The Geoffrey Dearmer Prize 1999

Sarah Wardle

Judge Sheenagh Pugh writes: ... [her] control of form was impressive, as was the humour and lack of self-obsession; this poet looks out at the world rather than contemplating the inside of her head. More important still is the fact that the language lives, it's sparky and feisty; it always runs rather than plodding and now and then ("Young Man in Bronze"; "Modern Poet") it flies.

In the National Palace Museum, Taiwan

Here in this entrepreneurial State
they work in night markets and evening school.
A Ming porcelain bowl shows Dragon Gate,
where a carp rises from a cobalt pool
 
to become that creature in mist above,
a symbol of strength, of the emperor,
of success - a concept these people love,
who fled from a communist conqueror.
 
In their port cargoes prepare to embark.
In their World Trade Centre the day's begun.
China Steel is the scale of a theme park.
Textile factory machines run and run.
 
But see how each busy capitalist
stares serenely through an exhibit's glass
to gaze at lotus flowers, a phoenix,
or philosophers on a mountain path.
 

Psyche

Yesterday life was faster and fuller than this,

when I arrived here, barefoot, with clenched fist,

ready to kick and punch. Yes, I fought.

Having travelled the earth to find him, I was distraught,

seeking him who came to me divinely in the night,

always in darkness, invisible, so that it might

all have been a dream, but one I believed.

 

I journeyed here, hoping to be received

in this, his house, his palace, his temple,

with him at the top of the aisle by the oracle,

extending his hand like a bridegroom. It was a trick.

I tried to escape, ran down corridors, looked for an exit,

like Theseus without Ariadne's thread.

 

It was no good. I was surrounded,

trapped like an animal caught in the nets. I'd be fed

to the Minotaur, or to one of the heads

of the Hydra. By fighting I only made matters worse:

seven sentries appeared, where before was one nurse.

 

I climbed on the couches, knocked over a chair,

hid in an alcove to block out the glare

of a light. Cupid was nowhere. The voices of my sisters screamed,

"He's not your lover! He's a monster!" In a living dream

I'd become Odysseus in the Cyclops' cave,

about to be swallowed without a chance of being saved.

 

They said No One would hurt me, but I guessed their game:

I knew that No One was Somebody's name.

They sharpened a needle for the eye of my mind,

speared it in, till I felt myself fade and go blind,

freefalling into a blackened abyss,

forever shut out from the day, like Oedipus.

 

Then I turned into Sisyphus pushing a rock,

as I struggled to keep awake, to swim back to the top.

Next I was Aeneas in Hades, the nurses were ghosts.

I was Psyche again when I awoke.

 

This room is silent now. On the door is a number

in washable ink. I wear a hospital toga.

When the nurse comes in with more drugs, she will say

in a mocking tone, "How is Aeneas today?"

Yes, yesterday with racing thoughts and clenched fist,

I can say life was faster and fuller than this.

Shortlist: Angela Leighton, Ros Barber, Hugh Macpherson, V. G. Lee,
R. G. Binns, Cate Parish