2017 Winners and shortlist

Kurt Cobain Proposes to Courtney Love, TJs, Newport, December 1991

Some young dude staggering from the station,
all jeans and grimace, all tufty coat
and peep-toe sneakers – that’s nothing
new around these parts. He rubs
his eyes, approaches this first stranger:
Excuse me, do you know the way to a place
called TJs? That voice
he has. A mile away, Courtney

Love is sound checking, warming up. Rain
comes down as he passes the ruined
castle, crosses the bridge
statistics say more than fifty people
will jump from that year. Nevermind
has been Billboard #1
for six weeks now. What
exactly does a human being do

with that much love? I am four
miles away and twelve years old, and Kurt Cobain
is walking through Newport, three years
too early for me. At the door
of TJs, his nose-ringed
biggest fan in the world
just tells him the price, stamps
his hand. Inside,

his eyes accustom and he spots
her, at the bar, back to the room. Her
mane. Her little girl’s
dress. People are brought into being by moments
like this: Kurt Cobain is crossing
the room in TJs, Newport, is falling
to his knees. The cold
floor through ripped jeans. The barman leaps

across the counter to deal
with some punter, and the bouncer,
grinning, gets in the way
as one girl punches another. Of course,
there are those who say all this is folklore,
legend, gossiped up by someone
with a romantic imagination
or a marketing background. I am twelve years old

and dreaming in a room lined with posters
of footballers and, on Newport Bridge,
a couple are walking hand-in-hand,
the man pausing now, perhaps, to light
a cigarette. In that sudden spark,
someone passing might almost glimpse his face,
before he turns away,
before he walks again into the dark.

Jonathan Edwards

Stay

A dog’s shadow crosses the park, let loose
off its black lead it sniffs and is sole
eyewitness to empty booze bottles
tangled in nettles; the necromancy
and parliament of the previous evening
where we exercised our shadow dogs
on the slopes up to the smashed-glass hothouse,
fearing their size in the heartthrob dusk,
their stilt legs stretched and monstrous
as the sun sat obediently down.

Natalie Whittaker

Mary Wants To Sleep With The Painter, But Pretends Otherwise
(with thanks to St Paul’s Cathedral)

Mary has crooked toes and
a belly full of bread

Mary is tired of people
painting her pretty,
she is the last mouthful
of a home cooked meal
but this does not mean
she is devourable

Mary sings with the silence
between bells, she is
the aftermath of music
the way dust looks
like powdered gold
under warm light

Mary is a building
that longs to be abandoned
but still stays full with people

she is tired of being
strung across the walls
of rooms she cannot undress in

Mary is naked
hidden in a stone closet
that cannot be seen from
the inside or out

Mary has nipples like Jesus
Mary bleeds into a cloth
it stains in the shape of
her own face

Mary’s lips are sketched silent her thighs are torn pages
her menstrual blood stains
red, like the Bible

Mary gives birth
is only a mother
never again a woman

which is to say,
she is a sacrament
that cannot be eaten,
only admired

the painter tells Mary to put her clothes back on
wipes her lipstick off, says “you must be holy”

he does not understand
how a woman is a place of worship
even when her womb is empty
even if she speaks in sin

the woman has crooked toes
and a belly full of bread
someone calls her “Mary”
she walks away from them

Maddie Godfrey

Memory Talkies

On the road leading away from Florence,
a woman is screaming at a man with a Picasso face.
Shaking his head and half-shutting the door,
he walks inside the house,
leaving her alone at the stoop, smoking.
She is trembling like the skeleton
of a snail being picked clean by a colony of ants.
The driveway leads to a gate
and a child is attempting to swing it open,
his face a smeared version of a Botticelli angel.
Old men in Kolkata, reading newspapers, smoking,
and solving the world’s problems
are facsimiling in the suburbs of this city,
while Cypress trees fingers point skywards, apportioning blame.
Buttery light pouring over miles of yet-to-be-harvested farms
with stakes at their hearts dusks the days to evenings.
In Montefioralle, a woman named Margherita offers me
a gooseberry-colored plum, while her husband tugs
at her attention like clothespins before a thunderstorm.
I am back in the city that led a crushed Independence Mutiny,
failing with my mother in convincing my father
 to let her go for a conference, alone.
Who will take care of everything,
he asks, even now,
a dozen years after her dying.

Jonaki Ray

Halcyon

When I give my father my poem he
translates it to Greek.
Each word teethes in his mouth.
He insists on the unknown: pree-ci-pai-ce,
I explain: γκρεμός, an abrupt,
rugged mountain-side.
In the afternoon shadow I see him again
as I did as a girl in the top-heavy dark
of his office: lofty, daunting,
like a gargoyle poring over his law books.
He continues, points out as he thinks
a verb is missing. When he stumbles
on ‘halcyon’ he stops and Iooks at me.
Smiling, he recites the myth of Alcyone,
describes how Aeolus reined in
his winds for a week every year to make space
for his kingfisher-daughter to lay her eggs
by the placid sea. I nod
but persist on the nuance of the English
word I intended. Calm, he repeats
and starts again with the myth.
When he comes to the silence at the end of the page
it’s like tuning into the static after a glance
at a report card or an indifferent Christmas gift.
I knew almost all the words, he says.

Later, there’s a tone to his voice I’ve never heard
when he calls to discuss metaphor.

Vasiliki Albedo

Notes For A Canary Fancier

When you first bring the canary home,
let it enter the cage by itself, let it hop
from the travelling box to its new frame:
real-life, four-chambered heart pouring
and nothing.

Call it home, this shiny home, its teeth
bare not in hostility, but in eternity;
none of its four walls are missing –
let it enter voluntarily, leap closer
to the soft wood perches, a tray for food,

another for water. Let it breathe,
pass by the mirror,
surface its own loneliness, sink
into the air of your house
surrounding its house.

Look at its feet.
Find what they know
more than two strays praying.
Find how you can't unsee them –
praying, blessed as they are,

with moist biscuit and egg.
Now find the door and close it.
Now wait. The yellow wait
is when you bring Africa
to your living room

and wait. For the song will come.
And in one of the chambers
she will wake up
and show you
her whipping scars.

Iulia David