The Battered MoonsPoetry Competition

Presents the 7 winning poemsand three 'meteorites'

In association with the

SWINDONFESTIVAL of LITERATURE

2011

Image Credit: Saturn's moon Phoebe NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

Battered Moons Poetry Competition 2011 Foreword

Organising and co-judging the second Battered Moon Poetry Competition has been a rewarding challenge and a privilege. There were over 150 entries, encouraging for a competition in just its second year and offering no cash prizes. It was possible only because of the generous effort of its supporters: Matt Holland as Artswords development worker and Director of the Swindon Festival of Literature, co-judge Lesley Saunders, registrar and advisor Hilda Sheehan, Mark Stopforth in his arbitrator role. To all of them my admiration and gratitude.

But the real headliners are the people who sent their poems. These are, ultimately, what Battered Moons is all about. However isolated and lonely your word-craft may appear, you belong in this creative community, and we wanted to hear your voice. You proved determination and courage in sending your poems for us to consider and made the effort worthwhile. Thank you.

Among in the poems submitted, there were those that caught our attention for their accomplished style. They brought language alive, grabbed our attention, had resonance and staying power, conjured intense, vivid scenes and drew the reader into their world. Their flashes of insight, invention and know-how made them memorable and invited the reader to come back to them. We would like to share them through the publication of this booklet. The order of the winning poems follows a personal reflection of how they work best as a sequence. I sought some contrast between one poem and the next. Appearances lent itself to opening the series, with its slower pace and breathing spaces, and a very suitable title. I aimed at an alternation of pulses and style that moved towards the rhythmic buzz of The Honeysuckle Corridor of Certain Doom, sensing their arrangement almost as a recital of chamber music.

Alongside the 7 winning poems you will find three by the people who were more closely involved in the competition process. As poets, we would like to approach you with a sample of our own work, rather than merely our names and credentials.

We look forward to hearing the winners read their poems at the Swindon Festival of Literature, where we will also have the pleasure of listening to our guest poet Paul Farley, a lecturer at Lancaster University and recipient of numerous awards and recognitions, including the Arvon Poetry Competition, the Forward Poetry Prize for Best First Collection, a Somerset Maugham Award, an Arts Council Writers' Award, the Whitbread Poetry Award, was named Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year 1999, and has been shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize. To the Battered Moons Poetry Competition winners, our warm congratulations and best wishes for their future work.

Cristina Newton, co- judge and organiser, April 2011

Image Credit: Saturn's moon Phoebe NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

Appearances by Gavin Salisbury

Gibraltar Point National Nature Reserve, 12 August 2008

Under an umbrella on the beachbinoculars raised to the wavesin back-handed salute to the passing storm,I stand just outsidethe breeding-bird exclusion zone.

The world mists up

in glass. Two Arctic skuasblack-capped sea marauderssally from the sandharry sandwich terns for their catch,settle again to watch mewatching. I resign the face-offand walk back inside the dune lineto the managed edge of the salt marshto be greeted by

the sudden sky.

V-winged, up floatthe land harriersMontagu's and marshas if turned on by the sun,dark solarpanels lifted in relief.They scour the green earth for a living.

Within minutesI am down to a T-shirt.More slowlyas the harriers driftaway in opposite directionsthe last mist clearsfrom my second sights,filling me with

empty horizons.

Ophelia by Linda Snell

These yellow flags, they are everywhere; they will not catch my eye on this burst bank.Only the struck white of their fingers swirlsin blacker light. My sight washes down at them.Stems are for needling, I think; there is yellow again in strung marigolds and dark longpurples. They come to hand; weeds lapat my knees. Stems can be wrapped in sucha green blanket. Teach me to care and notto care; teach me to lie still. The willow slantsforsaken; she weeps across the stream. I cansee the glaucous in her leaves; they lift and falllift and fall quickly. These are vicissitudes. Do you like that? Oh. You are not here and I forget it. Tell me the truth. See if you can.I have made now a circlet. Yellow eyes peepat me. Where shall I hang it? Nettles forbidyet there is a branch. It reaches out to me. Fallingthey say is a fast thing; hoops make a slownessof it. How they settle on the surface, circleafter circle; how my hair flows under water.It is my element: cold and numb with blackfor a colour. I breathe in bubbles; plants givestill life to me. Through lenses, the skyseems even blue. I wait without hope, forthere is no hope, not even for the differentnessof an ending. I hear only his words; theyfloat from a pocket. Ink dissolves in the water.He said, 'Doubt not my Love'. Did he mean it?

the hanger on by John Richardson

When I saw your collection of meat hooks,their silent silvered gleam piercing the darknessin the garage full of well-worn ropes, the blocksand tackle; it was then I remembered that tough test

initiation. All those ladders, brushes and paint, the long, long climb to your first globish, waxymoon, its blacked out wane, twice-fortnight feintand now it's all the cranks, levers and jacks He

has you to pull on the shrouding sky each night.The same laddered up haul, the back-ache climbto carry another star, another hook, another brightglitterati to hang in the black drop, the dime after dime

thumbed in the meter and still not content He expects you,at every turn, to rubbish the star gazers trying to amaze us,knows their rheumy-eyed recounts will be out. (One or twodelusional, think they've got it all sussed). But you, without fuss

let my hands smooth salve into rope-worn scars,let me undo your ligaments' toil of knots, rub tender balmin the rack of your back. So I took your fingers, that've held stars,into my mouth to taste the night's contentment; the calm.

It was then I knew, without a spark,it was you, and only you,that could light my dark.

The unbearable consequence of putting your head inside someoneelse's then trying to get it back out again without them noticing

by Michael Scott

I wanted to fill your heart with cellophane winged dragonfliesbut choked your head with wasps instead

my eyeless thoughtless buried in gut concretepins me to earthreal now gasps words

back to my tongueselfish escape not undoneheavy unableclogs your ears

last night's adrenaline sticky useless todayI stainmouthless indelible breathless

albatross arms cling youstoop friendfeel how weighty my me isI complicate

defuse nowbooby-trapped thud wired to my ribscut redcut blue

run

Ditched by Elinor Brooks

She sits by the roadsidecrunching an applehis ripe corn dollyoff-duty barmaidhair blond and braided.

He flattens the field with herplaiting her platinumlimbs underneath hertying her neckin a bright tight knot.

He tramples the husks of herinto the ditchthen spinning the spokesof her battered back wheelhe walks to his car

Sunday drivergoing to the pubto eat his lunch.

* * *

What was she doing,out in the countrysideall by herself?Asking for trouble. Tomorrow he'll moveback up north.

Coming to light by Janice Booth

The distant headlamps of a solitary car, eyes yellow as a feral cat's, define the lonely journey

of a Fenland road, where vacant window panesstare out at flinty fields. Along the sluices,

water shivers in the easterlies at Eau Brink, Magdalen, where pumping stations squat

against the sky. Pink footed geese trail in the thermals of the morning Fenman,

white wings effortlessly messaging the widening sky with upward loops that lift the loosening day.

I know this land – the way dull irrigation dykesflame pink along the flat horizon

in the sun's first blast of light. And how,like calotypes upon a visceral dawn,

our mirrored selves squint through the glass- to see the metamorphosis of night.

The Honeysuckle Corridor of Certain Doomby Heather O'Neill

Each day I test the sonic boomFacing down the honeysuckleCorridor of Certain Doom.

'Cause magic happens when you buckleUp to speed beyond all noise.Away from the drone I tuck all

Into a dot so dense I'm poisedTo surf on the edge of collapseTo new worlds, avoiding asteroids

I'm not there to hit - I'm that fast.My boom are wings of shields of saveMe steel. I make the sound. In fact,

Black notes. I make time stop on the stave.You're knocked out by my inflatableSilence. I wind through a crystal maze

To be anywhere but here and stungBy such a lonely buzz. My heart swells,I hold my hands and run.

Watch by Lesley Saunders

In their hearts they are the island nation, race of islanders, even the inland tribes who have only the dream of sea are obsessed

with horizons and the voluptuous possibility of ships. Unassailable as cliffs they have gone to the end of the earth to the edge of the land

to see for themselves how war looks like a sail. On the outskirts of towns there are artichoke beds and the serene mooring on a slow-moving Frome

and after lights out the late night shipping news. Still their eyes have the scrimped sheen of sea-glass and in the simple dawn they bandage their hearts

like world-forsakers against the bottomless crossing through fog to the outcrop, atoll, holm.

Written as part of a residency at Acton Court and first published in 2010

A Tragedy from a Bathtub by Hilda Sheehan

I listened to my father recite Shakespeare, from his bathtub, my ear to the bathroom door. He was my jewel set in a silver sea,my mighty Caesar.

Our mother, Juliet, was downstairs staring at the washing up,dreaming of Romeo, her lover, who'd mown our lawnrough and rude as love;cut tree branches dagger sharp.

After his bath, my father found the washing up had not been done; it sat in the swamp of the sink mourning for my mother who was found on the lawn, presumed dead. Romeo lay above her, speared by the branch of a tree, blood dripping our white roses red.

When mother awoke, she tackled the washing up, but found life too dull without Romeo,so she left through a door I could never find in the cellar.

I listened to my father recite Wordsworth, for he believed no harm could come of daffodils, and I was lonely as the cloud he lay onwhile our washing up grew into a crockery mountain.

Speechcraft by Cristina Newton

I write his speeches for him. He can sleep in peace – he knows he can leave the rigmarole of fetching metaphors to me.

I slide current notions into a sleek-swung sling,and lithium phrases broadcast their buzzon the see-saw sways of counterpoised analogies.

I set them to a mnemonic beat that he wears well. His voice melds the scores into a corollary that just slides down.

He memorises lines like lyrics, lists, rehearsing as he shaves, mock-lecturingthe mirror in the lift, self-addressing safety-glazed reflections in the back of cars.

He beats himself to it; in record time he digests the cud he chewed, while he chews the turf he grazed. Now it's his role to stand in the red-shiftof public light, and distill the logic of stellar parallax.

The words I wrote and he delivers have becomehimself. The world spins, tilts on a blunt ax-is. The picture is now the eye that shuts down for the night.

In his sleep, I edit his peace speeches.

The Winning Poets

Janice Booth has seen her own children grow up in Swindon but she herself started life in Norfolk. Meaningful landscapes and a working life committed to East Asian philosophy and medicine are two ongoing sources of inspiration. She finds writing a comfort, making sense of the muddle of the mundane, and when a winning poem comes along – joy!

Elinor Brooks: "There is a thin line between the time-bound world of our senses and the world of our imaginative empathy: I like to cross these borders in my poetry. I was born in Edinburgh, love romantic landscapes, and when I'm not writing can be found in the pub playing an Oriental strategy board game called Go".

Heather O'Neill is a Swindon housewife, raising two small boys. Previously she worked as, among other things, a secondary school teacher and a 70's disco wedding singer. A late comer to poetry, she's still regularly surprised by how useful and enjoyable it can be.

John Richardson: "I've been writing poetry since my early forties; with interests ranging from the Tang dynasty, through Argentinian, Greek, Russian, Spanish to 20th Century American poetry. My poems are about: family, friends, relationships, love and cheese. My poetic influences are John Ashbery and J.H. Prynne. I've published three collections and am a founder member of BlueGate poets".

Gavin Salisbury has been writing and publishing poetry and fiction since the early nineties. His latest solo publication is The Far Sense, a collection of speculative fiction short stories, which was published by Sam's Dot Publishing (USA) last year. Visit Gavin's website at http://gavin-salisbury.com for more information.

Michael ScottMichael loves words, his favourite word is lagrima. / A Koestler Trust Poetry Mentor, he believes that poems / have no walls, doors, locks, railings. / Poems are not made of glass. / Michael harvests poetry from alcoholism, Peruvian street-life/ and Swindon word soup. / Michael reads poetry in Swindon, Bath, Bristol, / Cheltenham and London. / Sometimes he is allowed back.

Linda Snell is the rose pruner at Sheldon Manor, near Chippenham. She has had poems published in: Equinox, Envoi, The Interpreter's House, South, Obsessed with Pipework and Iota. She won first prize in the Wiltshire poetry competition last year and was also short-listed in the Grace Dieu poetry competition. She is co-founder of the Corsham Poetry Society.

Registrar and advisor

Hilda Sheehan's poems have appeared on the BBC Website, The Rialto, National Poetry Society Website, The New Writer and South magazines. She performs her work at poetry events all over the South West region. She gained a distinction in creative writing with the Open University. Hilda is Assistant to Swindon Artswords Literature Development Worker.

Judges

Lesley Saunders is a published poet with several volumes to her name, includingChristina the Astonishing (with Jane Draycott), Her Leafy Eye (with artist/photographer Geoff Carr) and No Doves. She has held several poetry residencies, written various commissions and won a number of major poetry awards, including the Manchester Poetry Prize in 2008. See www.lesleysaunders.org.uk .

Cristina (Navazo-Eguía) Newton published poetry in Spanish in two collections and five anthologies before moving to Swindon, where she is involved in education, poetry workshops and reviews, wildlife projects, hondo-flamenco singing and raising her children. Some of her English poems have appeared in journals and become finalists at Bridport, Gregory O'Donoghue, Strokestown and Aesthetica.

Image Credit: Saturn's moon Phoebe NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

Battered Moons Poetry Competition 2011: REPORT

The Swindon Festival of Literature, now in its 18th year, attracts large audiences for its guest writers and speakers. So it is exciting and appropriate that Swindon also has its own poetry competition. This is the second year of the Battered Moons competition, for adult poets from Swindon and its 'moons' – all towns and villages in the SN postcode area.

The judges in 2011 were published poets Cristina Newton, organiser of the competition, and Lesley Saunders, who has several awards to her name. Both judges read all poems. They looked for the general qualities that help to make a poem good, including:•originality of thought and expression•the ability to attract and sustain readers' interest•an element of surprise, some unique and unpredictable idea, image or turn of phrase•technical accomplishment: control of language, image, patterning and structure.

A good number of submissions, including the seven winners, were all enjoyably original in terms of their chosen subject matter or in their treatment of a theme; and in many entries there was a sense that the writers really wanted to put their words out into the world, to be heard and understood. Some poems also contained surprises, or – even better – were clearly the expression of a practised individual 'voice'.

Technical accomplishment was where the winners stood out – they showed a developing command of their medium, an ability to create and control their verse-forms, words and images, so that the poem was able to bring an occasion or idea or feeling vividly to life. These were the poems that used language (from the title onwards) in fresh rather than second-hand ways; that, even when the theme was a familiar one, like time passing or old memories or nature, tried to find the new thing to say about it; and that, however short or long they were, knew when to stop. The judges were struck by the unusual images and inventive, allusive turns of phrase that each of these poets had created and that made the judges want to read the poems more than once, in order to experience the inner or outer world with this particular person's eyes and ears.

The competition was an evident success and judges would like to thank all the poets for their entries and the organisers for creating this opportunity for local writers. We would also like to take the opportunity to acknowledge the support of the Swindon Festival of Literature and Artswords, its organiser Matt Holland's advice and assistance, the hard work and efficiency of our registrar and advisor Hilda Sheehan, the cooperation of arbitrator Mark Stopforth and all those who have contributed by publicising and promoting the competition in the press, online and on radio.

Lesley Saunders, March 2011 (A fuller version of this report can be read at http://www.bluegatepoets.com/ )

Supported by theSwindon

Festival of Literatureand Artswords

Judges:

Lesley Saunders and

Cristina Newton

Arbitrator:

Mark Stopforth

Registrar:

Hilda Sheehan

“Dim, dusty moon in second-hand light,

worn and well-battered, but going.”