UPDATED: March 9, 2012
Fellows' Poetry Prize 2010 - Winners
The winners of the 2010 Competition are
1st Prize
A small, unremarkable oil-painting of doubtful provenance, labelled 'Allegory of the Artist trapped in an Idiot's Career', C.J. Allen
2nd Prize
Case Study, or Using Caddis-Fly Larvae to Construct 'Sculptures', Frances Thompson
3rd Prize
Glass Bird in a Shop Window, by Gill McEvoy
Highly Commended
Another Warning to Children, Rosie Miles
Eurydice, Joan Condon
Winning Poems
A small, unremarkable oil-painting of doubtful provenance, labelled ‘Allegory of the Artist trapped in an Idiot’s Career’
The career is a castle by Escher, an impossible knot
of brickwork and lunatic physics. Glimpsed through a window,
the artist, intent on a screen and rinsed in a glow
of synthetic jade, is wearing the mask of a man
who looks into the future but sees only fathoms of fog.
The gates of the castle are guarded by six drooling wolves.
Beyond them, in closed ranks, a forest forgathers. The trees
are stylized, pencil-like. There are no stars, but a moon
of regret or wistfulness shines on a river that turns
in fluxive meanders to hills where the lights of a cottage
glimmer like fish-scales, promising something unknown.
It is not at all clear if the wolves have been put there to keep
the artist from leaving or to ward off the strange, moonlit world
of his other life. Sheep fleck the hillsides and lavender smoke
hangs over the cottage. High on the battlements sits
an owl, badly painted, symbolic, about to take flight.
C. J. Allen 2010
Case Study or Using Caddis-Fly Larvae to Construct “Sculptures”.
I ease her out of her dull shift
of gravel - gently, for I know
her softness, and where she will cling.
As good as gold, she slips
into the tank. Air beads it
like her mountain pool;
its managed winter
will stay her nymphosis.
Naked as a newborn mouse,
miner for twig-detritus, prospector
after crushed shells of water-snails,
she finds gold.
Gold becomes her.
Gold swaddles and spangles her.
Gold is her first, rough casing
and when I shower my jewels on her
she it is who gives the silk
that binds my gifts to her body.
This one likes my pearls,
that minx prefers diamonds.
You mock muddy nature
in your brilliant precocity
you sly bijou-nymphets,
you little walking hat-pins.
Frances Thompson
Glass Bird in a Shop Window
Surely the maker of this bird is
one whose winter months are lived
among deep silences of snow
who understands the blue and purple
bruise of folds among the drifts
who knows
the strange transparencies of ice
the way light toes on it
a fragile dance?
I have been standing here so long
my feet have slipped into
boots of fur
snow is settling on my shoulders
under dank green pine
and snow-locked birch.
Ice splits; a bird flies up.
Freckles the freezing air
with blue.
A shudder of snow
ushers its escape.
Gill McEvoy
Kathleen Jamie Photo: © Clare MaNamee |
Jane Draycott Photo: © Jemimah Kuhfeld |
Tim Kendall Photo: © University of Exeter |
The prizes were awarded by the panel of judges - Kathleen Jamie (Chair), Jane Draycott and Tim Kendall -
at the English Association's Annual General Meeting on Wednesday 18 May 2011, 5.00pm,
at The British Academy, Carlton House Terrace, London