The Woman with a Bird in Her Head
This poem was selected in the best individual poems category of the Templar Poetry Pamphlet Competition 2006. It is published in the 2006 Templar Poetry Competition Anthology.

The Woman with a Bird in Her Head
(for my daughter, after a Native American painting)

The colours are blue
shot through with white.

A woman with a bird in her head
and you’re puzzled

but it’s what I wish
for you

the explosion of wing
unexpected

the layered
possibility of flight.

A bird for my daughter
a head to hold it

so she’s half bird
like the woman in the picture

the bird breaking from her
all charged

the bird flying -
a head for flying

and birds
for my daughter on blue-white mornings

in a dazzle of feathers
all her life.

Time out of Mind
On re-reading TSEliot's Four Quartets in a Prison Cell
This poem is one of several prize winners written by a prisoner in Dartmoor.

By inside time time inside's not implied:
For inside time's internal; time inside
Is time within, time cabined, cribbed, confined
In finite space externally defined.

Inside us time's circadian cycles bide,
Tying us tight to nightly flights of tide,
Binding as like with all kind, twinned, entwined,
And finding all the wider ties that bind.

Time inside's crime is temporal hiatus tied
So tired ideas society's sanctified.
So let it ride - decide to be resigned:
Out of sight, out of time, out of mind.

The Whole Red Sky
This poem was a runner-up in the Bridport Prize 2005 (judged by Andrew Motion)

We meet under a red sky, crunching against snow,
sinking, rising, our breath exploding from us, a small pain
inside from the heave. This is it, she says, on the highest point
looking down. There is no sound. I can cup the city in my hand:
a bowl of lights. The sky shimmers, splits. Now we’re here
I wonder for how long. A rawness in my throat.
How could it be anything but beautiful? This is her spot
where she always comes and I’ve always wanted it: the solidarity.
We call them the Merry Dancers, I tell her, but she doesn’t answer;
maybe she’s not in the mood for naming things
though I am. If I name the thing it’s pinned and can’t escape.
I take it with me in my mouth. I swallow it whole.

The Loch at Harray
This poem won first prize in the Frogmore Press Poetry Competition 2005

We glide out, dip the oars,
barely disturb the water

or each other. Light opens
the end of the loch,

the reeds, and the bubbles of flies
shaving the dark flat surface.

Breeze lifts your fringe, soothes
skin. The trout avoid us

in the shallows, but we see
them cruise. Our bloodstained

hooks lie untouched. September;
we might not come back again.

The sun cools even as we slide
along. Soon it will be the equinox,

a long dive hard to imagine.
The loch turning into a cold place -

white metallic. The grey fingers
of standing stones on the ridge

pointing to a smudged sky. Nothing
has been quite as clear for months.

A sample from Volume II

Groundswell

Today the plates are moving.
a fault at the heart of Dartmoor.
There should be tearing,
jagged edges, tectonic scrape.

Here, weary of autumn rains
the earth has bloated.
We balance on the riverbank,
feel the undulation,
watch the land vibrate.

Someone pokes a toe
through shivering grass:
the river oozes through.
We test our weight
as though stepping onto ice,
enjoy the ripple, the peaty gush.

Today, mainly unnoticed,
something shifted.

Supranational Directive for Literature
This poem by member John Feakins won the Runner-prize for satirical poetry at the Strokestown International Poetry Competion 2006.

EU Directive 34186/ 7B/ 125999. August 2005 Instructions to the reading public.


When you’ve read the title
Of this book, turn it over
And look carefully at the
International safeguards

As proposed,adhered to
And seen to be in force
At the time of publication,
Printed,signed and sealed.

Instructions:

First this book is produced
On recyclable paper
From sustainable forests,
No animals were mistreated

In the logging, transporting,
Or other operations necessary
Across rainforests,tropical
Rivers,across mountain

Ranges, steppes or leafy
Temperate woodlands,
No ethnic or indigenous
Peoples were explicitly

Required to uproot their
Habitat or settlement,
Or persuaded against their will
To leave home or hearth.

All workers involved in the process
Of storage, forwarding or dispatch
Across waterways,large or small
Were paid a minimum reasonable

Wage for the local conditions,
At acceptable competitive prices
And were not in any way disadvantaged
Vis-à-vis competition in developed countries.

Once reaching the shores of the European
Union, this material was handled
In such a way that no individual
Coming into contact with the chemicals

Involved in the printing would suffer
Any harm, as all precautions to protect
Eyes, skin, lungs, normal muscular
Exertion and functions of the body

Were seen to be taken by appropriately
Qualified and trained staff.In the ensuing,
Packaging, distribution and delivery
All containers and vehicles

Possessed suitable certificates of worthiness
And any information as to bulk, weight,
Awkwardness of shape and fragility
Was clearly marked on the outside.

Once displayed in the shop,gangways
Between book shelves being easily
Accessible and not in any way cramped,
The purchases easy to reach from the floor,

Sales assistants must be able to reassure
All customers of the non-toxic nature
Of the binding and the dust covers.

But one further point we have to make.
For the contents of the book we cannot legislate.

The Siren Lovers
In Ireland there is an international poetry festival culminating in The 2006 Fish International Poetry Prize. This year there were over 600 entries from all over the world. This year the winner of the Poetry Prize was Richard Rudd with his poem The Siren Lovers. He won 1,000 euros and publication in the 2006 Fish Anthology. Judges Leanne O'Sullivan and Michael McCarthy said of the poem: "The Siren Lovers was chosen for its mythical dimensions. It is visually and descriptively rich".

The Sea heaves at me
and I heave back,
there is a tension there
that would shatter atoms
fire fish skyward
like tendrils of light
Scything a black sky.

White brows frown
from gull-clipped crags
in the old man's face.
He peers at me, jeers
and coils like a cat
folding my life forever
between two giant silken paws.

I see her too,
Viscious, tireless Sculptress
weaving her webbed waves
about his breath,
and teasing a pounding pulse
between the shores of her lips
She lends him her ecstasy.

Together they lie.
He, with his brigand's smile
finite in the foam
combs her hair, unaware
that his great life lies
in the wind that she blows
across a single, upturned palm.

We Have the Day Empty before Us
This poem is from the winning sequence in the writers inc Writers-of-the-Year 2007 competition.

It’s morning in the long cold kitchen
the light from the window

bleached and chilly
our only heat this flickering

flame blue in the oven’s dark heart.
The child in the sink

is as smooth and shiny
as a jug, squat

next to the scarred pot, its pocked
cow’s lick of porridge.

Above my head nappies steam
the window’s streaming. Down

the hall, the shut street door -
a car coughs and stutters, belches

fumes under the crack. I mash
bananas into a field of yellow pleats

hear the harsh breath of the gas.

Festival
This poem secured second place in the Vibrophonic Festival Slam 08 at Phoenix Arts Centre, Exeter.

I stop in the gardens to turn the wheel
on the big framed city map
and press a few buttons
to light up little lamps.
You appear beside me
and ask, in good English,
the best way to the castle.
It is obvious from here,
standing as it does, above us.

We go along together.
Guess where I come from
"Italy"
No much further -
where the carpets come from
"Turkey"
No, Persia.

I walk around Edinburgh castle
and do not see it,
but I now know there is a temple
somewhere in Persia, so delicately constructed
it shakes when you touch it.

We meet again at four
under the Festival flags.
Here, I admit I write poetry.
You quote great chunks
of the Rubaiyat in Persian.
Am I supposed to resist this,
the k’s you roll in your throat,
or you, or the kisses?

The sky transforms through heliotrope
to floodlit gold,
a magic carpet above the pinnacles.
The park attendants turn us out.
Behind the wrought iron gates
I’ve lost an earring like a flower.