The Geoffrey Dearmer Prize 2006

Tamara Fulcher

Tamara Fulcher, a twenty-nine-year-old from Scotland, has won this year's Geoffrey Dearmer Prize, awarded to a poet who has not yet published a full collection for work published in Poetry Review. This year's prize was judged by distinguished poet, librettist and fiction writer David Harsent.

Tamara Fulcher grew up in Kent but has lived in Scotland since taking her degree, an MA (Hons) in Ancient History at Edinburgh University. Her poetry has been appearing in magazines since 2004 and new work is forthcoming in Iota and Shearsman. She is working on a novel, The Past and Sorrow of Lenny J,  which – with the poem-cycle Yellow – is her key project for 2007.

David Harsent praised Tamara Fulcher's winning poem, 'Choirsinger', saying: This bleak little domestic drama of loss and loneliness is cleverly understated. In fact, its tragedy lies in restraint: an economy that extends into technique. […] The narrator breaks off, now and then, to punctuate the poem with intense images that characterise the event and act as counterpoint to a series of utterances the sheer banality of which is, ironically, an indicator of their power to hurt. You can almost hear the echoes. […] The level tone of the piece gives everything away: the fear of feeling, the expectation of neglect; and the lines find just the right weight to allow us to witness the little tableau, static for only a moment, the arrested motion, the averted eyes, the damage done, the damage yet to come.

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Tamara Fulcher
Choirsinger  
My father said, So what do you do?
I stopped, and replied, I sing in the choir.
Choir? said Mother, That must take some work.
I said, It takes a lot,
 
And practice. He flicked his ash
Into the hearth and I tried to stand taller.
It fell as small snow. My shoes were tight.
Do you perform?
Not on my own, Ma, I said, But we do.
Who?
The choir. We are many. She dropped her head
As he made a noise.
Outside was getting in, between the drapes.
 
I wish you'd told us, she said,
We'd like to have known before now.
The fire cracked. He made the noise again,
Looking down.
We could have come to watch.
You can still come, I said, eager as a boy.
 
Oh, I don't know. He could still speak
To throw me off. He sucked on the end of it,
Chucked it in to burn. It's a bit late for that now.
Season's nearly over, eh.
There is no season, I said. There is no season,
Mother said, pushing in,
It's all the time. He rubbed his red hands fast.
Oh well, he said, You'll let us know how
 
You're getting along.
What do you sing? she said, craning up.
Oh, I said, Just songs. Everything.
Yes, we said, Yes. He was still looking
Down at the wood, white, shaking into air
And fading out of sight, out of being.
I saw her eyes were closed.


Published in Poetry Review, 95:4