We are delighted to announce the winners of the 2019 Cafe Writers Open Poetry Competition, judged by Zaffar Kunial.
First prize goes to Vanessa Lampert for Canada
Canada
Nights when the moon’s too heavy
I think about my ovaries – those two
low buildings stuccoed, painted pink,
those warehouses that came with me,
once teemed with tiny half-people, all cute-as,
every one clamouring to call me Mum.
Imagine those fat fists you have to kiss,
the soaring blue of their eyes. Listen,
I won’t lie, many times I feared one would
storm in headlong with its big head
and list of equipment. I used to welcome
menstruation, even one time on the up
escalator that exits the tube, and once
in the bakery section of Asda, and twice
I let my body wave a baby through –
how they thrived, how they grew, see them
shopping and hanging out their wet towels.
Today a sonographer found what she sought
and said, Yep, everything’s nicely shut down
in there. Think nailed planks over each entry
and exit, in the shape of an X.
Think windows boarded-up, graffiti
scrawled on pink. I’d like to think
the little half-people made it safely out.
I’m picturing them, looking like me
on the Isle of Wight or in Canada. Yes,
that’s the place. Say it with me. Canada.
Vanessa Lampert completed an MA in Writing Poetry at Poetry School London with Glyn Maxwell and Tamar Yoseloff, graduating in September 2019. She has been Highly Commended in the Bridport and Troubadour prizes and came second in the Yeovil prize.
Sea-snake bites are rare, yet they’ve been known to solder the transmission
of neurotoxins to an expectation of death when, too remote & late
for the Medevac helicopter, poison takes the scenic route through vital organs
that shut down like shadow puppetry in failing light, so let’s say you are
at a sorting table, your hands busy with the living litter of the sea
& you have a wide-angle view of a capped horizon & a swell like a detail
from Hokusai’s Great Wave, your trawler the longboat, the moon a poor
emblem for a mountain, & let’s say a small fish with electric blue needle-
points for a fan of dorsal fins has flipped onto the table, & because
you are distracted by a ponytail that has come adrift to slip like a plait
of afternoon light over the shoulder of a deckhand, your fingers
are injected with a non-lethal dose of oceanic misery, & while the pain
is bad enough to inspire a flurry of yelled abuse others find amusing
including the woman who has tied her wayward hair into place, this is
nothing compared to what awaits you at the start of the morning shift
where, staring into water so calm you can see the net emerging
from the deep like a vast bag leaking glitter & slick that swings over-
head & spills its contents for your selection, you will be absent
imagining the smell of her skin as you held her on a makeshift bed
above the labouring surge & drone of the engine, & as she traces
the outline of your face, you fail to see the banded krait emerge
from the net to bite the underside of your wrist before being killed
with a cut-down base-ball bat reserved for rays & sharks, & in shock
you look at the wound, the puncture marks the colour of the sea
at first light, & as the pain is interchangeable with the times you have
bled after being pinned by fish with anti-coagulate on their spines
you return to the table but lose balance & fall to the wave-washed
prawn-whiskered boards as the trawler heads for land & the crew secure
the boat, with a voice saying breathe, help is on the way, a long cloud
of shearwaters blowing over, trailing the sound of your name called
into a cross-current of wind, the wires singing & the dark coming on
too soon in diminishing frames & the chambers of the heart
Anthony Lawrence has published sixteen books of poems and a novel. His most recent collection ‘Headwaters,’ (Pitt Street Poetry) won the 2017 Prime Ministers Literary Award for Poetry. He teaches Writing Poetry at Griffith University and lives on Moreton Bay, Queensland.
Third Prize goes to Karen Hodgson Pryce for The Sleeper, 2020
The Sleeper, 2020
You hear the stoic heart
of the rails. The trusted
tug and trundle. Adjacent,
the weave of a vacant seat.
Its tease of tumbled Xs.
A crash of crystal as hail
batters the window. About
the furious living rattle
on. You snatch at handfuls
of aisle and out, out – ready
or not. The latticed
dark of a spurious stop.
Karen Hodgson Pryce lives in Aviemore, Scotland. She read English Literature at the University of Glasgow and has taught ESOL for 20 years. Her poetry is in Northwords Now, Butcher’s Dog, Black Bough, Lighthouse and Ink, Sweat & Tears. It is also in anthologies: Landfall by New Voices Press &Shared Stories: A year in the Cairngorms. Her short story was Commended in the Neil Gunn Writing Competition 2017. She spends much of her time running, swimming, hiking and cycling around the Scottish Highlands.
The Norfolk Prize goes to Jenny Danes for Portrait of S.A.D. with Carnations and Vibrator
Portrait of S.A.D. with Carnations and Vibrator
As an act of self-love, I bought myself
carnations. I cut them and fed them
with the clumsy devotion
of a new parent, I placed the vase
on my shelf, and for days looked at them,
just looked at them, their rhubarb
and custard frill, their conspiratorial buds
and thirsty, criss-cross stems.
The last time I was bought flowers
I was fifteen and that was only because
his mother told him to; the self at least
is to be relied upon, I always knew my body
was a self-serving temple. I am contemplating
whether masturbation is a chore
or an artform – sometimes I write
‘have a wank’ on my to-do list –
and there is a broken vibrator
in the drawer. I have heard
this should be a trophy, a badge of honour,
but at the moment I am fundamentally
undeserving, unable even to process pleasure,
this tiredness in me approaching nausea,
my bones like drainpipes I am back
to the brittleness of being a child
made to stand outside in the snow
and wait. I think to myself; I will see
these carnations through, I will keep them
until they are dust, until their vase is filthy.
Jenny Danes was born in Essex in 1995 and studied at Newcastle University. In 2013 and 2016 she was highly commended in the Bridport Prize for poetry and in 2016 she won The Poetry Business New Poets Prize. Her work has appeared in various magazines including The Rialto, Magma, The North, The Interpreter’s House and Butcher’s Dog, and her debut pamphlet ‘Gaps’ was published by smith|doorstop in July 2017.
Our Commended poems this year are:
Playground: Elena Croitoru
Playground
We grew up in our spare time
beyond a tower block island
where translucent cement dust lay
over the nerves of nettle and bindweed
leaves which clung to the cracked pale soil.
In winter, we would sink up to our chests
in snow and hide inside the unfinished body of a building,
its graffiti erased before it was written,
its three windowless walls wrapped around us
in an embrace that stayed the same except
the times when the mist dissolved their blunt edges.
We pretended this was a furnished room we owned
and thought God could not help us all
until later, and that when our turn came
we had to remember what we wanted.
We leaned against the concrete
which drew the last of our body heat
through tartan woollen clothes a size too small
until we could no longer bend our knees.
From this place we could not hear
the TV announcements that told us how
to love our republic, but we listened
to our silenced town and waited
until somebody missed us.
Elena Croitoru has an MSt in Creative Writing from the University of Cambridge. Her work has been selected for the Best New British & Irish Poets 2019and has been shortlisted for the Gregory O’Donoghue Prize, Wasafiri New Writing Prize, Stephen Dunn Prize, Bridport Prize, Bath Flash Fiction Award and other prizes. She won second place in the Bart Wolffe Award & third place in the Open House Poetry Competition. You can find her on Twitter: @elenacroitoru
A Preservation Spell: Matt Bryden
A Preservation Spell
Should sandal pass the chalk outline,
the lamp’s limit – should a ribbon’s fall
draw your passage from the world
then it is all like snow – the lie
no indicator of depth where it settles,
laughter tumbling as the body tips face-down;
and our calculations come in hunches,
the strike of the quarter-jacks crossing the river
in imminence of rain; the devil sat in his hammock
just beneath the nail. Remember the animals
in our windows at the knees of the saints,
how they reflect each one’s pomposity and grace –
the goose at the end of a golden cord, the man himself
set for a parade to demonstrate his quiddity.
We secured your knowledge to follow men like them.
So pride does not come into it – if you prosper
it has little to do with our handiwork,
regardless how we sank canes into the soil,
ran channels, led you by your open hand.
Our superstitions the stuff of donkeys
hung from trees, cotton sewn through lips
and mountain lions; in defiance of which
we tease out your locks like seedlings,
dress you in linens tailored in a feminine style.
I put it in my pocket wrapped
in inadequate tissue; it works free
and at home appears lost
until, beneath the debris of lip salve,
paperclips, paper pellets to be discarded
and a shoelace, I catch its essence,
the bladderwort of it.
On the windowsill it tells the weather:
a mermaid’s purse on a dry riverbed,
the drop from a familiar perch,
a sinuous gorge on the mud,
and desiccated lichen its intestinal shape
suggesting dropping;
its light weight and durable package
permitted a posting into the pool
no longer pooled.
Much later the unwrapping
because it merged with the crumble
of the stonework becoming
cuttlefish shell and secateurs.
It resists the prod of a stick or skewer
that skin thick and pudding-like
breathing back against imprint;
until thwacked with a trowel
it spills a cargo of fur and ivory;
the claws of huge rodents hunted in field guides
until the goods left to bleach
at the flowerbed’s edge descend
from fair price to articulated felt
a graveyard by the seashore;
bodies enveloped in beads and blankets
song all washed away.
Bridget Khursheed is a poet and geek based in the Scottish Borders; a Scottish Book Trust New Writers Award winner for poetry, her work has appeared in publications including The Rialto, New Writing Scotland, Ambit, The Cormorant, The London Magazine, Abridged and Gutter; her pamphlet Roads to Yair is available from TwinLaw; and she has just completed an MSc in cybersecurity. Learn more: poetandgeek.net @khursheb
Panacea: Sharon Mariem
Panacea
The astrologer pulls
caliper from pocket
measures Libra skull
and speaks the future
My date blames my mood
on time of month, then
suggests we reschedule
for the next new moon
And on the radio a graveled voice
speaks of sex and evolution
(never minding millennia
of construct)
At home I see the internet occultists
partnered with venture-backed
short-term rental startup
pushing out the nonbelievers
in neighborhoods better suited
to those with Virgo rising
The President is faking the numbers again
but his constituents don’t seem to mind
and when the balanced newscaster repeats the digits
the voters nod along
And in the neighbor’s bathtub, a woman
pleasures herself with porous crystal,
developing a celebrity-sold infection
When the CEO says their technology
won’t listen to secret conversation, well,
I, too, would like something to believe in.
Sharon Mariem is an American poet currently living in Norwich and attending the University of East Anglia’s MA program in creative writing. Prior to coming to the UK, she was based in Brooklyn, New York. Her work has appeared in A Shadow Map Anthology (Civil Coping Mechanisms, 2017) and several online literary magazines. She is currently working on a series of poems about cruelty and the concept of evil.
Lost in Chiang Mai: Kat Dixon
Lost in Chiang Mai
unscrewing a lid feels the same in every country
jam, olive oil, turpentine, tea
if you think about it, life is just a montage of unscrewing jars
with other moments threaded in between
pavement doesn’t mean the same thing in every country
this stretch of dirt inside, this stretch of dirt, out
collect shoes by door, tiger balm in palm
unscrew, sniff, hit of fresh, then release
if you think about it, life is just a montage of hits and release
with other moments threaded in between
that night we smoked too much and one of us almost died
hospitals are the not the same in every country
now, unscrew lid, unscrew lid, menthol hit
sniff recklessness and rain
Kat Dixon lives in London and is studying for her Master’s degree with The Poetry School. Her poems have been accepted to various journals, including South Bank Poetry, Perverse, Tears in the Fence andRialto. Her manuscript, Letters to ex lovers I will never send was shortlisted for the Rialto Pamphlet Prize 2018 and she has recently re-edited it. Her poetry has been nominated for a Forward Prize. She is currently working on a new pamphlet, experimenting with form and exploring the world of drugs.
Shortlisted poems:
Apparitions by Jeremy Dixon
Sharpenhoe Clappers by John Freeman
Lambs by Claudine Toutoungi
Two Lost things by Jeremy Leadbetter
I have even lived dream of perfect by Rachel Donati
A coat of her own choosing by Simon Murphy
To the flower lady by Gabriel Moreno
Landscape with inner child by Jane Lovell
Archaeopterix by Gregory Leadbetter
Jaw by Sarah Doyle
Plum Blossom and Green Willow by Susan Wood
Gilmore Girls by Miriam Craig
Behind the double glazing by Barbara Marsh
The Photographer insists on Yellow by Elisabeth Sennitt Clough