First Prize - Laura Theis
my home is flooding and all I want to do is learn about seahorses
but I am too worried about
the moles
whether they’ll drown in their waterlogged secret tunnels
I don’t want to
learn about sandbags and air brick covers
I don’t want to think
about e-coli or the aftermath of rotten wood and damp and rust
I want to treasure the noon light’s glittering surprise
at all the unexpected mirrors and only learn about the wild beauty
of things that owe their lives to water
how they change colour to blend with their surroundings
how sweetly they dance for each other and then
share the labour of birthing
thousands of tiny ravenous fries
whose first lesson is to hold onto each other with a desperate trust
the currents won’t rip them apart
Commended - Jacob Burgess Rollo
Still Life with Eggs and Carrots
For Lily. After Laura Sylvia Gosse
Dad has failed
to win acceptance
amongst his peers in the
arborealist society. He has been
branded by the tree-nerds as an oak-
fraud, as a painter more inclined towards
composition than he is the rendering of roots for
the roots’ sake. Our primary concern, now, is the laying
of the carrots on the table. Stalks as long and
stray as eyelashes. Eggs kept filmy and
loosely poached within a bowl.
The primary objective being,
now, the kinds of
hospitality that
suit a time
like this.
To lay
a table. To have
lain his table. Its mess.
To write the date and title
without ornate flares or flourishes.
The learning objective, now, being the making of
sounds at the back of the class. Like bears they’ll never
prod. To embrace an aesthetics of functionality. To then
reject it, wholly. The peeling of large russet potatoes. The
spud, sitting fat in your palm. Like a ship in a bottle. A yacht
in a movie. Like you love it (as you love me). And you cut it,
careful: like the seams of a duck-down pillow. Our aim being
the making of a brand-new potato-stamp. To traipse into
a woodland and press an extra set of footsteps in the
snow. The indent of a paw without the pawprint,
or the danger. To nuzzle a body. To lick it with
your bear-nose: wet. To look up at the tree-
line, for a moment. To run home. To beat
the carrots and chop the eggs up
and spoon-feed this muck
to my Dad, till he grins,
and goes to bed. For
me and you, then,
to catch and lose
our breath
together.
Noisily.
At last.
Commended - Tadhg Carey
​
Lost, Hidden or Stolen Friends
​
The market researcher wants me to describe
my British Museum experience,
and having seen Hoa Hakananaiʻa
stand watch over the Great Court
shop, I want to say, plunder,
the Great Famine, linguistic imperialism,
but I don’t, then, because in London
that is not the done thing, after all
there’s a good service
on the Victoria Line today and sometimes
silence can mean more
than just complicity.
​
Nor can I interpret his life:
whether his ancestors take a sacred shape
for him like moai for the Rapanui,
and I don’t know what he thinks
about repatriation,
and whether we should always
make reparations to our past.
​
I am just a white Irishman,
seeking to make flesh
of my own ghosts,
because in my people’s tongue,
there are no words
for yes or for no,
and it is only in retelling
that we become known,
like the Tattooed Man
who watched an empire
spirit his ancestors
away on boats,
and let the pain
bloom
in ink
on his skin,
that he could be heard.
Hoa Hakananaiʻa is a large stone sculpture, held by the British Museum having been taken from Rapa Nui (Easter Island).
​
Commended - Ger Duffy
​
After the Gender Reveal​
​
​
This world is not easy, yet you
elect to leave the waters of Lethe,
week by week you grow
- resembling tadpole, then fish.
Little bud limbs, starfish fingers,
a heart as large as a raspberry,
little grape lungs, your DNA
a helix of Duffys, Reids, Niblocks,
O’Briens, Smiths, Malones,
Mulloys, Goldens, Dolans,
Nolans, Grimleys, O’Malleys
- direct descendents of Grainne Mhaol,
there we stop. Some emigrate,
others survive famine to famine,
in good times fish, make furniture,
bake bread, haul water from the well,
in bad times go mad, give birth in a field,
hide it. It was like this, a pig for the house,
an ass for the bog, rubbing two copper
coins in a purse to live for one more day,
not contemplating the sky for answers. Oh little
one, what news do you bring, what news?
​
​
Commended - Rhian Elizabeth
​
lobster​​
​
you asked me
what i thought
the soul looked
like and i couldn’t
be bothered to think
of something intelligent
so i just took
my clothes off
when we were together
i felt like a lobster drifting
in a restaurant tank
watching you popping
the champagne and having
a great time while i
waited to die
and that’s a terrible thing
to say i know but a lot
of time has passed
and i can see from your
instagram posts that you
are happy now and have
found someone who probably
tells you exactly what the soul
looks like every night in
exquisite detail while i
knock my pincers futilely
against the glass.
​
​
Commended - Victoria Spires​
​
The view across
​
We insist on calling them sea
gulls, even this far inland. A ravage
of confetti against the field's dark,
skirmishing for oddments, scraps
of whatever the thresher missed.
​
I look for a scarp, some sharpened
tooth, to cut the sky's breadth. This
being fen, there is none. Just
the plough’s motley lines of
scrimmage, mimicking roiled surf.
​
Horizon becomes a tide of jostling
heads, mewled boundary disputes.
The scratch of their cold laugh
in the afternoon’s silence, a reminder
that nothing softens, just breaks.
​