Red Shed Poetry Competition 2021 Results
Congratulations to all of the poets listed below in our winners and commended entrants list for this year's competition.
Overall winner:
Roy McFarlane, Nanny of the Black Country wearing Converse All Stars
Second place:
John Gallas, Ruffled
Commended poets in alphabetical order:
M Lee Alexander, International Date Line
Jane Burn, Mrs/Mother Hail
Pat Edwards, On finding a flea trapped in her tights whilst at the photocopier
Noel King, Dust
Dave Simpson, A shielding dairy, Monday March 30 - 'and that's your news at twenty one minutes past six'
Wakefield W postcode shortlist in alphabetical order
Jo Brandon, En Suite
Clare Crossdale, Shared Threads
Lisa Falshaw, When all this is over
John Foggin, Half Term 21 October, 1966
John Foggin, Constant
Judy Rylance, The Sounds of Silence
195 poets entered the competition submitting a total of 460 poems all of which were read by this year's judge, Emma Purshouse to whom we express our thanks and deep appreciation.
Alas, an awards event was not possible this year but Emma's comments and the winning and second place poems follow.
Overall winner:
Roy McFarlane, Nanny of the Black Country wearing Converse All Stars
Second place:
John Gallas, Ruffled
Commended poets in alphabetical order:
M Lee Alexander, International Date Line
Jane Burn, Mrs/Mother Hail
Pat Edwards, On finding a flea trapped in her tights whilst at the photocopier
Noel King, Dust
Dave Simpson, A shielding dairy, Monday March 30 - 'and that's your news at twenty one minutes past six'
Wakefield W postcode shortlist in alphabetical order
Jo Brandon, En Suite
Clare Crossdale, Shared Threads
Lisa Falshaw, When all this is over
John Foggin, Half Term 21 October, 1966
John Foggin, Constant
Judy Rylance, The Sounds of Silence
195 poets entered the competition submitting a total of 460 poems all of which were read by this year's judge, Emma Purshouse to whom we express our thanks and deep appreciation.
Alas, an awards event was not possible this year but Emma's comments and the winning and second place poems follow.
Nanny of the Black Country wearing Converse All Stars
Woh-oi is the opened mouth call,
head raised slightly back,
conch shell deliverance,
set the captives free,
ship-a-oi ending.
Mother Beckford was like a nanny
who slipped sweets in my hands
when nobody was looking, lived
on the 9th floor of Blakenhall flats,
and squeezed in the Austin Allegro
on the way back from church shouting
woh-oi at black cats and near misses.
Woh-oi [grunt]
Woh-oi [grunt]
She was the mad woman of the church
who made her presence known with woh-oi
and grunts she would hold deep
in her throat like whole mangoes,
and in the seasons of spirits
when the wind blew,
you’d hear those mangoes
drop, one by one, thump as they hit the floor.
She once thumped a man, broke his nose
for calling her nigger, would argue
with the elders when they
looked down on her,
people always looked down on her.
Woh-oi [grunt]
Woh-oi [grunt]
She was Poco, Obeah, and Xaymaca,
She was Maroon cutting swathes through the air
with her tambourine, holding court
with her drum and her hips
and her bottom catching the spirits.
She was the mix-up woman of this world,
straddled other worlds
wearing Converse All Stars
in her Sunday dress, pillar hat
and a gold-teeth that punctuated
her smile.
Roy McFarlane
Woh-oi is the opened mouth call,
head raised slightly back,
conch shell deliverance,
set the captives free,
ship-a-oi ending.
Mother Beckford was like a nanny
who slipped sweets in my hands
when nobody was looking, lived
on the 9th floor of Blakenhall flats,
and squeezed in the Austin Allegro
on the way back from church shouting
woh-oi at black cats and near misses.
Woh-oi [grunt]
Woh-oi [grunt]
She was the mad woman of the church
who made her presence known with woh-oi
and grunts she would hold deep
in her throat like whole mangoes,
and in the seasons of spirits
when the wind blew,
you’d hear those mangoes
drop, one by one, thump as they hit the floor.
She once thumped a man, broke his nose
for calling her nigger, would argue
with the elders when they
looked down on her,
people always looked down on her.
Woh-oi [grunt]
Woh-oi [grunt]
She was Poco, Obeah, and Xaymaca,
She was Maroon cutting swathes through the air
with her tambourine, holding court
with her drum and her hips
and her bottom catching the spirits.
She was the mix-up woman of this world,
straddled other worlds
wearing Converse All Stars
in her Sunday dress, pillar hat
and a gold-teeth that punctuated
her smile.
Roy McFarlane
The winning poems and Emma's comments
I would like to congratulate everybody who entered. Thank you for sending in all your wonderful poems. Submitting your work is in itself an action of positivity and commitment to your writing. The standard was really high. There were so many poems that were publishable, and the sort of thing I’d enjoy hearing in performance. I looked at each entry at least three times, and enjoyed that process immensely. But of course, the whittling down has to take place, and I lost poems that I loved, and there were poems that went by the by that I fully expected to win prizes elsewhere or be accepted in poetry magazines, so please don’t be disheartened if you didn’t win… pick yourself up, dust yourself off and resubmit to places until you find your poem’s home.
The poems that have been commended or placed have been read lots of times both silently, and out loud as I made a long list and then a shortlist and then a shorter shortlist. I left spaces between each read-through in case my mood changed, and to give me time to think about what I’d read. In terms of the poems picked, I’ve thought long and hard about why I like them. I hope you’ll like them too. Of course, judging is subjective to a degree, and another time I may have made connections and chosen other pieces. Poems speak to us differently at different times, and that is one of their many joys.
Second placed poem
John Gallas, Ruffled – there were a lot of covid poems, and a lot of environmental poems submitted for this competition as you might expect. This poem is perhaps neither and yet both. It’s ostensibly a walk in the wind. Its pace is measured and slow, as walking in the wind might be. It doesn’t put a foot wrong. It’s a piece that will stand many reads. There are layers of “ruffling” here. The use of language is wonderful. I particularly loved the compounded words, the kenning like nature of “squallblow”, “antisleek” and “featherflush” etc. It’s filmic (black and white in my mind), it’s sensory (windy, cold, well-lit). It is a poem of isolation (which is why it feels so relevant now perhaps), desolation and yet there is still beauty in it. I would like to read more from this poet.
Overall winning poem
Roy McFarlane, Nanny of the Black Country wearing Converse All Stars – like the second placed poem, the winning piece works on many levels. I loved this poem from the first read through. It’s set in the region that I come from which worried me, in so much as I didn’t want to be seen to be choosing a poem that came from home turf, but it kept nagging away at me and I kept returning to it again and again to re-read. In some ways this poem had to jump through more hoops to prove itself because of this regional connection between me and it. To be honest it could be set in any one of Britain’s multi-cultural towns or cities. Each time I read this poem I saw something different in it. Again, like the second placed poem, for me, I don’t think there is a word out of place here. It is a beautifully drawn character study. It is also a masterclass in how to say important things about race, about class, about social injustice by way of consummate storytelling. It’s a show don’t tell poem, with layers of symbolism. Everything in it works for its place. There’s a lot going on but nothing feels shoe-horned in. Within it there is history large and history small. It is another piece that rolled out before me like a film. It is a piece that works on the page and in the air. The chorus was a wonderful device to hold it together. It’s a poem that celebrates the extra-ordinary in the ordinary, a highly relevant poem about standing up for yourself, and a love poem to all the “Mother Beckfords” of this world.
The poems that have been commended or placed have been read lots of times both silently, and out loud as I made a long list and then a shortlist and then a shorter shortlist. I left spaces between each read-through in case my mood changed, and to give me time to think about what I’d read. In terms of the poems picked, I’ve thought long and hard about why I like them. I hope you’ll like them too. Of course, judging is subjective to a degree, and another time I may have made connections and chosen other pieces. Poems speak to us differently at different times, and that is one of their many joys.
Second placed poem
John Gallas, Ruffled – there were a lot of covid poems, and a lot of environmental poems submitted for this competition as you might expect. This poem is perhaps neither and yet both. It’s ostensibly a walk in the wind. Its pace is measured and slow, as walking in the wind might be. It doesn’t put a foot wrong. It’s a piece that will stand many reads. There are layers of “ruffling” here. The use of language is wonderful. I particularly loved the compounded words, the kenning like nature of “squallblow”, “antisleek” and “featherflush” etc. It’s filmic (black and white in my mind), it’s sensory (windy, cold, well-lit). It is a poem of isolation (which is why it feels so relevant now perhaps), desolation and yet there is still beauty in it. I would like to read more from this poet.
Overall winning poem
Roy McFarlane, Nanny of the Black Country wearing Converse All Stars – like the second placed poem, the winning piece works on many levels. I loved this poem from the first read through. It’s set in the region that I come from which worried me, in so much as I didn’t want to be seen to be choosing a poem that came from home turf, but it kept nagging away at me and I kept returning to it again and again to re-read. In some ways this poem had to jump through more hoops to prove itself because of this regional connection between me and it. To be honest it could be set in any one of Britain’s multi-cultural towns or cities. Each time I read this poem I saw something different in it. Again, like the second placed poem, for me, I don’t think there is a word out of place here. It is a beautifully drawn character study. It is also a masterclass in how to say important things about race, about class, about social injustice by way of consummate storytelling. It’s a show don’t tell poem, with layers of symbolism. Everything in it works for its place. There’s a lot going on but nothing feels shoe-horned in. Within it there is history large and history small. It is another piece that rolled out before me like a film. It is a piece that works on the page and in the air. The chorus was a wonderful device to hold it together. It’s a poem that celebrates the extra-ordinary in the ordinary, a highly relevant poem about standing up for yourself, and a love poem to all the “Mother Beckfords” of this world.
Emma's book Dogged is available from Ignite Books
https://ignitebooks.co.uk/products-page/emma-purshouses-books/
https://ignitebooks.co.uk/products-page/emma-purshouses-books/
Ruffled
The bogdamp fields of Finster’s 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 untaken land. I peer through the prickles.
A silverpuddled pond. A swan trying,
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 Substation Hill.
The gates are shut. The cables toss and whine.
Across the tops the electric hum
thrashes past me with a sudden whoop
and hangs me by my hood up on the chickenwire
and slings a plastic bag across my eyes.
*
John Gallas
www.johngallaspoetry.co.uk/
