The winners were announced by judge Kim Moore at our September evening. Kim said she was very impressed by the quality of entries. She explained that she looks for poems that she herself couldn't write.
We reproduce the poems by the three prize winners with the shortlist of commended entries. We were delighted and a little humbled by the excellent poems entered. Congratulations to the winners and those commended, and thank you to everyone who entered. We'll be launching our 2018 competition next Spring.
You can see a review of the evening at the end of this list. We also thanked Jean Harrison for all who work on Settle Sessions. She started the venture some five years ago and has driven our programmes ever since, bringing top quality poets and writers to Settle.
First Prize: Caroline Price from Framlingham, Suffolk
Emergence
(Baby
mammoth, Natural History Museum)
You
lie so peacefully you could be
sleeping,
soundly, on your side
on
the white sheet rucked and folded like
the
Yamal snows. Your flank
exposed,
each ridge and wrinkle in your hide
quite
visible, the colour of wet sand or the clay that set
around
you when you fell, legs stretched as if you
toppled
in mid-thought, still walking, four feet
trampling
at the air. Your trunk curled in
protectively,
its two soft
flanges
of skin preserved, a miracle,
for
our speculation: imagining you
thirsty
and using them to sweep the snow
into
your mouth, flakes spilling, hanging
in
a premature moustache. Your domed head
calm,
your month-old weight at rest within its
shadow-shape
of cloth and foam as it was when you
keeled
over in the Siberian wastes and closed your eyes
and
died and more snow fell and turned
the
mud to ice, encasing you;
and you lay in your bed
for
forty thousand years – the time it took for us
to
arrive, for the earth with a gasp
to
thrust you to its surface as the reindeer herder
and
his sons came hurtling past with their sledges and dogs
and
tripped on the cracked-open
crust
of knowledge and found you.
Second Prize: Vicki Bertram from Kirkby Stephen Cumbria
Stanley, the white
cockerel,
motorised helmet
plume,
cavalier ruff
lifting
at the stiff dance
he stamps
to show off his
spurs-
Stanley is dead.
He was a gift
with Lucy the goose,
inseparable till
her ganders muscled
him out and
he found his place
in the pecking-order,
chivvier of hens.
No more crowing
and it is the season
for his pre-dawn,
drawn-out
over-blown,
monotonous
declarations.
Snowdrops shiver
as wind rakes iced
scrub,
seeking his ragged
call
to tear spring’s silence,
shake bulbs awake
to poke white through darkness.
No corpse, of course.
A few drab feathers snared in wire.
Remember the girls
chasing him,
that comic scoot
behind the sycamore?
The crinkly labial
scrunch
of his foppish
coxcomb?
Our latest loss.
Minor, of course.
We closed the door
too late.
The bright light of
him gone.
Fell and field and
walls and rock
pulse absence.
Like a home in early
new year,
denuded, or this
vista suddenly
dull green again,
snow’s white glory
vanquished by rain.
Third Prize: Kerry Darbishire from Kendal, Cumbria
A
Winter’s Night
Geese
safe inside, I shut the door
and
turned into the frosty night,
left
settling chatter, rustling straw
four
still white wings tucked warm and tight.
The
Plough above the sycamore
and
Seven Sisters clear to see,
the
green and red lights in the north
like
sailors’ lanterns on the sea.
Then
in a breeze I lifted through
November
branches high and bare,
bones
needle-thin and shining new
my
feathers glided brimmed with air.
The
moon a scythe upon my back
and
frozen scent of earth below,
my
cattle shrunk to mice and rats
as I
flew silently as snow.
Though
now it seems I’m almost blind
in
trodden pathways long ago,
in
hope I’ll search until I find
tracks
in a land I used to know.
Commended poems
Wish
I were here now John Foggin Ossett
Witchcraft at Belvoir Tina Negus Grantham
Heatwave Mary Jane Holmes Lunedale
An
old man’s reply to Jenny Joseph Bill Adair Stirling
Bumble
bee A.F. Paterson Poole
The school trip Kerry Darbishire Kendal
Multidrop Peter
Wyton Longlevens, Glos
Review of the evening
Poetic
abundance
400
hundred poems winged their way to Settle Sessions during the Summer
to take part in their second national poetry competition. Coming from
across the UK and covering a variety of styles and subjects
competition judge Kim Moore finally selected: ‘Emergence’
Caroline Price’s winning poem which vividly described the finding
of a baby mammoth, whilst Vicki Bertram’s second prize eulogised
her departed white cockerel in ‘Silkie’ and Kerry Darbishire’s
took third prize inspired by WB Yeats in ‘The Winter’s Night’.
Kim
continued the evening with new work, drawing from her transition away
from 13 years of teaching in ‘Leaving Teaching’ and no longer
needing to ‘pull a perfect b flat from the air’ to examples from
her new poetry sequence, ‘All the Men I Never Married’, including
calling out the sexist behaviour she still encounters.
Calder
Valley based poet Carola Luther describing herself as ‘not a jolly
poet’ gave a sample of her work with poems blending her former life
in South Africa made contemporary with the news of the death of a
former friend, her observations of women seeking economic survival
through prostitution in ‘Commerce Madrid 2012’ and highlighting
the impact of recent flooding in ‘The Rising’.
Sarah Wiltshire
The
next Settle Session will be on Friday 17th
November at 7.30pm (venue to be confirmed). It will feature two well
know local writers Jean Harrison and Sue Vickerman. Both published
poets and novelists, they will be reading from their latest work. Sue
recently spent a year in China and has produced a book of her
experiences.
The
evening will also include young local poets who took part in the Tom
Twisleton Project. This commemorates the centenary of the Settle
artisan and dialect poet. The new work is in response to his work and
celebrates local life today.
Tickets
are £6 available from The Folly, Cave and Crag and The Cheese Centre
Lawkland. For more information please see settlesessions.co.uk
ends
media
information from Veronica Caperon 01729 824537
