WoLF Poetry Competition Results
Our judges Helen Ivory and Martin Figura have now selected the winning and shortlisted poems from this year’s Wolves Lit Fest poetry competition, and it’s time for us to share that news with you. Our thanks to everyone who submitted poems to this year’s competition – we received over 1000 entries from across the West Midlands, all over the UK, and around the world. Wherever you are, we thank you for your support, and wish you all the very best of luck with your submissions and all your future writing.
Before we share the winning poems with you, here’s what Helen and Martin had to say about the process of judging all the work sent in…
“One thousand poems is a lot of poems. Congratulations to everyone who made it from the big pile on our table, to the smaller pile. The odds are ferocious. If you didn’t manage that, be assured there were many who came very close, and yours was almost certainly one of those.
And then there are the five, who insisted their way from the smaller pile to the even smaller pile, hardly a pile at all, of prize winners. It was quite a battle. The advantage of there being two of us is, we can have proper discussions, rather than it being alone going mad arguing with yourself. We were rigorous and we think, fair.
Big congratulations and thanks also to all the commended poets and their excellent poems which moved us and interested us so much they survived several readings and stayed in both our heads long after reading.”
And now, the winning poems…
1st prize
O'Keeffe's 'Ram's Head, White Hollyhock-Hills' is the Month of December by Marion McCready
Writing a good ekphrastic poem is difficult. How do you make something new and unexpected from such an iconic image as Georgia O’Keeffe’s famous painting. Marion first coolly sets about the image itself. She imbues it with something relatable to us, the reader whoever we are - ‘ all the Decembers lived / and unlived between us.’ as another year passes. The image is the last month of a calendar, another year gone. Only then does she make it personal, the recall of a memory with all its Proustian olfactory richness. Then she returns it to us as if the world’s sorrows could be put to fire and from that fire, we might find our way forward, yet again.
2nd prize
For Phil: a grey wagtail by Jenny Vuglar
The most everyday and necessary of things – the internal domestic world, set against the whole wide world that exists beyond the window – ‘The light is grey and pearl white, / a photograph without colour. Before colour existed.’ Once again, we find ourselves within time, as if it has been arrested like a photograph – ‘feeding my daughter but her mouth will not open’. Phil, we assume, is at the window, a teacup, the most mundane of things in his hand. Everything is still and then ‘stepping quietly onto the brick wall’ the titular grey wagtail ‘belly plump as a light bulb.’ sets things in motion again and with it light.
3rd prizes
How to behave at a wake in East Tyrone by Iain McClure
The poem lists the ways of platitude in good humour, the small details of a life before moving on to the dark, unsayable. It begs the question, did the speakers know about the unsayable thing, could they not have guessed by The stains / in the armpits / of his Viyella shirt / smelt /of bad milk? And a second question, is this how people get away with things, the not mentioning of the unpleasantness that can be seen?
The path of least resistance by John Newton
Humour is often undervalued in poetry – fun, but dismissed as unserious / flippant even. This poem has the temerity and daring to take Robert Frost’s The Road Not Taken to task in the most direct terms and made us laugh out loud. We don’t entirely agree with the poem; but on the other hand if we all took the road less travelled, well then it wouldn’t be…….
When we had jobs by Katie Griffiths
What a curious and delightful poem about the things that help us survive the boredom of office life. It shows how creativity can always find a way to enrich our lives. Can we survive without these small rebellions – I doubt it, as St Thomas himself might have typed in his lost font.
Shortlisted poets: Alexandra Corrin-Tachibana, Carol J Forrester, Damen O’Brien, Dean Gessie, Esther Lay, Fiona Ritchie Walker, Iain McClure, Jan Westwood, Jemimah Saturnino, Jo Peters (twice), John Gallas, Karol Olesiak, Katy Green, Laura Grevel, Marie-Louise Eyres, Michael W Thomas, Pam Job, Peter Lockhart, Peter Surkov, Piers Haben, Regina Avendaño Trueba, Ron Harper, Safia Khan, Sarah Dale, Suzanna Fitzpatrick, Tamara Evans, TN Kennedy
Wolverhampton poet Steve Pottinger selected the winning poem and seven commended poems in the WV postcode prize.
The winning poem is 39 things to do before entering the Wolves Lit Fest poetry competition by John Woodall
Anyone who has ever tried writing a poem will recognise how slow and grinding the creative process can sometimes be. This poem made me laugh out loud. I hope you enjoy it too. Steve Pottinger
Commended poets: David Hamblin, Jason Jawando, Jenni Thorne, Morgan Birch, Nathan McGarry, S.G. Marziano, Suzie Pearson