The 2007 Open Poetry Competition was judged by Anne Berkeley who edits the poetry magazine, Seam, and is part of the poetry performance group, The Joys of Six.
Please note: Any poems on this site remain the copyright of the author. If you wish to reproduce all or part of any poem, you must either e-mail the author (if the e-mail address is given) or make an approach via the Cambridge Writers' Secretary (see home page).
(* indicates that the person is a member of Cambridge Writers)
First Prize - The Rothko Room by Josie Turner
Second Prize - Greenhouse by Avery Slater
Third Prize - Bill's Reality by Eleanor Vale *
Commended poems: (alphabetical order by name of author)
Dove Cottage and Recovery by Diana Brodie *
The Third Man by John Dixon
Heraclitus by Harry Goode *
Drowning by Avery Slater
Third Prize - Bill's Reality by Eleanor Vale *< xml="true" ns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" prefix="o" namespace="">
Bill's chair was set apart: his eyes would drift
as I approached, but then he'd bid me stay
until the carer with his next meal came.
I'd watch his fingers rolling still the meat
in perfect mime to fit the slippery skins,
his butcher days etched deep; or else he'd take
an unseen cigarette and place it just
between his purple lips. It lingered there -
his lighter wouldn't work for several flicks,
but, when it seemed to please him, he'd inhale
and then relax his lungs and tap the ash
then lift again his hand - another puff,
and on until he tossed away the end
to join the other ghosts he known that day.
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Maybe all stories are a screen
through which a moral shines,
maybe our pangs of guilt demean
whatever love refines,
maybe my father knew Graham Greene
and speaks between his lines.
True: he was schooled with Graham.
But his tales were only of the boy’s humiliation—
of Mrs Greene at the school gate day by day
with forgotten pants and braces.
His reminiscence sifts with the years
into my archaeology of sonship
along with his flute and wooden boot trees.
I could have left it all to lie
like a locked collection in a cedar cabinet
faintly redolent of camphor and biography.
But the video takes me
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where the night wind fidgets round my sofa
smelling of sewers,
belief, betrayal, doubt and cordite.
And at the fatal shot my father wakes
and glances down on weaker men, on Greene,
on faith torn by desire’s salt tides,
on half-lit streets where hope and fear
smile from a doorway through the same white face,
on muddling of realities
as plain as the content of a grave.
He looks in the very grave
where Greene has brought us,
and the zither’s heartbeat pleads with ours
for something to come back from it
unreal enough for us to love.
Commended - Heraclitus by Harry Goode *
Heraclitus
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"Heraclitus...having fallen...into a dropsy...buried himself in a cow-stall, expecting that the dropsy would be evaporated off by the heat of the manure...he failed to effect anything, and ended his life..."
Diogenes Laertius
From the Moon condensed a drizzle of souls,
as you lay, dissolving in a dropsy.
Later the stars, cupped in their fiery bowls,
made you long for the return, long to be
home. Since the soul is unbounded and free,
with one thought you are there, a single leap.
Star bright Heraclitus, dying in a dung heap!
The path up, the path down - one and the same.
Wise one, don't say you've forgotten the way?
You could recall how you’d stopped for a game
with children, preferred the pleasures of play
to the grimmer task, framing the law's sway.
Who but a wise child makes laws we might keep?
Star bright Heraclitus, dying in a dung heap!
Perhaps some god can see the whole of it,
wiser than wise? Then why impose disgrace,
this cosmic quip, this ending in the shit?
Or from that distant point, that far off place,
is beauty all and nothing seen as base?
Hiding in awe, you’ve found somewhere to creep.
Star bright Heraclitus, dying in a dung heap!
Things can mislead. What's said can turn out wrong.
The gnomon points to what we cannot know -
or not as yet. Follow where you belong,
to where at Ocean's rim that fiery glow
tells of the fire we fell from long ago.
Hidden beneath the surface, not too deep,
lies truth, O Heraclitus! Truth in a dung heap.