The Poetry KitTM

 

 
LIVERPOOL POETRY FESTIVAL
POETRY COMPETITION 2006
 
It was the intention of the organiser to exhibit all the poems entered for the competition and ask visitors to the site to vote for their favorites and so end up with a winner through a democratic vote.  Unfortunately some idiots came onto the site within minutes of it being launched and crashed our server through multiple votes for the same poem.  These votes must have been electronically generated as they were all from the same computer.  As a result of this, the poems were short listed into quiet a long shortlist and Jim Bennett displayed the poems at his events asking for people to name their three favorite poems.   The results are as follows
 
1st Place - Rain by Diane Jackman
 
Runner-up - Wild Ransoms by Patrick B. Osada

Commended

The Bottom of the Mersey by Ronnie Smith Robertson
Anchored by Sonia Montgomery

Archaeology By Julie Mellor

Congratulations to the writers of all these wonderful poems.
 

 

 

 

1st Place

Rain

Diane Jackman

 

We stop beneath the dripping trees

for another kiss.

Lifting my head to unaccustomed height

rain slides from your lion hair

into my nose,

and my breath is twice-stopped.

The gilt chain of a bag

too small for use

slips from my shoulder.

Cars pass showering water.


But these distractions

only cement the memory

of dark and lamplight and rain and love.

 

Runner-up

Wild Ransoms

by Patrick B. Osada

 Along the cliff edge -
Too far to safely reach -
These white bells tantalised
With their strange scent :
A pungent odour on the breeze
Their signature.
 Later, in Roseland,
We saw them grown like weeds :
Filling meadows, smothering hedgerow grass,
Covering the roadside verge
Like gentle drifts of snow.
 And at St. Just, filling the churchyard there,
Bluebells and ransoms like a haze
On every bank, round ancient graves.
 And, through the palm
That grows where you now rest,
A solitary ransom flower had set.
 Though far away in miles and time,
The smell of garlic takes me back -
Transports me instantaneously
To that Spring day :
The tiny church, the muddy creek,
The ransom flowers and you.         

Commended

The Bottom of the Mersey
by Ronnie Smith Robertson.

Sasson threw his medal
into the dephs of the mersey
that was his protest
that was his stand

when my generation are told about the great war
we're told about courageous soldiers
fighting for peace
fighting for freedom
fighting for the people

but were not told about the muddy trenches
filled with rotting corpses
allied or german
they're all human
each soldier fearing their next

and how they ended up fighting for the royals
fighting for the queen
she's still alive
whilst most of the soldiers died

and that's why sassoons medal
is at the bottom of the mersey
where forever it will stay
destroyed by rot and decay.

Commended

ANCHORED

Sonia Montgomery

 

So we died a few times

hinged to rural floors, pointed doors north

across winter harbours where ships

breathing dark water

 

lay in wait. Swimming though your eyes

seeking light, thirty years a night

of fragmented sun until mornings became

 

unbroken. Winds unwinding storms,

plugging holes in turbulent skies,

steering parched arms

to anchor.

 

Commended

Archaeology
By Julie Mellor

 

Powder-white lips
of dried deodorant
in the armpits of her dress,
a frisk of cat hairs on the sleeves.
Her dead shoes are moulds
to replicate fallen arches.
 
The shrine of the mantelpiece
displays an absent family
propped at angles, facing
the central spot where
a draylon-covered high seat chair
stands like a tired throne.
 
Read her life in the yellowed
wallpaper, in milk gone sour,
in anenomes of mould
around the bath.
Read it in the broken lock,
the bruised cushions, the bleeding tap