Results of the McLellan Poetry Competition 2013
This year the judges, Peter and Ann Sansom, have decided to share the prize so the prize money has been re-allocated to offer four prizes of £400. Five commended poems will receive cheques for £25.
Peter Sansom writes:
“It’s traditional for judges to say it was difficult to make a decision. But we’ve taken that idea several steps further by opting for a four-way tie for first place. We hope you’ll agree all of these poems are worthy winners – and that the runners-up are outstanding poems in their own right too.
What we have is quality work, all with interesting subjects and often unusual treatments. And all of them poems which engage the reader immediately, however removed in time or place, the poems are themselves ultimately very much engaged with the world we live in now.
Still, having said all that, what actually is most striking for us about these poems is how very different they are from each other – hence the injustice, we felt, in prizing one over another. Instead, let’s simply celebrate and enjoy them all.”
The winners are …
Joint First:
Dog in a MinefieldRon Scowcroft
HomecomingJim Carruth
Hosing DownHubert Moore
Two Rhapsodies for Piano, Opus 79Marcia Menter
Highly Commended:
Franklin, the evidenceJane Routh
OarsEmma Strang
ScorpionSharon Black
Sounds RebornAnne Welsh
WoodfallJames Fairfoot
Read the winning and commended poems here.
Dog in a Minefield
(Sappers Hill, Port Stanley, June 1982)
So there we were,
downdraft kicking out grass
and me leaning out the side hatch
waving a ham sandwich, smiling like Mr Happy.
Come on boy, come on.
Bloody dog, unconvinced,
thought it was the end of the world,
stayed flat, patch of raw peat,
and the sheep he’d tended
already dead, back legs gone.
Things you do. PR. Last stretch,
inching in . . . a collar, a handful of fur,
thinking this was it after everything we’d done.
Good boy. And we got him, wet through,
cowering, hearing shot.
Then for us, back to rounding up:
last of their lot, conscripts,
battle shocked, not sure it was over,
another isolated farmstead radioing in the strays
and our lads on the ground
treading carefully.
