The Geoffrey Dearmer Prize
Winner 2011: Denise Saul

Denise Saul. Photo: Naomi WoddisThe Poetry Society is pleased to announce that the winner of the 2011 Geoffrey Dearmer Prize is Denise Saul, for her poem 'Leaving Abyssinia'. The Geoffrey Dearmer Prize is awarded annually to the best Poetry Review poem written by a poet who doesn’t yet have a full collection.

Denise Saul is a poet and fiction writer. Her White Narcissi (Flipped Eye Publishing) was a Poetry Book Society Pamphlet Choice for Autumn 2007. In 2008 she was selected for The Complete Works, a two-year mentoring and development programme for ten advanced black and Asian poets in the UK. House of Blue (published by Rack Press) is a PBS Pamphlet Recommendation for Summer 2012. 

In the summer issue of Poetry Review Judge Moniza Alvi comments: "The uncertainty is palpable, conveyed as it is by the fog, the windowless cabin and the sense of not knowing whether there’s any movement, whether this really is a journey, a journey for the self, as well as for the ship." 

Denise Saul
Leaving Abyssinia

A foghorn sounds: I notice the distance
between houses and the shore
as the ship pulls away from a pillar:
strata of limestone, clay and granite.
A wall of fog drifts towards the coast;
gulls peck at moss behind a stone ledge.
I sit in a cabin without windows,
unable to tell if I’m moving or not. 
 
I cannot hear what grandfather shouts
from the pier – goodbye – perhaps.
The wind billows in the smell of mackerel.
At night, nothing is certain when I leave
this land where morning and night
come so close together that fishermen
who return boats at sunset
hail those who sail theirs out at dawn. 
 
An hour later, the clock ticks the same way.
It’s 1.30 a.m. and as I’m still
awake, I light an oil-lamp to read a book.
I packed books which were needed:
World Dress by Frances Burnett,
Oxford English Reference Dictionary
and Greek Myths by Robert Graves. 
 
Here, there is no Odysseus to let passengers know
that the ship’s motion is ‘uniform’.
I recall that phrase from a lesson at school
as that formula was rote learnt:
every body continues... in its state
of rest or of uniform motion... in a right line
unless it is compelled... to change
that state by forces impressed upon it.
I leaf through the story of the Clashing Rocks;
all the sun returns to the underworld.

Denise Saul photo credit: Naomi Woddis

About the Geoffrey Dearmer Prize

The Geoffrey Dearmer Prize was established in memory of Geoffrey Dearmer, who at 103 was the Society’s oldest member. It is awarded, through the generosity of the Dearmer family, to honour this noted World War One poet. Poetry Review is extremely grateful to the Dearmer family. By establishing an endowment fund, the Dearmer family has enabled the Poetry Society to award an annual prize to the best Poetry Review poem written by a poet who doesn’t yet have a full collection.

Read about the history of the prize.

Email: poetryreview [@] poetrysociety.org.uk
Telephone: 020 7420 9880