Wells Festival of Literature
Winning Poems 2009
First Prize
£500
By Robert Tamplin
Debussy: in a Breton Church
In the roof the long-mouthed dogs grip
The beams. The hung Christ rises, seems to float
From the pillar where the cross is nailed.
A baroque canopy roofs a solid,
Raying sun.. Suspended on a wire,
A chandelier. In its pendants,
Frosted greens and whites, oranges and blues,
As with the wonders of this coast, if all were
Drowned? The coast, the seas are haunted,
Impassioned to one element. Fishing
Boats plough home or to the grounds, plunging,
Rising , the white bone between the teeth.
Birds, the sailors’ souls, plane the cliffs,
Interleaving one another in the air,
And flights of birds, at evening, hug the sea
Between the heads. Around the sunken
God, a fleet of rocks, like sunk destroyers,
Heels in the waters. Some of those rocks
Are gods. As if to view a saint, open-mouthed
Fish lip the surface, astonished at the air,
And astonished too, they weave and school,
Munchausen fish, between drowned pillars
And past the tower where the great bell swings
And sounds. Nothing, Pascal says, can fix
The finite between two infinities. Our ground
Cracks, earth opens and the waters rush to fill
The abyss. I scrabble the slanting deck, driven
Into the blind wind, the ship in rags. Blunt fish
Herd upon the shore, seaward shapes, bent inland,
To expire. I will write notes, silvered like fish.
Arcane to themselves and driving seaward.
Second Prize
£200
By Penny Ayres
Granny at My Age
Has shy, withholding eyes, like mine,
Behind dark frames, a frame of
Fine wisped hair round a clear
Soft face. We share a high brow –
Mine I hate and cover with a fringe.
Her mouth, without lipstick, tries
A smile for the camera and for me.
Or does she smile at me, who wasn’t
Even the “o” in nothing then, this
Woman who lived with God all the
Days of her life? Now my mascara-ed
Eyes, expensive hair, my pink-glossed
Lips are tipping me along the careless
Road to Hell. The Bible she held fast
Stands like a strong black door between us.
My granny, putting on her good plain
Coat and hat each Sunday to go to the
Meeting House, so shy she would hide
In a doorway rather than meet a neighbour
In the street – what if I began to walk
Towards her, the years and decades
Rolling under my high-heeled feet, into
The grey-stoned Fifties Northern town?
And what if, seeing her, the soft strong
Woman, it was me who stopped then
Slipped into the doorway, afraid after
All, I would habe nothing to say, she
Would find nothing to know in my face?
Third Prize
£100
By Daphne Schiller
A Crack in the Glass
We fell through the ice
On the edge of the lake, But
It was only knee-deep
So we waded home
To the nearest Mum, who
Pulled our boots off,
Then sat us in front of the fire
With hot chocolate and cake.
In school the next day
We talked of swimming through murk,
Fingers near chopped,
Till an Eskimo paddling his kayak
Had hauled us back from the dead.
We were a one day wonder
Til the thaw set in. The lake returned
To its ink-black gloss.
Where a full-moon one night
Slid across like a stepping-stone
And Thomas Mulberry, balance disturbed,
Was snatched by a witch
With snapping fingers
Who pulled him down
To her tangled bed.
A notice went up: DEEP WATER.
Later, another was added in red:
DANGER. But Thomas, who’d slipped
Through a gap in the rails,
A crack in the glass, had
Gone on ahead. Our parents
Were sad. He couldn’t read, anyway,
We said. We remembered last summer
He’d eaten a dandelion, from petals
To stalk. But we thought
Of the cold and the shock and the boy
On his own, and the way that the lake
Rippled and shook as it always di
When a stone or a boat or a swan
Disturbed its glittering surface.
Wyvern Prize
£100
By Rachel Williams
Contact Visit
Did you remember
That Saturday afternoon
We were first in the queue at the cinema?
Bagging centre front row seats
We sat together as a family
The film was Girl on a Red Velvet Swing.
I didn’t understand that kind of love
But it didn’t matter that I couldn’t follow the story.
Close to you in the darkness
I was breathing you in.
Afterwards in the café
We had tea and cakes and chatted
Not about the film but about us.
Did you remember
Long afterwards.
Long afterwards
Did you remember
Not about the film but about us?
We had tea and cakes and chatted
Afterwards in the café.
I was breathing you in.
Close to you in the darkness
It didn’t matter that I couldn’t follow the story
And didn’t understand that kind of love.
The film was Girl on a Red Velvet Swing.
We sat together as a family.
Bagging centre front row seats
We were first in the queue at the cinema
That Saturday afternoon.
Did you remember?