South Downs Poetry Festival Competition

The Binsted Prize

judged by James Simpson

James Simpson is a Jerwood/Arvon award winner and a prizewinner in the Thomas Hardy
Society’s James Gibson Memorial Poetry Competition. He is author of several collections of
poems including: The Untenanted Room (Agenda Editions 2011) and
The Rhyme of the Reddleman’s Daughter (Hedgehog Poetry Press 2018).
Original unpublished poems were invited on any theme.

Twelve of the Prizewinners will read their poems in Binsted Church

(BN18 0LL) during the poetry evening, one of the events in the 2019 Binsted Art Festival,
on Friday 7 June, 2019 at 7 pm

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 The poems of the Highly Commended and Commended poets will be published in the competition anthology in time for the Binsted Arts Festival (June 7-9), and will be available at the poetry evening in Binsted church on June 7.

 

First         Anna Kisby          Five Times Raccoon

Second     Sylvia Oldroyd    Tribute

Third        Eleanor Punter     Carols

 

Highly Commended:

 

Robin Ford                       Days without End

Philip Burton                    The Cloudbuster

Roger Elkin                       Credo

Pat Murgatroyd                 Eating a Pomegranate with a Pin

Anna Kisby                       A Candle burning down, rural France,1858

Anna Kisby                       Bald Eagle

Maya Pieris                       I Always Look

Rosemary Black               Yellow Archangel

Chris Warren-Adamson   When the child appears

Ben Ray                            The thoughts of Charles Byrne

 

Commended:

 

Mandy Pannett                 Q and After

Mandy Pannett                 The Last Notch

Roger Elkin                      Starlings, gathering

Philip Burton                    Moonlight Found

Diana Brighouse              When did you last eat and drink, do you have any allergies

Romola Parish                  Scop-sweg: The Beowulf  poet considers his composition

Lin Lundie                        A love poem in the dark

Ben Ray                            Winter at the Sands Café

David Simpson                 You’ve ten minutes to cut my hair?

Sarah Lundie                     Menopause

Anthony Watts                  Friday Man

Lizzie Smith                      Klimt Triptych

Anne Stewart                     Going through the albums

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Judge’s Note

The judging of the South Downs Poetry Festival Competition and the selection of The Binstead Prize was an unexpected pleasure. Without a theme to constrain the entrants the submissions were multifarious and varied in scope, subject and form. From over three hundred poems it was left to me to whittle down to a final twenty-six commended and winning poems.

During the selection process I looked for poems with a distinctive voice, strong imagery and which attempted an exploratory use of the language. Most importantly I chose work that I felt sustained a vivid and continuous dream in the reader’s mind. What Coleridge calls that ‘Shaping spirit of the Imagination’. The three prizewinning poems in particular, were successful in achieving this.

The best poems have a metabolic quality, they are living creations in their own right. In the ‘Place of the Imagination’ (the relational space where the reader inhabits the world created by the writer) the best work becomes a living visceral thing. The generative wildfire spark that is present in the subject, author and reader becomes embodied and heart-beatingly real.

I like to think, that in these winning and commended poems, we have works which achieve in the ‘Place of the Imagination’ a union of inner and outer worlds and demonstrate a kindling of their own unique wildfire sparks.

James Simpson   Heyshott   May 2019

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Five Times Raccoon                by Anna Kisby

 

(i)

 

First thing this morning you tell me you can’t                     

drive me to California after all and the reason is

raccoons. Raccoons are impetuous, slyer than fox,

mischief-creators. You are regretful, won’t meet my eye –

 

raccoons came in the night, dismantled the VW.

Of all God’s creatures they are most adept

at unscrewing hub-caps; our wheels are rolling

down our drive, worse –

 

our seats are out of joint,

our steering wheel stolen – it is spinning

at the top of the neighbourhood stone pine,

a distressed saturn.

 

 

(ii)

 

You tell me raccoons are survivors –

adapt to the city, thrive in the wild –

 

a plip-plop accompaniment of tears

 

as I realise we’ll never make a den

inside a redwood as we planned.

 

(iii)

 

Whoever is photographing us

from the space station, yawns

and looks away, we are so meh

out on our front lawn, speaking raccoon,

gesticulating in raccoon

 

meanwhile under our soles

nocturnal creatures in burrows

are building war machines

from what they’ve scavenged

yada-yada-yada-squeak we say

 

(iv)

 

Remember that time we were speeding

on the freeway and passed the car-struck

raccoon? It was staggering on two legs, weaving

in and out the road again.

 

We should have stopped.

 

(v)

 

Time passes and you can bend

the dead, fix the little things.

On this occasion I put

my finger to your lips

 

to shut you up, adjust the angle

of your raccoon-skin hat –

its brilliant tail, a talisman

 

while how we split up

rises to the heavens, joins

all the other cute animals

the balloon-man made, let-go

afloat above America

 

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Tribute                 by Sylvia Oldroyd

 

He was never a man

to show much respect;

 

would hardly have touched

his cap to royalty.

 

Trench-digging on the allotment,

he heard the clip of hooves

 

echo in the hollowed lane,

but no clink of harness;

 

straightened his back,

thrust spade in soil

 

with such force that it juddered,

strode to the gate to watch them

 

still keeping in step, pulling

together to leave a straight furrow.

 

In the distance a tractor

droned like an irritating fly.

 

He stood to attention, head bared,

eyes front in the wind’s cold burn

 

as the last pair of Shires from Trigger’s Farm

came pounding proud up the lane to slaughter.

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Carols             by Eleanor Punter

 

Dad likes it dark and bitter.
Peeling back foil
snapping off squares;
a ritual
to help him write
his piece
on Polish Catholicism.

 

Below
they drink tea, wash down
sticky wedges of cake;
icing
hard as bone.
They call my name

but I am
counting currants
in my head,
the sugar fizz rush
dissolving
on my tongue and

 

later
when curtains will be drawn
and sherry poured
into thin stemmed glasses
delicate
for clumsy hands
like mine

 

I will lie
on my bed;
a blown out egg
listening to carols,

 

the cadence
of notes
flutter light as snow
falling softly
one by icy one
all over my skin.    

 

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Details of the Binsted Arts Festival 2019 programme can be found on

www.binsted.org/arts-festival

and for the South Downs Poetry Festival on www.sdpf.org.uk/