The Poetry Society

Foyle Young Poets of the Year 2004:
And The Air Sang

 

The 2004 judges were Moniza Alvi and Mario Petrucci.

The anthology was named for the closing line to Joe Heap's poem, 'The Air Sang'.

Scroll down to read the winning poems and commended poets.

 

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Search for My Voice
Felicity Ann Alma

I had been searching for my voice,

checking each inch of my body

for its hidden noise. I pulled out

each of my eyes in turn and checked

 

their dull colours for a sight of it,

but it was not there. I turned my heart

inside out like a purse, but there was

no trace, no single note playing

 

as a clue. I searched each crystal breath

as it emerged, my eyes spinning

like sugar in my head. I could not find

my lost voice and I despaired.

 

It was as I sat, desolate, by your side

and listened to your sexist jokes

that I found it, foetal and quavering,

hiding on the end of my tongue.

 

 

I swallowed it whole in shock and felt it

grow within my throat, hammering

on the cage my teeth made, and

when I opened my mouth it roared.

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Feel, if you can, the agony...
Lyndsay Coo

 

Feel, if you can, the agony

of Daphne:

each cell in your body

(and these,

they are countless)

 

stiffens

buds a vacuole.

 

This feels

like an all-over choking,

 

this feels

like the love

of a boa.

 

Then your toenails

thicken to root,

 

burst

from your skin

 

race

into topsoil.

 

You feel

the bump and the scrape

of every rock all the long way down.

 

This hurts.

Legs fuse to a trunk,

 

heavy bark screaming

outwards

 

itching,

sprinting upwards

 

over legs, hips, sex, chest, neck...

 

with a warm gasp

a breathless sigh

 

closing over your head,

a barky straitjacket

 

(for if you were not mad before,

you are now).

 

This is metamorphosis.

Your head nods in the breeze,

blood thins to sap.

Sprout a whisper of leaves,

heart rattles

like an abacus.

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The Air Sang
Joe Heap

 

Crystal radio

I do not understand.

Copper wire wound tight

On toilet tube core.

Brass button slider on the copper

Tuned to roots and water.

Green wire vines

Binding slider to thirsty crystal.

 

One wire pinned to the ceiling

One wire tied to the metal bedpost

Aerial and Earth

Not machine but plant

Branch and Root.

 

Strange plant

I do not understand you.

No batteries, no plug

No key to wind, no wheel to turn

Nothing to fuel, power, charge.

You suck your life from the air

Like desert cacti living

Without rain, stretching

Tiny hairs to the dust wind

Catching water on the breeze.

 

I put the single piece to my ear

Snapped the switch, pushed the slider

Through dust wind static.

Tiny hairs reached out,

Voices were drawn from the quiet

And the air sang.

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The Apocalypse Museum
Judith Huang

 

We unearthed the Earth and found a dead museum,

stonestruck, the dead, as though catastrophe

had wiped them out, had claimed the hollow heads,

the bleeding eyes, now dried, paleoanthropic.

Some mated, hands to hearts and eye to eye,

eyes gazing up into the gravel sky.

Small units sat and stacked themselves in flats

around a table lost, without their necks.

Neck to neck the screaming shuttles came

the flaming wonder fossiled on their face.

In granite corridors we found the poor

their lashes bit with frost. Soldiers swaddled

in warm uniforms. They paved the floor.

 

They had, it seems, first invented metal

They wear it round their heads and round their arms

in shapes, and some embed it in their hearts.

 

In the museum we found the empty art.

The pillars held the posts of massacre.

Dust preserved the ancient manuscripts

and marble, a mausoleum for the heart.

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from mermaid
Dawn Lim

 

0

tonight a flood of rain

eliminates

the spaces of the earth

 

waterland; only the clouds

form its barriers

 

a breeze steers the leaf

of a boat like a free-

floating

compass

 

a fisherman

pulls in the sea with both arms,

and keeps it in a basket

to tame. he dreams

of teaching it to travel by air.

 

[…]

 

100

if there are no salt rivers, there will still be rain.

if there is no rain, there will still be the humidity.

if there is no humidity, there will still be tears for remembrance.

if eyes do not speak, there will still be my lips, upturned, broken bird.

if lips do not speak, then their silence will.

if silence will not, then memory will.

if memory will not, then absence will, reminding us

of how lightly we brushed our lips away from our pasts.

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The Unwilling Villain
Sara Lyon

 

On this border

A wall juts and breaks into dead land

A soldier fires its gun.

 

The gun listens as the shot reverberates

And jars sharply at the expulsion

Choking on waves of acrid fumes

Enduring the miles of sun in the folds of a sour-smelling uniform

 

The gun wants to be a child

Harmlessly spewing cherry pits and watermelon seeds

The gun wants to be the starting pistol

Of an Olympic race

The gun wants to be a branch

Launching showers and bombs of blossom

The gun wants to be a chrysalis

and disappear after releasing a single butterfly

 

One by one, each bullet finds a last home, to

Lodge in flesh or rattle in unseen cavities

For an instant, the emptiness swells and rages against the metal surrounding it

A tiny glow-worm of promise change breathes in the nothingness

As it cools silently in the shade of a wall

On this border.

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Risk Assessment
Helen Mort

 

We started with rain - grey, hair

plastered against our heads -

and you drew for me the heavy lungs

of a valley, filling and swelling

with water, where you had dived,

pulled sideways by current, trying

to touch the river bottom,

and had broken through the surface

with only silt in your eyes,

drowning in the brown water

a story your mother told you

about those lads

the river hugged too tightly.

 

Opposite 'The Rose and Crown'

the traffic holds its breath for you

and we dodge through cars, drivers

gaping against their windows. You talk

of miracles in the everyday;

the euphoria of an open window,

sunshine unsettling dust across the floor

and the car headlamps flash

across your own small miracle,

the half-way mark on your neck

still bruised with something like luck.

 

We started with rain,

but then you tell me that

the only thing you've ever wanted

is to make love in a thunderstorm,

watch the clouds crowding in.

The night jostles against my skin,

warning me to assess.

Traffic, with nothing to stay for,

moves on. I am left

to walk the tightrope of your smile

not alone

but by myself.

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Adam
Maria Achieng Onyango

 

Cradled at the chest of the Earth -

ribs a hill to the swing of the wind,

my days are sleepers

and my dreams filled

with collapsing pectorals and the

moist lustre of something called placenta.

 

I know the lightest part of the night,

where I stand to exhibit my stomach

to the waiting air

and strain my abdomen

into a dim imitation of the convex moon

that is soft and heavy with nurturing.

 

Next morning I watch the birds that

divide my dandelion garden and snatch

a cardinal

from the peaches -

pluck him with overeager hands and weave

a deep womb from the cooling feathers.

 

In lilting hours I rest my fist inside it,

pushing my fingers to lodge the sides

and hate to know

that my red womb

won't fit inside the flatness of my torso -

I demolish it, quickly, from the inside.

 

Every morning I put two fingers in my mouth

to make myself vomit onto the ground -

I cradle the empty air

where my belly should be

and examine in detail my milkless chest

and my ribs, which are aching with loss.

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What We Must Not Forget
Hazel Perryman

 

I

Cannot forget another day

Like this I cannot

Let go/stop

Hold

ing hands with it -

look how the sun blushes in the dirty sky -

look how wet and red your organs -

In the sky,

the bird turns on the blue knife-edge

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On recovering from leprosy
J C H Potts

 

I took hour-long baths every evening,

drowned myself in strawberry scent,

 

never licked my lips when eating doughnuts,

let pineapple tickle down my chin,

 

tightroped chocolate on my tongue's tip

till it slipped melted into my mouth,

 

traced tulips, roses, forget-me-nots, thistles,

lamb's-ears, buttercups, over my cheeks.

 

I collected old books, skulls, vinyls, shells,

brushed past iron railings, bamboo, wire mesh,

 

plunged my hands into snow, tissue paper,

and in one greengrocer's, a barrel of kidney beans.

 

People thought I was funny

standing half an hour at the fruit stand.

 

(Their conception that having was enough,

or that rasping lie "mind over matter".)

 

I liked the museums of old

agricultural implements,

 

took up amateur acting so I could dress up

in the fine clothes, antique and antic.

 

I cut myself sometimes and had bandages

and tape and antiseptic cream;

 

I wrapped myself in scarves and gloves and hats,

or other times walked naked - rain or shine.

 

My bubble mixture abstract thoughts

I could touch.

 

I built a desk of old railway sleepers

and now write poems there.

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Lolita
Colette Sensier

 

She wore silk for him, chiffon velvet satin, skirts

fluttering like pastel butterflies around her ankles. She brushed her hair

with a soft wooden-handled brush, one hundred strokes every night and

morning, and lay after baths

in the empty tub, surveying her body, smoothing coconut scented moisturiser

over fluent limbs

and torso. Took to smiling at odd moments, made herself

up every day, cheeks lips eyes, and she blotted

the lipstick with tissue paper, bold

Warhol pouts left on the tissue. She listened to music with high

swooping notes,

and no drumbeat, and she found a love for the back of her neck, the curve

of it, the delicacy and the downy

 

hairs smooth down the length of it. Descended the stairs with her head up and

one hand on the bannister, like Scarlett O'Hara,

and considered playing the cello, imagining curved wood

between her thighs, taut horsehair making

dignified mellow notes. Slept fractured sleep, threw off her duvet and slipped

 

between the sheets instead, noticed the heat more, stole glances at herself

in mirrors, shop windows, TV screens. She floated in a blown-glass bubble

six inches from the ground, she loved the texture

of painted walls and the tangy smell

of oranges. When she sipped pale champagne with him, her eyes over the glass were

wide and inquiring. She was a softer person than before, also sharper. She licked at

ice cream with a pointed pink tongue.

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from Arethusa
Laura Seymour
 

This poem has been removed.  

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Saint Tropez
Tim Smith-Laing

 

In his hand a photo of his fiancée,

this long-dead German soldier is paling

sea-white now, and his girl washes away.

 

This Heinrich or Hans missed her and she him.

For the town this is a small victory,

the drilled efficient Germans drowning

 

and their children who harvest wild chicory,

to brew make-believe coffee, will not let him be,

they throw stones at the sea, and in the heat,

 

glug-glug at German patrols in the street

play drowning soldiers with rolling eyes.

They were training and did not know the tides.

 

Coarse sand whirled up in the undertow,

has stripped his bones of their disguise,

and scoured her loving face from the photo,

 

until she is gone and his white bones lie

broken and smooth as fragments of sea-glass,

mixed with rotten iron and brass.

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from Learning to Draw
Chloe Stopa-Hunt

 

i

 

And when it falls like the smooth arms of angels

in amazement at such an abundance of grace,

the prince's roughened hands chalk its white wake

where it sings amid the cracked ionic columns -

but I can draw you only in falling,

aspire to drawing you in velvet, cinnabar

in coffee organdie, sunk silence, in disguise

in sepia Je baiserai ta bouche, Iokanaan

the lowest layer moon-wrapt, découpaged,

sinking fin de notre siècle, love. Or I could

drink you, as unlike the cold stars you

are black cognac and ink-black Je baiserai

ta bouche in the crimson stabs - wild shelter.

Wild shelter - ta bouche in the crimson stabs

are black cognac and ink-black Je baiserai

drink you - as unlike the cold stars, you,

sinking fin de notre siècle, love. Or I could -

the lowest layer moon-wrapt, découpaged,

in sepia Je baiserai ta bouche, Iokanaan -

in coffee organdie, sunk silence, in disguise

aspire to drawing you in velvet, cinnabar

but I can draw you only in falling,

where it sings amid the cracked ionic columns

the prince's roughened hands chalk its white wake

in amazement at such an abundance of grace

and when it falls - like the smooth arms of angels.

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Petroushka
Felicity Yeoh

 

She had been engaged to talk to us about work-life balance.

To guide us onto our pedestals, blindfolded Minervas

Holding our twin pans in one hand,

To whisper instructions - compensate, adjust, find the equilibrium and hold it -

As we sweated, uncomfortable in heavy robes

Unsteady and uncertain.

 

She stood at the front of the room like the figurehead of a ship

And like a prophetess, heavy-lidded eyes burdened with knowledge,

Explained like one who has seen and understands

The benefits and importance of the orgasm.

 

A hand laid on the carved box we would later find out contained a working relic for pleasure,

One finger sheathed in an articulated silver talon.

 

From a corner of the room, the one who had lost control of the situation started forward, stopped, understood at least that to interrupt would be to call divine wrath upon himself.

Squirming in our chairs we one by one dropped our gaze, momentarily blind.

And attempted to be mature: focused on her grey hair, slack upper arms and heavy unsmiling jaw.

 

'Come and come and come and come.'

 

She stopped. Thrilled and contemptuous, we applauded as she made her passage through the crowded room, Medusa-curls shifting in a localised storm, the clicking heavy silver, skirts swirling around her like waves and her swing of her hips the rhythm of the sea,

And every man fell back before her.

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Commended Poets

Paul Abbott; Nii Kpakpo Addo; Ijasan Adelehin; Olivia Alabaster; Fiona Apps; Laura Attridge; Alexandra Avis; James Bailey; Jennifer Ball; Richard Bell; Elyse Bellamy; Jeneece Bernard; Tanieka Mitchell Blake; Jason Brander; Alice Brooksmith; Wesley Brown; Richard Budden; Catherine Cable-Chandler; Alex Campbell; Jessica Chang; Mary Chen; Miranda Cichy; Sam Clodd; Nadia Connor; Henry Cullen; Robyn Cutforth; Rachael Dalsing; Louisa Dawes; Simon Demetriou; Joseph Dennett; Kye Dorricott; Joshua Duval; Paul Edwards-Ganning; Laura Friis; Charlotte Geater; Olivia Hanson; Shannon Harrington-Hay; Laura E. Harris; Samuel Lórien Harwin; Rebecca Hawkes; Elizabeth Hemsley; Kate Hewson; Tim Hodgson; Jemima Hodkinson; Kathryn Jansz; Jenny Jarman; Meirion Jordan; Hayley Kearns; Juliana Kerrest; Jaz Krautwurst; Naomi Lever; Sian Lewis; Emma Lindley; Nicholas Liu; Alice Malin; Annie McDermott; Ellyn Mee; Claire Mongeau; Shezani Nasoordeen; Philip Naylor; Charlie Newport; Chloe Orrock; Alanna Palmer; Jonathan Payne; Sarah Ramsey; Whit Ray; Joyce Sheung-Ching Ng; Rachael Simpson; Dory Smith; Victoria Sparrow; Janine Stockford; Amy Stone; Emma Teichmann; Sharlene Teo; Nicola Thomas; Charles Thompson; Beth Underdown; Jesse van Buren; Rebecca Varley-Winter; Joseph Wells; Samantha Welsh; Rachel Wong; Ruth Yates; Hann-Shuin Yew; Nimrah Zeb.

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