Poetry Competition – Results – Coverstory Books

I am pleased to be able to announce the results of the Coverstory books 2024 Poetry Competition. The three prize winners and ten highly commended poems were chosen by our judge, Richard Lister.

FIRST PRIZE – Curlew by Mark Totterdell

“evocative, finely crafted, resonant”

Curlew

Over the curling river
and the straight canal
goes the moon-billed haunter
of mudflats and winter meadows,

the call spilling from its throat
in curlicues of sound,
each note curving upwards
across rain-filled ditches.

Its plumage shows the colours
of ripples tide-licked in sand,
the low sun picking out the ridges,
the grooves in cold shadow.

Its blatant archer’s bill
is unbalanced by trailing legs,
so the whole bird seems front-
heavy, clumsy, comedic,

but its deep black eyes
are not clowning.
It’s dead serious about
this mission, going solo

over the drained wetlands,
the arable emptinesses.
Its cry translates as loneliness.
Curlew is a synonym of loss.

SECOND PRIZE – Gauze from Gaza by Helen Boyles

“original, reflective, effective metaphors”

Gauze from Gaza

Silk from Damascus in colours stolen
from flushed fruit, flower petals, skies 
and stippled with the light of desert sands
flowed along trading routes through continents 
and centuries to swathe the gentle
and the privileged. 

Gauze from Gaza luminous as sun
through mist unrolled woven lengths
to veil the sacred and the beautiful,
drape altars marking sanctuary space. 
Warp and weft alternated for resilience, 
in journeys grazed by danger gauze folded 
round an injured limb to soothe hurt
with its healing weave.

Sometimes the long path twists 
not to an exchange of cultures and of need 
but to a wall or reckoning.

Here, in a bitter place where mission 
narrows to revenge and crossed threads 
no longer pull together but tangle,
fly apart with warp and weft unravelling,
here, in a refuge for the sick and frail,
gauze is the breath of babies
floating in nursery cribs a tremulous 
suspense, ephemeral as cloud.

It is here, helpless, that we see and hear
suddenly the sanctuary door burst open
to an angry mouth that tears this fabric,
empties a new dark on the innocent,
gapes a wound no gauze can bandage now.

THIRD PRIZE – A Brief Journey by Kerry Darbishire

“mysterious, some beautiful and original imagery”

A Brief Journey                                                                                          

We go    where I am small     
and scared amongst concrete    pavements 
       of gum     eyes trapped in a dull gaze.

The night sees more than I know    red lights 
stealthy amid the late shows we can’t afford.

There are creatures that dare not stir
from galleries and museums     there are monsters
           behind glass.   How strong my father’s coffee tastes.

He takes me walking through the park 
Blackheath dusk breaking down the day 

into dark corners     and there 
an old actor friend who can only speak 
       by pressing his paisley cravat.    

I should know his name     but I know he is brave.
They speak in smoke signals     language 

of a tribe that hoofed the pre-war boards of Rep’.    
Then back    we stroll alongside the iron railings 
       to his life weighed in newspapers     reviews 

and obituaries.  His one-room flat –      
a cage in the ground     dim     airless    damp.

Above     the sound of shoppers and traders come 
and go talking of cash and cashmere 
       bulls and bears    they have no time     they are

leaves on a tree waiting to fall.    Tar and lanolin 
peel like skin from his jumpers     loose elbows 
       in need of a patch.     It’s late     lamplight soft 

as a fox’s nose brushes the high window.     He offers me 
the only single bed     low as a ship’s hammock 

and toast in the morning.     I want to give him fells 
rising higher than the Houses of Parliament      streams 
       and curlews     a land of exile     he carries everywhere

Highly Commended

Grand Jete by Siobhan Gifford
Den by Paul Lynch
Shaneeka is not your friend anymore by Carmina Masoliver-Marlow
First Swifts by Iain McClure
Hear the world explode by Jenny Robb
Liverpool, Stoke, Kaikoura and my mother by Jenny Robb
Photographs of published poets by David Walrond
Ghosts of Winspit Quarry by Laura Webb
Let’s Go Blackberrying by Keith Willson
Old Man, Brown Hat by Keith Willson

Winning and commended poets will be invited to read their poems at a future Contextual virtual poetry reading event.

Thank you to all those who entered! The standard was really high and Richard’s job far from easy.

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