Winning and selected poems published in the competition anthology.

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Adjudicator: Cynthia Kitchen

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FIRST PRIZE:  John Hussey

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Missing Glove

 

A red blur spiked on a railing,

raised in mute appeal on the headlong street.

I picture the owner getting home, patting pockets, swearing.

She enters the blameless lounge. The armchair stands

She lays the survivor in a bedroom drawer as if the other might return,

scurry over tarmac, steal through a window, tip-finger up the stairs.

But it’s still there when I walk home along the weft of pavements.

 

Maybe at night the lost gloves of London fly up, flock, swoop over rooftops

while their owners and finders sleep, joined by the delicate threads

that cross dense postcodes, run silent down empty high-hedged lanes.

 
 
SECOND PRIZE: Louise Walker

 

Russell Hobbs

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The witness who knows all your secrets,

the ones which rattle once the button is pushed,

the secrets which swirl in your cup, catch

in your throat.

The witness who never

lets you down, not even tonight, when a friend

sits crying at your kitchen table and all you can do

is fill the kettle, then stand there, gripping

the handle, waiting for the first tremor,

the long exhalation, the pouring out at last.

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THIRD PRIZE: Gillian Knibbs

 

Unhinged

 

It lies on its side, the faintness of green

in its mottled windows like moss in a riverbed.

 

It is unhinged; raw wood gapes

where the locks were gouged out

like donated organs. I didn’t have the heart

to take its numbers. Propped against the hedge

it is still our door – night sentry, gatekeeper,

rattler when lorries passed,

feeder of sneaky draughts.

Unhinged.