Foyle Young Poets of the Year 2005:
When the Thunder Woke Me

Toujours
Adam Beaudoin

I've got a

slight red spot

in the fold of my palm -

 

a puncture wound

perhaps, from a wasp

and the edge of a rail

 

which I obtained

in the yard of a

school I never attended.

 

And afterwards,

without a doubt, there

you must have laid your lips.


to katherine
Adam Beaudoin

china hides in the creases

of your hands, they sing

as oia dies with the sun.

 

and midnight is some paler

rose - of chlorine and cold

tile, it is breathless.



Kid Moth
Jeneece Bernard

They lift her by her corners.

Dusting her with the soot of flight,

They wing-beat, blind -

Into the crevices of the evening,

Carrying the baby spine.

 

At first they looked for antennae

When she was found curled next to the mother.

They looked for the stump of wings

To teach her to soar

But thought maybe arms would do.

She would flap, collide against the air

And look up at the flight of the others.

 

They hovered with scraps of sock,

Old denim and worn wardrobe suits.

They dropped them in

Marvelling at the single red tongue.

Soon they watched her crawl across the floor.

Too delicate for discovery, she picked

The buttonholes of vagrants,

Looking for thread.

 

At night

They listened to her navel for whispers,

To see if she could hear the lunar proverbs.

She learned to sing,

learned their audio.

 

They taught her to sit on the sills of windows

Mesmerised by the blue flick of TV screens.

And once they found her twenty feet up

Hugging the bulb of a street lamp.

She had never slept so close to the moon -

She dreamed that she could graze the cusp,

Press her face against its glow.



How to Watch a Child Die
Amanda Chong

Avert your gaze from his eyes,

even if they plead for you to be drawn to its depths.

Instead focus on his sallow complexion

the sun crawling on his aged skin,

the colour of the well-trodden carpet

in your living room;

the spot where your son once threw his football boots

and you missed bleaching

for the past few years.

 

Do not try to guess his age

or say, he is older than he looks

as you study his brittle bones, too-large head

and the empty basket of his ribcage.

Think instead of the sound they may make

when his body is thrown into a ditch;

the sound of rain whipping through branches,

the crackling of a creek before thaw

or your antique vase

crashing into smithereens

from its place on the mantelpiece.

 

Turn away from the blank faces of your own children

and make no associations.

Pretend you do not notice

how your teenager leaves her food

uneaten on her plate.

(Convince yourself you are not an escapist)

After all,

this skeletal child is merely

a marionette in a macabre fairytale.

 

Now, ignore the queasy feeling in your stomach

as you get up to dish out dessert.

Resolve to write to the authorities

to complain for showing such

disturbing footage during dinner.

 

Be blind to the broken birds of the child's

hands as they reach out pleading to be held,

the rolling whites of his eyes, the bruised animals

of his lips, parting, as he takes his last..

 

Turn off the television set.

 

Children should not know that

(in some very remote parts of the world)

they may die before their mothers.



Gasmask
Charlotte Geater

I once dreamt of wearing a gasmask

leather, crackling. It was so thin

and yet it didn't break. I didn't pull at it

or tug, but I breathed it in and yet didn't smell

anything.

 

There were sirens and a table and an

anderson shelter. I didn't like the smoke

and bombs. A baby in a cradle.

In the darkness, I thought you were lost

my arms didn't find your shoulder

maybe your blood was silent.

 

when the thunder woke me up

I couldn't understand why you were still there.



Untitled
Philip Knox

a friend

just told

me

that

her

 

one-year-old

 

sister'sboyfriend'scousin

 

 

 

choked.

to.

death.

 

 

shortly before his mother

went into

labour

with

(what would have been)

 

his new baby brother.

 

before slipping blankly back

into the

dulling lukewarm

wash of the

everyday,

I thought it

 

only right

(but nothing more)

to write

some words

which will never

warm the heart

 

of the

impossibly

small

tangled

body

prone

in some

living-room.



Country Lass
Emma Lawrence

Mud traipsed through your living room,

Dirty, smelly, unholy, corrupt

Sweet brown mess, all over your cream carpet.

I'm a dirty country lass in a fouler city.

 

My tangy words slaughter and kill your

"Correct enunciation." Squinting you ask

Me to repeat myself, slowly. But

I'm a dirty country lass in a fouler city.

 

The sweat on my brow offends you,

And a rose-smelling, country-killing

Handkerchief is thrust in my face. No thanks -

I'm a dirty country lass in a fouler city.

 

You try to smile with painted-on lips,

Even though you have eyes of cold glass.

You see the wild twinkle in mine -

I'm a dirty country lass in a fouler city.

 

Frowning at the crease in your lavish sheets,

You are revolted by my stories of

Lovers in the barn, straw in my knickers.

I'm a dirty country lass in a fouler city.

 

Stripping me of my dungarees and shirt,

Of those filthy Wellingtons. You strip me bare,

And stop, gasp, as you see my red, rural, country heart.

I'm a country lass in a foul city.



Travel-Map, Summer 1938
Alice Malin

Reflections on an Acquaintance's Travel-Map

 

Compact, like an old anatomical plate.

 

Block capitals, thin as stitches, lace

together your stops with names, foreign

and plump like the names

 

of bones: uvula, fibula,

tibia. Moldova, Kirovskaya, Belarus.

They sprout from a fine, black

vertebra, curved like an old man's,

slashed with dashes

like the stumps of ribs. This was

where you travelled by train.

 

Moutain ranges flex and bulge

on the curling paper, rutted

with crimson. These veins, these

 

stiffened old arteries are where

you travelled by plane.

 

There are gaps: white slabs you left

uncharted, bare, as if unsure

whether to record what you remembered

of that wasteland, if there were

any point at all

in the recording of a nodding lady

at a nameless airfield, of the contours

that grappled to a toothless crater as she smiled.

'Da, da, da.'

 

Or of her three-legged dog, howling.

 

This was

Eastern Europe on the cusp

 

catpured in blither unknowing. You

strolled across it, spooling

your scarlet, quivering capillaries

behind you, crossing

borders, flashing a blossoming passport

in countries, long gone.

 

And this, now,

anatomised, filtered, strained,

a litany of lost things, the echoes -

'da, da, da' -

I can guess at, only.

 

We make up memories

to soothe ourselves.

 

                                            I want to scratch

new, throbbing organs

of cities onto the expectant, empty

flesh of 'summer, 1938',

re-draw borders that will carry on changing

and you,

the last point dotted

discreetly

on your old, anatomical plate,

will not know.



Catskin
Laura Marsh


I am old now

and I have lost all my teeth.

 

I remember my oiled catskin,

the mousey smell of it, the scarfing nape of it

and the girlish shame of passing kittens and gentlemen in the street.

 

I tried it on again once

and I was glad you didn't look

to see that I preferred it to everything.

To gooseflesh and to mutton.

 

Once I caught you too,

staring back at yourself in the mirror

on the landing, drawing your hair in front of your eyes,

thinking about growing it long, like it was when we met.

And then we both wondered when it was

that I stopped being beautiful.

 

Every day since I have longed for my catskin,

to be inside it, to do the washing up in it

and to lie in it on the sofa;

to shrink it two sizes down

and to spill out of it

and to say with mangey fur

 

I am old now

and I have lost all my teeth.



The Diver
Emily Middleton

His toes curl,

determined

as the slugs in his mother's vegetable

patch, the boy raises his arms.

The creamy sunset illuminates his muscular

figure. He inhales deeply, pushing his diaphragm

downwards like he's been taught, so

that the butterflies

in his belly are shrunk to playful moths. He springs,

agile as the spindly-legged frogs in the park

opposite his gran's. As he tumbles through the air,

the familiar thrill, induced

by this and rollercoasters alone, shoots up his

belly and erupts in his torso. The wind defines

his premature wrinkles and his skin is moulded

easy as clay

into a Picasso-like sculpture. The disorder

reflects his state of mind: a multitude of thoughts press against

his temples; he dismisses them as annoying little buggers

but as each individual notion becomes obsolete, another

slips in, quick as the Fido he wishes he'd had,

to replace it. He sees

his miscalculation

before he feels it. The biting rocks

soar up to meet him, snapping

eagerly in anticipation. The last taste

to grace his tongue is one of

salty seaweed.


 

Trivia
Richard Osmond

As a baby I said nothing as the sun

Flowed into my eyes and the wonder

Of the "too big to even think" world

Was beautiful. It was left undefiled

Until I began to speak

 

I cut out photos from magazines

And made a collage of the world

That I taped across my window.

I argued so much about birdsong

That I never heard it.

 

Every time I described something

I did it an injustice, shrunk it into

A silhouetted representation.

I talked God down off his perch

And into my pocket.

 

I broke the second commandment.

Everything I said was a graven image,

An imprisoning mockery.

Not letting go, I talked and talked.

The world was far too small.



Lift
Julia Rampen

I am dead. They will find me poised

in creaky elevation, heart empty

but for three business men. Shabby suits

from out-of-date lives, last voices.

 

My last seconds. I heard those mutters

so many times before. It wasn't my fault.

I was a kaleidoscope once; plush and mirrors

that cotton print girls dreamed through;

 

at dawn the doorman polished away

a myriad of glimpses.

 

The different floors had different scents. Remember,

the Junior offices were inky fish and chips.

Old perfume drifting down from Sales; the boss

trailed nicotine and lashes of gin.

 

The basement stank of rainy nights

and emptiness.



"under lost/found column..."
Dora Sharpe-Davidson

under lost/found column

a bird

small yellow talking

answers

to joey

please call

 

you mourn

that empty

cage

i cry

for the one

who didn't escape

who took

nine years

to reach paradise

 

even in death

trapped

not in dried cat

faeces

or soft

winter leaves

 

but underground

in a tin box

the lid

tighter

than feathers



Beach
Martha Sprackland

My fingertips gathered the rain

Held in milky measures

the sad reluctant drops more anaemic than sea water

for her. Awkwardly she twisted her

tiny hands around my palms

scavenged the liquid from

my skin which clutched her to my clothes to dry.

Sand clung to hair

ground crunchily in our teeth

salt and sharp cracked my lips like peeling paint but

The discomfort of our boots waterlogged and wrinkled pale was

nothing

She filled my pockets with shells.



Finding a Voice
Ella Thompson

There is a hole in the mountain.

 

I have been watching from my porch

as it gets deeper, wider.

 

The trees go sliding downwards

uprooted, grumbling

 

in the way only very old trees grumble

at having to relinquish their chosen spot

to an impudent stranger -

 

- Like this hole.

 

Still the cavern grows, and smoke-backed birds

drift, suspended at its mouth,

then peel off to gossip and speculate,

 

perched in one of the shunted trees,

like those Grecian sisters who shared an eye,

discussing the sad truth;

 

The mountain is clearly going off the rails.

 

I can see it from my window

and hear strange creakings, whispers,

sighs from deep in its roots.

 

They grow louder...Crescendo

into a moan, then a bellow

and the cavern is roaring.

 

The air trembles with this strange sound,

until now unheard,

the kind of resonant music

that is swallowed over any long silence -

 

- and the moutain has been quiet forever.

Aching to speak,

it has dug down,

breathed in deep,

 

and found its voice.



Fish Eyes
Sharon Wang

Grandpa, seven years I've watched you

part the flesh of fish, gouge skin until it gapes

with gills. Your chopsticks trip over fins, scale

the dish for a bony rim. Then it is quick:

the sudden plunge, the pluck of a ripe eye.

 

"He eats them to cure his blindness," mother explains

as she clears the dishes. Seven years

since you were packaged across an ocean

in your tiny stained suit, she still says this

every Sunday. I think of the day you went blind,

imagine you stiff-armed as the Cultural Revolution

marched into your lab, swept your chemicals

up with street-brooms. It is hard

to amputate your cane from these images.

 

Then I imagine mother: crouched, she shells

rice with raw thumbs. She hauls your foot-water

for you at night and cannot study for exams

or go to college or learn chemistry.

Grandpa, you did not eat fish eyes

for thirty-one years to flush out swarming flecks

of white. You ate to pluck out the fishes' sight.



Foyle Young Poets of the Year 2005: Commended

Phoebe Amis, Laura Attridge, Stacey Balkin, Phillipa Behrman, Lucas Bennett, Louise Benson James, Christopher Blunt, Helen Bragger, Rebecca Broome, Benjamin Burns, Rachel Burns, Charlotte Butcher Johansen, Miranda Cichy, Laura Costa, Dominic Cottrell, Haf Davies, Tom Escott, Paul Evans, Penny Faulkner, Liam Fearn, Daniel Fisher, Renee Fledderman, Clarisse Fong, Samantha Fong Wei Teng, Ashanya Griffiths, Elen Griffiths, William Grove, Zachary Hamasaki, Lauren Haruno, Lewis Holt, Rosie Hoskin, Natasha Hyman, John Iwamoto, Felix Johnston, Laura Kilbride, Gloria Lagou, Catherine Lawford, George Legg, Sian Lewis, Michelle Lynn Chiu, Sara Lyon, Madeleine McGarrie, Sophie McGrath, Elie McKenzie, Luska Mengham, Emily Mercer, Tan Mingjuan, Sarah Mooney, Jonathan Moran, Jamal Msebele, Laurence Newrick, Pamela Ng, Tom Offland, Mie Omori, Maria Achieng Onyango, Eleana Orr, Adrian Pascu, Alexandra Paulin-Booth, Karin Remmelzwaal, Kate Rolison, Evan Rosenman, Joe Rybicki, Melanie Sabet, Kristin Saitveit, Sophie Sawicka-Sykes, Patricia Scurfield, Colette Sensier, Yasamean Shirani, Eleanor Sikorska, Ellie Slee, Bea Stanley, Makhima Sukhdev, Emma Sykes, Alex Taylor, Nicholas Tolkien, Ceri Townsend, Charlotte Trevella, Julio Vargas, Evelyn Webster, Kelly Wehrle, Daniel Lee Guan Wei, Jonathan Weir, Sophie Yeo

top

 

 

 

Jay (Jeneece) Bernard,
Winner 2005:

"My week at the Hurst
informed me of two things:
that there are other young writers out there whose work
is vast and beautiful and there is nothing wrong with confidence in my own style or approach to poetry. Being selected as a winner by
Colette Bryce and George Szirtes, and talking to them in subsequent workshops got rid of (some) of the apprehension we invariably feel when trying
to write creatively. It's one of
the most useful experiences
to have - to sit with a
published, prize-winning poet, and to hear them express an appreciation for your work."

Since winning, Jay has had several television and radio appearances, including a feature on The Culture Show. tall lighthouse published her first collection your sign is cuckoo, girl, in 2007.