The Strokestown Poetry Prizes 2009 - the shortlist, in alphabetical order
   The prizes will be announced and awarded at Strokestown International Poetry Festival, 1st ~ 3rd May 2009

  
 
 
 
 
 
                       
                       
    Juliet Akroyd is an actress, teacher and playwright. She published Performing Shakespeare, a handbook for students (Samuel French) in 1989, and won second prize in the Mobil/NYT play competition (1992) for her play Silver Hercules, and first prize in the Oz Whitehead/Irish Pen competition for Nancy Cunard (1994). Her poems have appeared in several competition anthologies: most recently she was a runner-up in the Peterloo Poets 2006 competition. She lives on a smallholding in Somerset, England.      
         
         
         
                       
   

Clear-out


The day she died she got down to cleaning,

glad of no wind to blow the dust back

or sun to show up worst of moth and murk.

Sweeps up crumbs, webs, combings, parings,

woodlice down on their luck, flies feet upwards:

puts paid to spider sacs, louche stains, loose coins,

busts fluff, rubs scum, scrubs crap, sorts junk, dumps muck.

 

So when we find her in the wing-back chair,

feather-duster sceptered in her fist,

she has the air of someone taking stock

before a journey, pleased with what's got done -

wheelie-bag all packed and scarfed-up hair -

while jostling worms, bugs, birds, beasts, leaves and flowers

press against her spotless panes to stare

          
             
             
             
             
             
             
             
             
             
             
             
             
             
             
             
             
             
                       
   
   
                       
 

Louise C. Callaghan grew up in County Dublin and studied for a B.A. at University College, Dublin. She had four children and then worked in publishing and as a secondary school teacher. She has published two collections of poetry with Salmon Poetry, The Puzzle-Heart (1999) and Remember the Birds (2005). She has edited an anthology of poetry, Forgotten Light, published by A&A Farmar in 2003. She was awarded an M.Litt in Creative Writing from St. Andrews University, Scotland, in 2006.

    
     
     
     
     
                       
  The Binder's Notes      
                       
 

It was heavy,
difficult to hold
and as slippery

as that salmon
my son caught
last season.

I lifted it,
like a baby
from its cradle

from trolley to table,
the cockled,
creased leaves

spilling over
like an accordion.
The pages open

mid-conversation
between Aug.
(St Augustine)

and Adeo – in
Latin of course.
The ‘M’ of memorit

  

seems lit within.
On my report form
I note its condition:

oak-boards
damaged both
front and back;

binding-leather broken;
of five bosses,
one is preserved.

I note  the gnawed
edges of vellum,
(a medieval rat!)

and spills
of  candle-wax.
But the irreparable

vandalism
of a guide-letter,
crudely excised

is a gaping
silence
which pains me,

            
               
               
               
               
               
               
               
               
               
               
               
               
               
               
               
               
               
               
               
               
               
               
               
               
               
               
               
               
               
               
               
 
           
 

like a child’s body,
a child of mine,
defiled.

I can only imagine
gold-leaf motifs
of entwined animals

whose tails turn
inexplicably
into serpents,

  

or vine stems
half hiding
dismayed birds.

If I could effect
a repair
I would, willingly

and gather it
up with
unexpected care.

            
               
               
               
               
               
               
               
               
               
               
               
                       
                       
   
     
                       
 

John Wedgwood Clarke is the UK and Ireland poetry editor for Arc Publications and Director of the Beverley Literature Festival in East Yorkshire.  He has a selection of poems forthcoming in the 2010 Oxford Poets Anthology and is currently completing his first collection. He lives in North Yorkshire and lectures part-time on poetry and creative writing at the University of Hull.

    
     
     
     
                       
   

Lachrymatory
 

Tiny pockets of puff, fragile as yolks

at the lips of jugs, they spin from themselves

capillaries of light, fluent risks,

each body’s green-blue abdomen

a memory of streams, milky iridescence.

What they hold was always gone

and so they measure it with craft, their throats

teased out, thirsty for our eyes,

their tiny handles gifting us the kiss

of thumb and forefinger, the scale of grief.

Repeated, beyond repetition, they tilt

on a paradigm of glass, each one

a catch of breath, transparency prickled

with tiny bubbles, a nettle rash of light.

             
                 
                 
                 
                 
                 
                 
                 
                 
                 
                 
                 
                 
                 
                 
                 
                 
                 
                 
                 
                 
                 
                 
                 
                 
                 
                       
   
     
                       
  C.B. Follett lives in California USA, and is the author of six books of poems, the most recent of which is And Freddie Is My Darling (2009). At the Turning of the Light won the 2001 National Poetry Book Award. She is the editor and publisher of GRRRRR, A Collection of Poems about Bears, publisher and co-editor of RUNES, a Review of Poetry (2001-2008), and owns a poetry printing house, Arctos Press. She has several nominations for Pushcart Prizes, received a Marin Arts Council Grant for Poetry, and has been widely published in various magazines and journals.    
     
     
     
     
     
                       
                       
   

Triangle           

of Two Admirers and You, Undecided.

 

Take a pin and bulbs, maybe tulip,

say one may come up red,

the other infused with purple,

two loves, two portent flowers.

 

Take the tiny bodkin, honed and ready.

Scratch one name on this bulb, one into

the other. Give it force, etch the names

beneath the bloom-protecting tissue.

 

Let your heart flow into the oil of your skin,

into the breath of each bulb.

This could be the rest of your life.

Take up the first and bury it for spring.

 

Remember whose name is on this bulb

and where it lies sleeping. Hold the second

rounded in your palm and dig it too

a home in earth. Tamp gently. Give each

 

an equal chance at winter’s spare sun.

Wait.

Soon enough, the nails of winter

will withdraw into the warmth of spring,

 

the alarm that says wake. And soon enough

the stalk of each will insist into air,

raising its erotic green, its enclosed and

silent bud.  And one day, perhaps

 

when you are not looking, one tulip

will open before the other, and you will know.

Take one of its petals to your bed,

place it under the side where you sleep,

 

most nights turning and dreaming. 

Smile to yourself for outside your window

a tulip blooms, and somewhere in the village

a patient man waits for your opening hand.

              
                 
                 
                 
                 
                 
                 
                 
                 
                 
                 
                 
                 
                 
                 
                 
                 
                 
                 
                 
                 
                 
                 
                 
                 
                 
                 
                 
                 
                 
                 
                 
                 
                 
                 
                 
                 
                 
                 
                       
   
     
                       
  Angela France has been widely published in various poetry journals and small press anthologies. Her second collection, Occupation, will be forthcoming in summer 2009 from Bluechrome Press. She lives in Gloucestershire, UK and is studying for an MA in Creative and Critical Writing at the University of Gloucestershire.    
     
     
     
                       
   

first things

the jesus head on the mantel
in her bedroom has dust trapped
in its thorny crown and its upturned
eyes show lines in the glaze
like he’d been drinking or crying
like nan cried when the old man went
into hospital and said he wouldn’t come out
and was right

but if you take it
to the window and peer through
the hole in the base
there is a glimmer deep inside
like a speck of stardust
or a bit of magic left behind
from when she said god
wasn’t watching

it’s like the hole between
the brick and the tin roof
in the yard where a stripe
of sunlight stabs
through the sullen air
to stir fumes from the paraffin lamp
that’s supposed to stop
the pipes freezing
so they glitter and dance
and the cold seat and the spiders
don’t matter

i stare at the coal-hole
in the kitchen for the lump
with a sparkle to betray
a diamond inside but my sister
says that wouldn’t happen
the rich people get all the diamonds
and the glint inside the jesus head
is a tiny crack on the outside
that i won’t look for

          
             
             
             
             
             
             
             
             
             
             
             
             
             
             
             
             
             
             
             
             
             
             
             
             
             
             
             
             
             
             
             
             
                       
   
     
                       
    Stephanie Green lives in Edinburgh, was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, (1966), Kent University and received a M.Phil in Creative Writing from Glasgow University in 2004. In 2007 she received a Scottish Arts Council New Writers' Bursary. Her pamphlet Glass Works was shortlisted for the Callum McDonald Award in 2005. Her novel The Triple Spiral was published by Walker Books in 1989 and she has had many scripts broadcast on BBC Schools' Radio.      
         
         
         
                       
    Your Voice

sounds like Johnny Trawscoed yoiking the cattle in.

It's sour like silage trailing off the muck-spreader,

elastic as mucus bouncing from the sick

cow's muzzle, as dark as a bull's belly.

The magpies are sweet compared to your laugh.

Your voice is unhygienic as the feral cat

who trawls its belly round far-flung farms.

It's bitten off like spat claws, tails

and viscera of mice left on the doormat.

Limping like Idris after the sow trapped him.

Muddy as the lane when the culverts flood,

mired as the gate where the cows wait.

Your voice is matted like the sack

Idris wears over his jacket in the rains,

as frayed as his shirt collars, as faded

as the flowered oil-cloth on your kitchen table.

          
             
             
             
             
             
             
             
             
             
             
             
             
             
             
             
             
             
             
             
             
             
                       
   
     
                       
 

Hazel Mutch is a poet and painter living in Lancashire. She studied English and Art and has had a variety of jobs in education, group work and disability support and is currently working with disabled University students in Lancashire.

   
     
     
     
  The Authorised Version            
                       
 
I tried to see you
through an aperture
in the window of your church.
I strained
over the course stone sill,
peering into stained glass.
I pressed my fingers
on the inky surfaces;
just a hard screen.
              
               
               
               
               
               
               
               
               
                       
       

You are hidden from me
somewhere in the stillness.
Serene, and sharp, and clean.
Your immaculate depictions
laid before you;
a well-edited slide show
lit from behind,
casting miraculous wide-angled shafts
for you to be blessed in.

            
                   
                   
                   
                   
                   
                   
                   
                       
   

I'm distracted by the pictures
in the glass
telling their stories;
Strangers with assembled bodies,
jigsaw limbs,
seamed with lead.
Their odd, discordant heads
and painted faces.  Unearthly.
Acting out myths and romances
I don't believe in.

                
                   
                   
                   
                   
                   
               
               
               
                       
       

They scatter precise shards
of jewel colours
over you.
Offer familiar narratives
through prisms of light -
The Authorised Versions.
No dark negatives;
all faces are bright, over-exposed,
flat, clear, transcending.

              
                     
                     
                     
                     
                     
                     
                     
                       
   

I can't see past them,
these crowded surfaces;
your creations
with their backs to me.
They share secrets with you
Their priest
Their maker.
They excommunicate me.

                
                   
                   
                   
                   
                   
                   
                       
     

You are soothed
by these daily visits.
These rituals.  Chanting your fables.
The suffering of feeling
cannot touch you
here.  No chaos or uncertainty
allowed on hallowed ground.

            
                 
                 
                 
                 
                 
                 
                       
   

Outside, the dull glass
(a dead eye) is thinly coated
with a film of sky.
But I turn, look up, and breathe sky in.
No surface
to separate me
from the infinite blue. I breathe.
And leave you
to your versions of the truth.

                
                   
                   
                   
                   
                   
                   
                       
   
     
                       
  Padraig Rooney was born in Monaghan and currently lives in Switzerland. His first book of poems In the Bonsai Garden (Raven Arts Press) won the Patrick Kavanagh Award. His second collection The Escape Artist (Smith/Doorstop) came out in 2006. He is completing a third collection.    
     
     
     
                       
    The Fever Wards


I must be half-asleep in the fever hospital

above the town. Cathedral bells and coughs,

and candles lit beside the winched-up beds

beneath the moon, the northern stars and frost.

The roof is gone and in its place a canopy

of cloth of gold and parasols that flutter

along the path towards the sanatorium.

We’re moon bathing and taking in the air

as the fever wards come down around us

in brick dust and granite blocks and spores.

A wrecking ball destroys a stained-glass window

and swings back out as though a pendulum

were marking time across the patchwork fields.

It showers us with glass and shards of lead

and leaves a broken mosaic on the quilt.

We’re outside catching breath and watching

the customs huts asleep in their own silence,

the creamery cans that man the ends of lanes,

the polytunnels’ darkened mushroom beds.

And on the bedside table a Lourdes Messenger,

a thermometer and damson plums from home.

They smell of coal as though they’d taken in

the smoke that used to puff behind the orchard

before the war. The northern trains are gone

and in their place the disused sidings, sleepers

that smell of creosote warming in the sun.

I’d rise and take my folding cot and walk

if only for this fever that shakes me nightly,

all my nerves on stalks like rhubarb leaves

to catch the rain, or gongs announcing dinner

or benediction in the nurses’ home.

        
           
           
           
           
           
           
           
           
           
           
           
           
           
           
           
           
           
           
           
           
           
           
           
           
           
           
           
           
           
           
           
           
           
           
           
           
           
           
           
           
           
           
           
           
                       
   
     
                       
    Pat Winslow worked for twelve years as an actor and left the theatre in 1987 to take up writing. Her poetry collections include Dreaming of Walls Repeating Themselves (Templar Poetry) and Skin & Dust (Blinking Eye). Her latest collection, Unpredictable Geometry, was published by Templar in 2008. She is currently Writer in Residence at Long Lartin Prison in Worcestershire, England, and also runs writing workshops for a local theatre. She lives in Oxfordshire, UK.      
         
         
         
                       
   

A Dream of Bauduen


 The lavender is in the wash house –

immense bunches, thirty score, each bound

with a piece of string around its base.

 
Two men came in Chauvel’s cart.

They stopped the water, unloaded them,

stacked them in layers, crammed them tight

 
against the walls and roof , no space

between them for a bird to come and go,

no space, even, for a village mouse.

 
In the shuttered houses, laundry gathers

in the bedrooms. Snowdrifts of lingerie

collect on the dressers and chairs.

 
Shawls and trousers heap up behind doors.

There are mounds of sheets on the tables,

bundles of shirts and towels on the floors.

 
The women wait. Peaches ripen on the trees,

figs grow fat and soft and start to drop.

One day, when the first papery leaves

 
are blowing down the streets, when

the children realize it’s too cold

for swimming in the lake, the men

 
come back  to take the lavender away and drive

it to the city. They unblock the water pipe

before they leave. The women arrive

 
with besoms and a slow hand cart spilling

a good month’s worth. No one speaks

while the stone troughs are filling.

 
One plunges her hands in the icy flow

and laughs. Such a long silence.

One by one the others follow.

 
Quickly, they unwrap bars of soap,

fold the laundry in and begin to scrub.

The first of the stories starts up.

 
An urgent river. There are moments

when the words leap out like salmon.

They walk home singing fragments

 
of old songs. Later on, when the first

hoar moon of the season lifts above the trees

and slips into their windows, they think of lost

 
men and boys, the creaking ice, a silver ocean.

Lavender dust sifts from their hair to their pillows.

Sleep comes like a purple benediction.

              
                 
                 
                 
                 
                 
                 
                 
                 
                 
                 
                 
                 
                 
                 
                 
                 
                 
                 
                 
                 
                 
                 
                 
                 
                 
                 
                 
                 
                 
                 
                 
                 
                 
                 
                 
                 
                 
                 
                 
                 
                 
                 
                 
                 
                 
                 
                 
                 
                 
                 
                 
                 
                 
                 
                 
                 
                       
   
     
                       
  Mary Woodward, lives in Hertfordshire, UK. Her poems have appeared in various magazines including The North, Ambit, Poetry Ireland, Stand and THE SHOp. She was runner-up in the UK National Poetry Competition in 1996, and in the Arvon Competition in 2005. A collection of her poems, Almost Like Talking, was published by Smith Doorstep in 1993.    
     
     
     
                       
   

Lodging

 
A double bass stood, unused but often admired,

in the corner, a mute reminder of the crane driving

 
public-school educated jazz musician husband

who'd recently hanged himself in Simonshyde wood.

 
The place teemed with rescued, sulky cats, and small boys

rushing and shrieking like young midshipmen in a force ten gale.

 
Poland filled the house with a brooding medieval winter.

Myths of destitute fathers selling rags from barrows

 
making enough money to take on the middle class

were brandished as proof no-one ever needed to vote Labour.

 
There were cream and jam-marbled Napoleonskis at Daquise’s,

crowded with Catholic priests and old ladies in veiled hats.

 
At Easter sorrel soup, with new potatoes, hard boiled eggs,

welcomed the spring still so slow in coming.

 
I’d walk to work hours early in search of normality:

two miles in ankle-wrenching high wedge heels.

 
One evening the children hanged a teddy bear

from their bedroom window. The strangest of the cats

 
took to the top of my wardrobe, a tabby baselisk

refusing all offered strokes, invitations to friendship.

 
I packed my Penguin Guide to English Literature and left,

weighing six stone despite all the poppy seed cake.

          
             
             
             
             
             
             
             
             
             
             
             
             
             
             
             
             
             
             
             
             
             
             
             
             
             
             
             
             
             
             
             
             
             
             
             
             
             
             
             
             
             
             
             
             
             
             
             
                       
 
   
                       
 
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