-love, the sticky clots of

crows choking the elms.

Across the Carse, Ben Mhor

still holds its fractured arm

 of snow and yet already there’s

the crashed-gears call of sheep,

 the starter motor answer

of a lamb and all the rattled

cutlery of birdsong in this

drawer we’ve labelled spring.

The seat needs stripped

and oiled but what the hell,

instead you watch a meadow pipit

teeter on the ladder of its song.

 

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