Edward Thomas Fellowship Poetry Competition 2022, the Edward Cawston Thomas prize.
These are the 2022 Poetry Competition winning poems, judged by Jamie McKendrick.
We were delighted by the quality and number of entries – over 480 – this year, and warmly thank everyone who entered.
The winning poem of the Competition is ‘Shadowland’ by James Driver. Joint second are ‘This’ by Kathryn Bevis and ‘Kaze no Denwa (The Wind Phone)’ by Theresa Giffard. Highly commended were Derek Sellen (for two poems), Bill Dodd, Lawrence Wray, James Driver (for a second poem.)
Jamie’s report may be read here but before reading it you may like to read these wonderful poems and join us in congratulating the winners.
Shadowland By James Driver
He was the bailiff here. This is his map.
Six inches to the statute mile. The names
Are still the same – Frome Copse and White Beech Lane –
But all the trees it shows went long ago,
Clear felled one winter, 1921.
Work for the unemployed, two hundred men
Out in the rain with tools they couldn’t name.
He gave them sacks to keep their shoulders dry.
They left no tales to tell, no photographs;
Their stories, like the paths his old map shows,
Are lost and yet, just like he said it would,
All that was slight and aimless still survives:
A stretch of woodland runs by High Street Green –
Replanted, felled, replanted once again –
The Sadler brothers owned it. Thomas lived
At Pockford. His favourite horse was Plantain.
Ajax and Dewdrop, Bosphorus, his hounds.
James, on the Petworth Road, kept Cherfold House.
August the thirteenth, 1855,
He took his ball and bat to Shillinglee, played in
The famous match where no-one scored a run.
William, too, lived somewhere hereabouts.
They gave that belt of trees – the way they rode
To Sidney Wood – the name Botany Bay,
And told themselves they’d made a jest as fine
As all the captions on the Punch cartoons
They cut out, trimmed and framed and liked to hang
Around the tack room walls. Hung there too was
The harness of the horses used by him
To drag the hewn trunks out on furrowed tracks
Which, once the timber tug had gone, the deer
Took as their own, pushed further on, and jays
Flew through to plant their acorns out while soft
Seeds floated in and ash keys tumbled down.
When I was young he drew a map for me,
Named all the places that he walked and worked,
And painted pictures of his favourite trees
As true to life as any photograph.
Across that spot he printed “PERFECT WOOD’.
Across the rest he scribbled “shadowland”.
Joint Second prize poems
This, by Kathryn Bevis
A fire has been lit in new leaves,
will grow to a green world
in the dark wood. Small whites
rise in drifts to the swish of our boots.
Nothing is worth more than this day.
A pair of grey wagtails fly low,
gold-bellied, over the rushing river.
Their bodies translate water
to sunlight, sunlight to water.
Nothing is worth more than this day.
Here, the wind toys with leaves like loose
change in the pockets of the sky.
High above, a wood pigeon calls to us,
wild and true, Who are you, who who?
Nothing is worth more than this day.
Kaze no Denwa (The Wind Phone) by Theresa Giffard
On a hill above Otsuche
there is a phone box
in a garden
overlooking the building site
that used to be the town
before it was swallowed up
by the sea
The locals come
one by one, or in pairs
shuffling outside
clutching tissues
anxious faces
scarves and thick coats
wrapped up against the cold
Pushing the door open
lifting the receiver
they dial numbers of homes
that are no longer standing
and speak to the missing
to loved ones who are lost
presumed drowned
A teenage son
has walked from the station
his father a lorry driver
last heard of on the coast road
when the wave came
“I miss you dad” he said
“I made the baseball team”
An old woman climbs the path
her back bent like an apple tree
she calls her husband
whose body has never been found
and asks if he is warm enough
there is no reply
just the sound of the wind
Reports and winning poems from previous years may be viewed and read by following this link initially.
The Fellowship is also pleased to announce that a second edition anthology of previous winning poems from the competition – Another Nest of Singing Birds – and covering the period 2020-2022 has now been produced and is available to buy – more details and purchase information are available here.
