GRAPE
& GRAIN ONLINE POETRY CONTEST RESULTS 2010
Adjudicator:
Jenny Moore
This was certainly a varied crop of poems with an impressive
number of different takes on the harvest theme.
Some entries focussed more on the grape and grain aspect (two of these
even sharing the same title - great minds clearly think alike) while others
chose to take the harvest idea along more general autumnal lines. Other entries took the theme to completely
new and unexpected places, often to great effect. Sadly there were a few, however, that simply
didn’t make the harvest connection obvious enough, given that the competition
states ‘the harvest theme MUST play a central part in your verse’.
Typos were pleasingly few and far between but there were a
number of poems that would have benefitted from more
attention to punctuation. Some of the
entries might also have benefitted from more ruthless
editing – it’s sometimes worth asking yourself what the real focus of your poem
is in order to avoid a general haze of ideas and images (no matter how
beautiful). Then strip out any
hangers-on that detract from that focus, ensuring that every word, line and
image is earning its keep. And if you
choose to use rhyme do make sure that it doesn’t end up dictating meaning and
syntax.
Judging this competition was no easy feat with so many
different styles and interesting interpretations of the theme. Many of the poems that didn’t make the
shortlist also had much to commend them – my paper copies were covered with
notes of great lines and superb images.
After much deliberation my final placings are
as follows:
FIRST
‘The Wishing Woman of Seal Bay’ was the poem that drew me
back time and time again with its haunting lines and assured use of form and
near-rhyme. The harvesting of ‘wishes
from the waves’ to be stored in ‘a mermaid’s purse’ was an unusual, melancholy
take on the harvest theme but one that worked very well. There was so much to admire within this
beautifully executed poem but I particularly loved the sea change wrought upon
the line ‘she counts the pebbles on the shore’ – seemingly innocuous and
factual at the start yet loaded with a sense of loneliness and futility when it
returns at the end.
SECOND
In complete contrast my second choice, ‘A Warning to Young
and Old’, is positively bursting with the sights and smells of traditional
harvest fare - a ‘lush embarrassment of fruit and veg’. Less traditional, perhaps, is the overtly
sensuous nature of this harvest, leading us from mere ‘whispers of excess’ into
an ‘orgy of plenty’; a ‘top-shelf’ world of ‘plump flesh’, of ‘velvet grapes,
as slippy as sex’ and ‘the heavy throb of plum
juice’. I felt it would have been even
stronger without the lines ‘I really think it shouldn’t be allowed,/ autumn. It spurs
the young, disturbs the old,’ (and perhaps even a different title) but I loved
the energy and humour and the lascivious lusciousness of its imagery.
THIRD
Third place went to ‘Elysium (by Highbury) Fields’ with its
wonderfully witty opening, ‘When you met me I was swimming in /Jacob’s Creek./ You fished me out and put me to/ Work/ In fields I had
long neglected.’ Here we have a
different harvest again, with the former wine-swimmer reaping the fruits of a
new relationship: ‘For once there is plenty’; ‘Arms are opened in /
Abundance’. The use of the second
person worked well, lending the poem a gentle intimacy which nicely balanced
out the self-deprecating humour (although the archaic-sounding ‘pose not the
threat they did’ jarred somewhat with an otherwise modern poem). This was another example of a great ending:
the once wild ‘I’ (who no longer needs wine to feel intoxicated) has now become
a ‘we’, oozing contentment - ‘We are / Fat as tame things’.
VERY
HIGHLY COMMENDED
Although ‘In Vino Veritas’ had me reaching for my Spanish dictionary (perhaps
translation notes could be added at the bottom for the more linguistically
challenged amongst us?) the inclusion of the non-English phrases certainly set
the scene effectively and made for a far richer opening than ‘Two beers please’
would have provided. I enjoyed the
steady build towards intoxication from the first beer that simply ‘refreshes’,
the second rendering the night ‘bright and hopeful’ and on through the
wine-fuelled loosening of tongues into convivial tipsiness and the drunken
arguments beyond. The ending felt a
little flat maybe, but perhaps that is simply in keeping with the morning-after
mood! For me the stand-out lines were
‘Six corks line up like truth bullets,’ and the
alliterative ‘an aggression of arguments’.
COMMENDED
‘Inner Things’: I
loved the first half of this poem with its clever progression from horse
chestnuts to the problems of the preceding months. ‘I fell out with this year’ is beautifully
understated, leading us nicely in to a series of increasingly traumatic events,
from finding grey hair to dealing with the acquaintance who ‘longed for death;
planned it meticulously’. And then comes that brilliantly stark central line, all on its own:
‘No one could stop her’. For me this was
by far the stronger half of the poem however – I didn’t quite understand where
some of the ideas and images in the second half were coming from. Consequently they lacked the punchiness of the opening.
Perhaps a slight rethink about the second half would pay dividends – it
certainly has the potential to be a fantastic poem.
OTHER
SHORTLISTED POEMS
‘Third Autumn’: This had a lovely lilting quality. Lists were used to great effect in both the
cataloguing of produce, ‘Bramleys, Coxes, Quince and
Grape’ and the coming together of people from so many wonderful sounding
places: ‘Burcott Godney
Worth and Yarley’.
I also particularly liked the layering up of ‘From the hamlets from the
farmstead’ and ‘From the village from the Parish’
which gave a real sense of people streaming in from all directions.
‘Mulberry Children’: at just 10 lines long, this is both
short and sweet. I liked the simple,
delicate feel of this poem and the way it so effectively conjured up that
childish delight in berry-picking and indeed berry-gorging!
‘September Evening’: The viewing of a harvest evening as a
cinematic event was another nice take on the theme. I liked the idea of staring at the ‘black
screen’, waiting for the
‘Harvest from Home’: I liked the way the narrative couplets
are interspersed with the descriptive harvest lines, allowing for new readings of
such a seemingly innocent activity as picking berries: ‘clever fingers part
leaves, probe/the shade and harvest greedily from hedgerows’. I think the couplets themselves could perhaps
be stronger – they veer a little too far towards the saccharine for my tastes
and the rhymes certainly don’t help this.
But having said that the last two lines worked really well, bringing the
poem to a satisfying conclusion, ‘We waited for the
call and wondered what to bring / to you and him; and him; new life in the spring’
(though maybe an extra syllable is needed to make that last line scan
properly).
‘In Vino Veritas’:
This is a poem that begs to be read out loud at a good pace and with plenty of
expression! The combination of cheap
booze and Italian opera was an unexpected one and some of the rhymes certainly
made me smile.
Judge’s
Top Ten (in order):
Winner - ‘The Wishing Woman of
Second - ‘A Warning to Young and Old’ by Valerie Robinson
Third - ‘Elysium (by Highbury) Fields’ by Ali Ball
Very Highly Commended - ‘In Vino Veritas’ by Ian Beckett
Commended - ‘Inner Things’ Scharlie
Meeuws
‘Third Autumn’ Peter Gatenby
‘Mulberry Children’ Paula Leyden
‘September Evening’ Mary Charman-Smith
‘Harvest from Home’ Anne Graham
‘In Vino Veritas’
Jim Archibald
Site
Top Ten:
‘God’s Eye’
‘In Vino Veritas’
‘Harvesting the Flood’
‘When’
‘Third Autumn’
‘Sonnet: The Nurturers’
‘Halcyon Harvest’
‘The Travelling Tinker’s Song’
‘Pick Me!’
‘The Wishing Woman of
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