The Geoffrey Dearmer Prize 2003

Rebecca O'Connor

The winner of the Geoffrey Dearmer poetry prize 2003 is Rebecca O'Connor, for her poem 'A Bag of Tangerines', which was published in Poetry Review 92:4 (Winter 2002/3).

This year's judge was the poet Matthew Welton, who said: "Rebecca O'Connor's 'A Bag of Tangerines' is a poem that occupies itself, and, in that, it does as much as any poem has to. The poem is striking in how simple it appears, but, of course, it can only have this effect because it is put together so well. Like sewing a straight seam or stretching a tight drumskin, making a poem is a matter where the technical achievement is better if it doesn't draw attention to itself. And 'A Bag of Tangerines' is a poem on which the work has definitely been done." Matthew also commended two other shortlisted poems: Jon Woodward's "your eyes are just hanging" (93:2) and Carrie Etter's "Fin de Siècle" (93:2).

A Bag of Tangerines

 
About a dozen tangerines fell
out of my blue shopping bag
and rolled down the bus aisle.
That made them smile, though
it was only a bag of tangerines
rolling down the aisle.
 
A gentleman in a white tunic
handed me four at a time,
the lady next to me stooped down
and scooped up a few,
the bus driver slowed right down:
"Are they limes?" "No,
they're mandarins, tangerines –
a little bruised now."