Poetry Competition Winning Entries

Here are the top three entries in our 2022 poetry competition, Lost In Space.

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Third place

Lost Space by John Gallas

The bogdamp fields of Finsters Farm
rot dimly in the shade of Truck Park #9.
The wind is wild: I walk in weird slowmotion.
At Dogs Dip I take a rest and tie my earflaps down.

Bottles, bags and boxes flap and clatter.
The thorny hedge that lines the road
darts at my buttons like a snappy, fitful fencer
guarding at its back, maybe,

some last dim skimp of ungrabbed land.
I peer past the prickles.
A silverpuddled pond. A swan trying out,
before the buckled wind, its short allowance –

a few brightpewter yards from shore to shore –
sailing slower than the squallblow at its back,
its feathers prickled up and antisleek. It nods and thrusts,
and turns its questionmark from side to side:

and at the bank it turns, shuts its marble eye
against the gust, lifts its neb and honks, sails back
the little way it came – this time all featherflush –
climbs up the tump and windbreasts on the grass.

I dodge out from the thorns and wish them well
in all their jealous barricades to come.
I swim the wind up New Substation Hill.
The gates are shut. The cables toss and whine.

Across the tops the electric hum
thrashes past me with sudden whoop,
and hangs me by my hood on the chickenwire,
and slings a plastic bag across my eyes.

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Second Place

Venus in retrograde by Glen Wilson

We are all mirrors collecting and focusing light,
sacrificing the held breath for distant objects,

only you have the resilience to be so still,
so still long enough to see so far.

One eye closed, the other on the telescope
that’s how I first fell for you.

There is such wonder held by the cold command
of these metal binary controls,

a hairs-breath of change in co-ordinates
undresses each and every mystery.

But I never thought we would stay here,
watching shooting stars from Andromeda,

unwilling to follow you were always waiting
for something else to flare across the lenses.

Was it Saturn’s rings or the hours pressed
against the eyepiece that left those dark circles?

Is this the fate of all the stargazer’s significant others
to be a moment passing through the celestial spheres?

One eye closed, the other on the telescope
so you don’t notice me leave,

it is such a clear sky tonight.

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First Place

Hart’s Diary by Glen Wilson

After the Boxer Rebellion

This door was on a single hinge,
splinters fresh where the lock had been,

glass lay as angular ponds rationing
the light, a wind whispered out and in.

The desk was overturned, a porcelain
shepherd gifted to me, lolls headless and hollow

at my scuffed feet, the secret drawer
for all its confidence was crudely empty.

I’ve been travelling longer than I’ve been home,
trekked my Ulster temperament

through these Eastern tongues
on board many fan-plumed junks,

felt every bump of every rickshaw in Peking,
watched firedrake kites twist in the air.

I’ve known the push and pull of duty
kinking from a wife to a concubine.

Who would think these thoughts again?
much of what was said is forgotten

so all of what is thought is barely sketched.
Which regret is more bitter to the self,

the said or the unsaid?
The deed done or the undone?

Between the hagiography and the exposé,
figure eights the truth, and I’m as reliable

as any other in its handling, the best guess
is a child’s mosaic to the master’s stained glass.

As I move charred furniture back into place,
a crane looks in through the jagged gap

before flying away at my movement, its wings
feathering chapters, shedding appendices.

NB Sir Robert Hart was Inspector-General of China’s Imperial Maritime Custom Service (IMCS) from 1863 to 1911.

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