Foyle Young Poets of the Year 2005:
When the Thunder Woke Me
The judges for 2005 were Colette Bryce and George Szirtes.
The title is taken from Charlotte Geater's poem 'Gasmask'.
Scroll down to read the winning poems and commended poets.
Toujours
Adam Beaudoin
I've got a
slight red spot
in the fold of my palm -
a puncture wound
perhaps, from a wasp
and the edge of a rail
which I obtained
in the yard of a
school I never attended.
And afterwards,
without a doubt, there
you must have laid your lips.
to katherine
china hides in the creases
of your hands, they sing
as oia dies with the sun.
and midnight is some paler
rose - of chlorine and cold
tile, it is breathless.
Kid Moth
Jay Bernard
They lift her by her corners.
Dusting her with the soot of flight,
They wing-beat, blind -
Into the crevices of the evening,
Carrying the baby spine.
At first they looked for antennae
When she was found curled next to the mother.
They looked for the stump of wings
To teach her to soar
But thought maybe arms would do.
She would flap, collide against the air
And look up at the flight of the others.
They hovered with scraps of sock,
Old denim and worn wardrobe suits.
They dropped them in
Marvelling at the single red tongue.
Soon they watched her crawl across the floor.
Too delicate for discovery, she picked
The buttonholes of vagrants,
Looking for thread.
At night
They listened to her navel for whispers,
To see if she could hear the lunar proverbs.
She learned to sing,
learned their audio.
They taught her to sit on the sills of windows
Mesmerised by the blue flick of TV screens.
And once they found her twenty feet up
Hugging the bulb of a street lamp.
She had never slept so close to the moon -
She dreamed that she could graze the cusp,
Press her face against its glow.
How to Watch a Child Die
Amanda Chong
Avert your gaze from his eyes,
even if they plead for you to be drawn to its depths.
Instead focus on his sallow complexion
the sun crawling on his aged skin,
the colour of the well-trodden carpet
in your living room;
the spot where your son once threw his football boots
and you missed bleaching
for the past few years.
Do not try to guess his age
or say, he is older than he looks
as you study his brittle bones, too-large head
and the empty basket of his ribcage.
Think instead of the sound they may make
when his body is thrown into a ditch;
the sound of rain whipping through branches,
the crackling of a creek before thaw
or your antique vase
crashing into smithereens
from its place on the mantelpiece.
Turn away from the blank faces of your own children
and make no associations.
Pretend you do not notice
how your teenager leaves her food
uneaten on her plate.
(Convince yourself you are not an escapist)
After all,
this skeletal child is merely
a marionette in a macabre fairytale.
Now, ignore the queasy feeling in your stomach
as you get up to dish out dessert.
Resolve to write to the authorities
to complain for showing such
disturbing footage during dinner.
Be blind to the broken birds of the child's
hands as they reach out pleading to be held,
the rolling whites of his eyes, the bruised animals
of his lips, parting, as he takes his last..
Turn off the television set.
Children should not know that
(in some very remote parts of the world)
they may die before their mothers.
Gasmask
Charlotte Geater
I once dreamt of wearing a gasmask
leather, crackling. It was so thin
and yet it didn't break. I didn't pull at it
or tug, but I breathed it in and yet didn't smell
anything.
There were sirens and a table and an
anderson shelter. I didn't like the smoke
and bombs. A baby in a cradle.
In the darkness, I thought you were lost
my arms didn't find your shoulder
maybe your blood was silent.
when the thunder woke me up
I couldn't understand why you were still there.
Untitled
Philip Knox
a friend
just told
me
that
her
one-year-old
sister'sboyfriend'scousin
choked.
to.
death.
shortly before his mother
went into
labour
with
(what would have been)
his new baby brother.
before slipping blankly back
into the
dulling lukewarm
wash of the
everyday,
I thought it
only right
(but nothing more)
to write
some words
which will never
warm the heart
of the
impossibly
small
tangled
body
prone
in some
living-room.
Country Lass
Emma Lawrence
Mud traipsed through your living room,
Dirty, smelly, unholy, corrupt
Sweet brown mess, all over your cream carpet.
I'm a dirty country lass in a fouler city.
My tangy words slaughter and kill your
"Correct enunciation." Squinting you ask
Me to repeat myself, slowly. But
I'm a dirty country lass in a fouler city.
The sweat on my brow offends you,
And a rose-smelling, country-killing
Handkerchief is thrust in my face. No thanks -
I'm a dirty country lass in a fouler city.
You try to smile with painted-on lips,
Even though you have eyes of cold glass.
You see the wild twinkle in mine -
I'm a dirty country lass in a fouler city.
Frowning at the crease in your lavish sheets,
You are revolted by my stories of
Lovers in the barn, straw in my knickers.
I'm a dirty country lass in a fouler city.
Stripping me of my dungarees and shirt,
Of those filthy Wellingtons. You strip me bare,
And stop, gasp, as you see my red, rural, country heart.
I'm a country lass in a foul city.
Travel-Map, Summer 1938
Alice Malin
Compact, like an old anatomical plate.
Block capitals, thin as stitches, lace
together your stops with names, foreign
and plump like the names
of bones: uvula, fibula,
tibia. Moldova, Kirovskaya, Belarus.
They sprout from a fine, black
vertebra, curved like an old man's,
slashed with dashes
like the stumps of ribs. This was
where you travelled by train.
Moutain ranges flex and bulge
on the curling paper, rutted
with crimson. These veins, these
stiffened old arteries are where
you travelled by plane.
There are gaps: white slabs you left
uncharted, bare, as if unsure
whether to record what you remembered
of that wasteland, if there were
any point at all
in the recording of a nodding lady
at a nameless airfield, of the contours
that grappled to a toothless crater as she smiled.
'Da, da, da.'
Or of her three-legged dog, howling.
This was
Eastern Europe on the cusp
catpured in blither unknowing. You
strolled across it, spooling
your scarlet, quivering capillaries
behind you, crossing
borders, flashing a blossoming passport
in countries, long gone.
And this, now,
anatomised, filtered, strained,
a litany of lost things, the echoes -
'da, da, da' -
I can guess at, only.
We make up memories
to soothe ourselves.
I want to scratch
new, throbbing organs
of cities onto the expectant, empty
flesh of 'summer, 1938',
re-draw borders that will carry on changing
and you,
the last point dotted
discreetly
on your old, anatomical plate,
will not know.
Catskin
Laura Marsh
I am old now
and I have lost all my teeth.
I remember my oiled catskin,
the mousey smell of it, the scarfing nape of it
and the girlish shame of passing kittens and gentlemen in the street.
I tried it on again once
and I was glad you didn't look
to see that I preferred it to everything.
To gooseflesh and to mutton.
Once I caught you too,
staring back at yourself in the mirror
on the landing, drawing your hair in front of your eyes,
thinking about growing it long, like it was when we met.
And then we both wondered when it was
that I stopped being beautiful.
Every day since I have longed for my catskin,
to be inside it, to do the washing up in it
and to lie in it on the sofa;
to shrink it two sizes down
and to spill out of it
and to say with mangey fur
I am old now
and I have lost all my teeth.
The Diver
Emily Middleton
His toes curl,
determined
as the slugs in his mother's vegetable
patch, the boy raises his arms.
The creamy sunset illuminates his muscular
figure. He inhales deeply, pushing his diaphragm
downwards like he's been taught, so
that the butterflies
in his belly are shrunk to playful moths. He springs,
agile as the spindly-legged frogs in the park
opposite his gran's. As he tumbles through the air,
the familiar thrill, induced
by this and rollercoasters alone, shoots up his
belly and erupts in his torso. The wind defines
his premature wrinkles and his skin is moulded
easy as clay
into a Picasso-like sculpture. The disorder
reflects his state of mind: a multitude of thoughts press against
his temples; he dismisses them as annoying little buggers
but as each individual notion becomes obsolete, another
slips in, quick as the Fido he wishes he'd had,
to replace it. He sees
his miscalculation
before he feels it. The biting rocks
soar up to meet him, snapping
eagerly in anticipation. The last taste
to grace his tongue is one of
salty seaweed.
Trivia
Richard Osmond
As a baby I said nothing as the sun
Flowed into my eyes and the wonder
Of the "too big to even think" world
Was beautiful. It was left undefiled
Until I began to speak
I cut out photos from magazines
And made a collage of the world
That I taped across my window.
I argued so much about birdsong
That I never heard it.
Every time I described something
I did it an injustice, shrunk it into
A silhouetted representation.
I talked God down off his perch
And into my pocket.
I broke the second commandment.
Everything I said was a graven image,
An imprisoning mockery.
Not letting go, I talked and talked.
The world was far too small.
Lift
Julia Rampen
I am dead. They will find me poised
in creaky elevation, heart empty
but for three business men. Shabby suits
from out-of-date lives, last voices.
My last seconds. I heard those mutters
so many times before. It wasn't my fault.
I was a kaleidoscope once; plush and mirrors
that cotton print girls dreamed through;
at dawn the doorman polished away
a myriad of glimpses.
The different floors had different scents. Remember,
the Junior offices were inky fish and chips.
Old perfume drifting down from Sales; the boss
trailed nicotine and lashes of gin.
The basement stank of rainy nights
and emptiness.
"under lost/found column..."
Dora Sharpe-Davidson
under lost/found column
a bird
small yellow talking
answers
to joey
please call
you mourn
that empty
cage
i cry
for the one
who didn't escape
who took
nine years
to reach paradise
even in death
trapped
not in dried cat
faeces
or soft
winter leaves
but underground
in a tin box
the lid
tighter
than feathers
Beach
Martha Sprackland
My fingertips gathered the rain
Held in milky measures
the sad reluctant drops more anaemic than sea water
for her. Awkwardly she twisted her
tiny hands around my palms
scavenged the liquid from
my skin which clutched her to my clothes to dry.
Sand clung to hair
ground crunchily in our teeth
salt and sharp cracked my lips like peeling paint but
The discomfort of our boots waterlogged and wrinkled pale was
nothing
She filled my pockets with shells.
Finding a Voice
Ella Thompson
There is a hole in the mountain.
I have been watching from my porch
as it gets deeper, wider.
The trees go sliding downwards
uprooted, grumbling
in the way only very old trees grumble
at having to relinquish their chosen spot
to an impudent stranger -
- Like this hole.
Still the cavern grows, and smoke-backed birds
drift, suspended at its mouth,
then peel off to gossip and speculate,
perched in one of the shunted trees,
like those Grecian sisters who shared an eye,
discussing the sad truth;
The mountain is clearly going off the rails.
I can see it from my window
and hear strange creakings, whispers,
sighs from deep in its roots.
They grow louder...Crescendo
into a moan, then a bellow
and the cavern is roaring.
The air trembles with this strange sound,
until now unheard,
the kind of resonant music
that is swallowed over any long silence -
- and the moutain has been quiet forever.
Aching to speak,
it has dug down,
breathed in deep,
and found its voice.
Fish Eyes
Sharon Wang
Grandpa, seven years I've watched you
part the flesh of fish, gouge skin until it gapes
with gills. Your chopsticks trip over fins, scale
the dish for a bony rim. Then it is quick:
the sudden plunge, the pluck of a ripe eye.
"He eats them to cure his blindness," mother explains
as she clears the dishes. Seven years
since you were packaged across an ocean
in your tiny stained suit, she still says this
every Sunday. I think of the day you went blind,
imagine you stiff-armed as the Cultural Revolution
marched into your lab, swept your chemicals
up with street-brooms. It is hard
to amputate your cane from these images.
Then I imagine mother: crouched, she shells
rice with raw thumbs. She hauls your foot-water
for you at night and cannot study for exams
or go to college or learn chemistry.
Grandpa, you did not eat fish eyes
for thirty-one years to flush out swarming flecks
of white. You ate to pluck out the fishes' sight.
Commended Poets
Phoebe Amis, Laura Attridge, Stacey Balkin, Phillipa Behrman, Lucas Bennett, Louise Benson James, Christopher Blunt, Helen Bragger, Rebecca Broome, Benjamin Burns, Rachel Burns, Charlotte Butcher Johansen, Miranda Cichy, Laura Costa, Dominic Cottrell, Haf Davies, Tom Escott, Paul Evans, Penny Faulkner, Liam Fearn, Daniel Fisher, Renee Fledderman, Clarisse Fong, Samantha Fong Wei Teng, Ashanya Griffiths, Elen Griffiths, William Grove, Zachary Hamasaki, Lauren Haruno, Lewis Holt, Rosie Hoskin, Natasha Hyman, John Iwamoto, Felix Johnston, Laura Kilbride, Gloria Lagou, Catherine Lawford, George Legg, Sian Lewis, Michelle Lynn Chiu, Sara Lyon, Madeleine McGarrie, Sophie McGrath, Elie McKenzie, Luska Mengham, Emily Mercer, Tan Mingjuan, Sarah Mooney, Jonathan Moran, Jamal Msebele, Laurence Newrick, Pamela Ng, Tom Offland, Mie Omori, Maria Achieng Onyango, Eleana Orr, Adrian Pascu, Alexandra Paulin-Booth, Karin Remmelzwaal, Kate Rolison, Evan Rosenman, Joe Rybicki, Melanie Sabet, Kristin Saitveit, Sophie Sawicka-Sykes, Patricia Scurfield, Colette Sensier, Yasamean Shirani, Eleanor Sikorska, Ellie Slee, Bea Stanley, Makhima Sukhdev, Emma Sykes, Alex Taylor, Nicholas Tolkien, Ceri Townsend, Charlotte Trevella, Julio Vargas, Evelyn Webster, Kelly Wehrle, Daniel Lee Guan Wei, Jonathan Weir, Sophie Yeo
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