SEVEN MOONS -THE 2011 WINNING POEMS
Appearances
by Gavin Salisbury
Gibraltar Point National Nature Reserve, 12 August 2008
Under an umbrella on the beach
binoculars raised to the waves
in back-handed
salute to the passing storm,
I stand just outside
the breeding-bird exclusion zone.
The world mists up
in glass. Two Arctic skuas
black-capped sea marauders
sally from the sand
harry sandwich terns for their catch,
settle again to watch me
watching. I resign the face-off
and walk back inside the dune line
to the managed edge of the salt marsh
to be greeted by
the sudden sky.
V-winged, up float
the land harriers
Montagu's and marsh
as if turned on by the sun,
dark solar
panels lifted in relief.
They scour the green earth for a living.
Within minutes
I am down to a T-shirt.
More slowly
as the harriers drift
away in opposite directions
the last mist clears
from my second sights,
filling me with
empty horizons.
Ophelia
by Linda Snell
These yellow flags, they are everywhere;
they will not catch my eye on this burst bank.
Only the struck white of their fingers swirls
in blacker light. My sight washes down at them.
Stems are for needling, I think; there is
yellow again in strung marigolds and dark long
purples. They come to hand; weeds lap
at my knees. Stems can be wrapped in such
a green blanket. Teach me to care and not
to care; teach me to lie still. The willow slants
forsaken; she weeps across the stream. I can
see the glaucous in her leaves; they lift and fall
lift and fall quickly. These are vicissitudes.
Do you like that? Oh. You are not here and I
forget it. Tell me the truth. See if you can.
I have made now a circlet. Yellow eyes peep
at me. Where shall I hang it? Nettles forbid
yet there is a branch. It reaches out to me. Falling
they say is a fast thing; hoops make a slowness
of it. How they settle on the surface, circle
after circle; how my hair flows under water.
It is my element: cold and numb with black
for a colour. I breathe in bubbles; plants give
still life to me. Through lenses, the sky
seems even blue. I wait without hope, for
there is no hope, not even for the differentness
of an ending. I hear only his words; they
float from a pocket. Ink dissolves in the water.
He said, 'Doubt not my Love'. Did he mean it?
the hanger on
by John Richardson
When I saw your collection of meat hooks,
their silent silvered gleam piercing the darkness
in the garage full of well-worn ropes, the blocks
and tackle; it was then I remembered that tough test
initiation. All those ladders, brushes and paint,
the long, long climb to your first globish, waxy
moon, its blacked out wane, twice-fortnight feint
and now it's all the cranks, levers and jacks He
has you to pull on the shrouding sky each night.
The same laddered up haul, the back-ache climb
to carry another star, another hook, another bright
glitterati to hang in the black drop, the dime after dime
thumbed in the meter and still not content He expects you,
at every turn, to rubbish the star gazers trying to amaze us,
knows their rheumy-eyed recounts will be out. (One or two
delusional, think they've got it all sussed). But you, without fuss
let my hands smooth salve into rope-worn scars,
let me undo your ligaments' toil of knots, rub tender balm
in the rack of your back. So I took your fingers, that've held stars,
into my mouth to taste the night's contentment; the calm.
It was then I knew,
without a spark,
it was you, and only you,
that could light my dark.
The unbearable consequence of putting your head inside someone else's then trying to get it back out again without them noticing
by Michael Scott
I wanted to fill your heart
with cellophane winged dragonflies
but choked your head
with wasps instead
my eyeless thoughtless
buried in gut concrete
pins me to earth
real now gasps words
back to my tongue
selfish escape not undone
heavy unable
clogs your ears
last night's adrenaline
sticky useless today
I stain
mouthless indelible breathless
albatross arms cling you
stoop friend
feel how weighty my me is
I complicate
defuse now
booby-trapped thud wired to my ribs
cut red
cut blue
run
Ditched
by Elinor Brooks
She sits by the roadside
crunching an apple
his ripe corn dolly
off-duty barmaid
hair blond and braided.
He flattens the field with her
plaiting her platinum
limbs underneath her
tying her neck
in a bright tight knot.
He tramples the husks of her
into the ditch
then spinning the spokes
of her battered back wheel
he walks to his car
Sunday driver
going to the pub
to eat his lunch.
* * *
What was she doing,
out in the countryside
all by herself?
Asking for trouble.
Tomorrow he'll move
back up north.
Coming to light
by Janice Booth
The distant headlamps of a solitary car, eyes
yellow as a feral cat's, define the lonely journey
of a Fenland road, where vacant window panes
stare out at flinty fields. Along the sluices,
water shivers in the easterlies at Eau Brink,
Magdalen, where pumping stations squat
against the sky. Pink footed geese trail
in the thermals of the morning Fenman,
white wings effortlessly messaging the widening sky
with upward loops that lift the loosening day.
I know this land – the way dull irrigation dykes
flame pink along the flat horizon
in the sun's first blast of light. And how,
like calotypes upon a visceral dawn,
our mirrored selves squint through the glass
- to see the metamorphosis of night.
The Honeysuckle Corridor of Certain Doom
by Heather O'Neill
Each day I test the sonic boom
Facing down the honeysuckle
Corridor of Certain Doom.
'Cause magic happens when you buckle
Up to speed beyond all noise.
Away from the drone I tuck all
Into a dot so dense I'm poised
To surf on the edge of collapse
To new worlds, avoiding asteroids
I'm not there to hit - I'm that fast.
My boom are wings of shields of save
Me steel. I make the sound. In fact,
Black notes. I make time stop on the stave.
You're knocked out by my inflatable
Silence. I wind through a crystal maze
To be anywhere but here and stung
By such a lonely buzz. My heart swells,
I hold my hands and run.
THREE METEORITES - POEMS BY TE BATTERED MOONS 2011 COMPETITION TEAM
Watch
by Lesley Saunders
In their hearts they are the island nation,
race of islanders, even the inland tribes
who have only the dream of sea are obsessed
with horizons and the voluptuous possibility
of ships. Unassailable as cliffs they have gone
to the end of the earth to the edge of the land
to see for themselves how war looks like a sail.
On the outskirts of towns there are artichoke beds
and the serene mooring on a slow-moving Frome
and after lights out the late night shipping news.
Still their eyes have the scrimped sheen of sea-glass
and in the simple dawn they bandage their hearts
like world-forsakers against the bottomless crossing
through fog to the outcrop, atoll, holm.
Written as part of a residency at Acton Court
published in 2010
published in 2010
A Tragedy from a Bathtub
by Hilda Sheehan
I listened to my father recite Shakespeare,
from his bathtub, my ear
to the bathroom door.
He was my jewel set in a silver sea,
my mighty Caesar.
Our mother, Juliet,
was downstairs
staring at the washing up,
dreaming of Romeo,
her lover,
who'd mown our lawn
rough and rude as love;
cut tree branches dagger sharp.
After his bath,
my father found the washing up had not been done;
it sat in the swamp of the sink mourning
for my mother who was found on the lawn,
presumed dead.
Romeo lay above her,
speared by the branch of a tree,
blood dripping our white roses red.
When mother awoke,
she tackled the washing up,
but found life too dull without Romeo,
so she left through a door
I could never find in the cellar.
I listened to my father recite Wordsworth,
for he believed no harm could come of daffodils,
and I was lonely as the cloud he lay on
while our washing up grew
into a crockery mountain.
Speechcraft
by Cristina Newton
I write his speeches for him.
He can sleep in peace – he knows
he can leave the rigmarole
of fetching metaphors to me.
I slide current notions into a sleek-swung sling,
and lithium phrases broadcast their buzz
on the see-saw sways of counterpoised analogies.
I set them to a mnemonic beat
that he wears well. His voice melds
the scores into a corollary that just slides down.
He memorises lines like lyrics, lists,
rehearsing as he shaves, mock-lecturing
the mirror in the lift, self-addressing
safety-glazed reflections in the back of cars.
He beats himself to it; in record time
he digests the cud he chewed, while he chews
the turf he grazed. Now it's his role to stand in the red-shift
of public light, and distill the logic of stellar parallax.
The words I wrote and he delivers have become
himself. The world spins, tilts on a blunt axis.
The picture is now the eye
that shuts down for the night.
In his sleep, I edit his peace speeches.
BRIEF PROFILES OF THE POETS
The Winning Poets
Janice Booth has seen her own children grow up in Swindon but she herself started life in Norfolk
Elinor Brooks: "There is a thin line between the time-bound world of our sensesand the world of our imaginative empathy: I like to cross these borders in my poetry. I was born in Edinburgh, love romantic landscapes, and when I'm not writing can be found in the pub playing an Oriental strategy board game called Go".
Heather O'Neill is a Swindon housewife, raising two small boys. Previously she worked as, among other things, a secondary school teacher and a 70's disco wedding singer. A late comer to poetry, she's still regularly surprised by how useful and enjoyable it can be.
John Richardson: "I've been writing poetry since my early forties; with interests ranging from the Tang dynasty, through Argentinian, Greek, Russian, Spanish to 20th Century American poetry. My poems are about: family, friends, relationships, love and cheese. My poetic influences are John Ashbery and J.H. Prynne. I've published three collections and am a founder member of BlueGate poets".
Gavin Salisbury has been writing and publishing poetry and fiction since the early nineties. His latest solo publication is The Far Sense, a collection of speculative fiction short stories, which was published by Sam's Dot Publishing (USA) last year.
Visit Gavin's website at http://gavin-salisbury.com for more information.
Michael Scott
Michael loves words, his favourite word is lagrima.p
A Koestler Trust Poetry Mentor, he believes that poems
have no walls, doors, locks, railings.
Poems are not made of glass.
Michael harvests poetry from alcoholism, Peruvian street
and Swindon word soup. Michael reads poetry in Swindon , Bath Bristol
Sometimes he is allowed back.
Linda Snell is the rose pruner at Sheldon Manor, near Chippenham. She has had poems published in: Equinox, Envoi, The Interpreter's House, South, Obsessed with Pipework and Iota. She won first prize in the Wiltshire poetry competition last year and was also short-listed in the Grace Dieu poetry competition. She is co-founder of the Corsham Poetry Society.
Registrar and advisor
Hilda Sheehan's poems have appeared on the BBC Website, The Rialto, National Poetry Society Website, The New Writer and South magazines. She performs her work at poetry events all over the South West region. She gained a distinction in creative writing with the Open University. Hilda is Assistant to Swindon Artswords Literature Development Worker.
Judges
Lesley Saunders is a published poet with several volumes to her name, including Christina the Astonishing (with Jane Draycott), Her Leafy Eye (with artist/photographer Geoff Carr) and No Doves. She has held several poetry residencies, written various commissions and won a number of major poetry awards, including the Manchester Poetry Prize in 2008. See www.lesleysaunders.org.uk .
Cristina (Navazo-Eguía) Newton published poetry in Spanish in two collections and five anthologies before moving to Swindon, where she is involved in education, poetry workshops and reviews, wildlife projects, hondo-flamenco singing and raising her children. Some of her English poems have appeared in journals and ran up at Gregory O'Donoghue, Strokestown and Nottingham . ‘Edison Peña Runs the Six Miles’ won the Poetry London Competition 2011.
