The Charles Causley Poetry Competition 2013

The Winners

The Poems

SECTION 1

Charles Causley was born in 1917 and is acknowledged as one of the very finest Twentieth Century English poets. He lived all his life in Launceston in Cornwall, where he was a popular and admired figure and, for many years, a much-loved schoolteacher.

His poetic reputation was worldwide and brought him many awards; among them The Queen’s Gold Medal and The Ingersoll/TS Eliot Award. He was made a CBE in 1986 and a Royal Society of Literature Companion of Literature in 2000. He received the Hon DLitt from the University of Exeter, where his archive is now held. He died in 2003.

The Charles Causley Trust exists to protect and promote the legacy of Charles Causley’s writing for future generations in the United Kingdom and beyond.

The Charles Causley Poetry Competition has been established to support the House and Projects. The competition was judged by Sir Andrew Motion. In 2013, the winners are:

1st Prize £3000 for ‘The Icicle Garden’ #

Jo Be!

2nd Prize £500 for ‘The River Trevillet’ #

Dorothy Coventon

3rd Prize £100 for ‘Love Poem to Black Pudding’ #

Simon Pomery

For more information about The Charles Causley Trust:

www.thecharlescausleytrust.org

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The Icicle Garden

You give me this – your snow-and-blackthorn heartlandwith its back-door heron in the gill, your childhood stream that meets a river further on.

The water races down, as cold as Herod: runs full tilt, till rapids break in little raptures on the rock.

Every moss-wet hollow’s strung with icicles:a glassy crop as slippery as elvers on their first lap home.

You lean into the clough and gather them;wet shoots and spikes, invisible asparagusthat gives a snow-pea snap with every pick;

and bunching them together, hand them into my black glove, a posy of cold flowers in colours too clear to name.

A wild bouquet. I take your gift and take you in, offering upa frozen sliver to your softened mouth.

You split one from the bunch and show me how to tease a summer out of ice, leave the bundle thawing in the tumbler by the bed.

Jo Be!, Winner

The River Trevilletat St. Nectan’s We!.

As if running, and before herself,the river spit-screams over the ledge,shouts a spate into the black slate funnel,and roars to a rock basin thatpours breaking wateronto the quietly breathing alterof the well.

She’s still nowher light-mirror saucer reflectsthe Late Devonian dome. Sprouting treesroot where the birds dropped them,their supplicant branches disguisedin wish – and – grief – rainbow ribbons,left there to guidewhispered prayers.

Crystals implore on slippery ledges.An amethyst rosary hails Maryon dried Sycamore leaves.A blue elf waits in such devotionby a small moss covered –once fragrant -unstopped bottle, that leanson an icon, of a girl so thinin a waterproof frame, that somehowkeeps her memory dry.

The pool is slow to let go,trees, ribbons, and sun-rayed domestay devoted to its light – mirrorlevitating on keen pebblesand humble coins,agitated by the undertowand the headless Saintthat walks her water to the sea.

Dorothy Coventon, Second Prize

Love Poem to Black Pudding

Little pool of fa!en blood, boiled discmottled with pearl barley, spiced with mace and black pepper, guiltybreakfast delicacy, a bloody history

in how to eat the whole beast;to re-animate blood into circulardumplings; to boil, dry and #ythe hidden rivers of pigs...

Today I eat at dawn in Smithfield Caféby the meat market, guarded by dragonsin the City of London, by two goddessesplaying harp at the meat palace, meat factory.

My grandfather made his own in his small outhouse in Oldcastle, Ireland,where he used to hang a pig on a hook, and stoke its throat with an iron stick

to let blood fall, to collect the streamsof blood in a steel troughbelow. But that pig lived a good life sealed off in a pen at the back of the house.

Almost-present at the table of family mealsthe pig gorged on scraps, well-fedin its own black pig valley, producingpiglets that would, in time, turn into pudding;

piglets whose teeth my grandfather snappedoff with a pair of pliers, sitting them on his kneeas they squealed, so they wouldn’t teartheir mammy’s teats, the pig he was fattening up.

And in that century it was customary to give the best cutlet of pork, sliced from the neck to the loin, to your neighbour out of courtesy, the cut they called the gríscín.

It’s twenty-four-hour meat in Smithfieldwhere I sit and eat my breakfast, Full Irish, where cabbies lean on cab doorsdrinking tea from Styrofoam cups,

and the last butchers stroll like doctors,white-coated, red-eyed and up all night,cleaning up the last of the day’s blood,like the last of a species slowly becoming extinct.

Simon Pomery, Third Prize

About The Poets

SECTION 2

First Prize Winner, Jo Bell works as a poet across the UK undertaking

projects, residencies and commissions. Formerly the director of National Poetry Day, she has been a tutor for the Poetry School and Chateau Ventenac, a lecturer in Creative Writing at MMU Crewe and a poet in residence for Glastonbury Festival, the National Trust and Royal Derby Hospitals. Currently the UK Canal Laureate, appointed by the Poetry Society and Canal and River Trust, she lives aboard a 67ft narrowboat in the Midlands.

Dorothy Coventon was born in Cumbria and has lived in Cornwall for many years. Dorothy became a member of Falmouth poetry group in 2002 where the founder Peter Redgrove was a major inspiration. She is a member of Indian Kings Poets, and Liskeard Poetry Group and has read at the Bodmin and Port Eliot festivals.

Simon Pomery lives in London. His recent work has been published by Edinburgh Review, the Times Literary Supplement, and The White Review. A new pamphlet of work, Defence Against a Knife Attack, is due in 2014.

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About Charles Causley’s House

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The Charles Causley Trust acquired Charles Causley’s House in 2007 and their future work is the continued development of the poet’s house as a centre to celebrate his life and writing and promote new literature activity

in the community and region in which he lived. This work includes the Charles Causley Poet in Residence Project.

This activity is supported by Arts Council England, Cornwall Council, Launceston Town Council and Literature Works.

If you can donate to our work or for more information:

www.thecharlescausleytrust.org

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Acknowledgements

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The Charles Causley Poetry Trust is deeply grateful to a! our competition entrants, our judge, Sir Andrew Motion, the Charles Causley Trust Poet in Residence, Kathryn Simmonds, Vicky Reece-Romain of Cornwa! Council, and the staff of Literature Works for their support in delivering The Charles Causley Trust Poetry Competition in 2013.

www.literatureworks.org.uk

The Charles Causley Trustc/o Potter Baker Chartered Accountants20 Western RoadLauncestonCornwa!PL15 7BARegistered charity: 1102459

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