Lymington Arts Festival Solstice Poetry Competition Winners 2010

Over 400 people were involved in the Lymington Arts Festival Solstice Poetry Competition this year and entries came from all over the United Kingdom including the Isle of Harris and the Isle of Man, the Isle of Wight and the mainland!

The standard was high which made judging an interesting but immensely enjoyable task. If we can find the funds we will publish an anthology but for now the winners are here.

Thanks to all who took part; look out for next year's competition.

Winner : Phil Powley – Winter Solstice

WINTER SOLSTICE

There is no better place to be than here
as the year turns, on this shortest day.
On my right hand the Solent still and grey,
and to my left the marsh pools polar clear.
There is a stillness to the untrained eye
that fails to spot a distant skein of geese
fall from the skies on farming land to feast
like grazing herds on winter wheat and rye.
But now, close by, a lapwing rises, falls,
performs an acrobatic roll and fades
away as starlings launch a sudden raid
with bustling wings and imitative calls.

Across the water lights in Yarmouth glow
as white phantasmal ferries come and go.

Runner – up : Joanna Grigg - Chanctonbury Ring

When we opened the basket of birds we' carried
between us up the steep hill to Chanctonbury
on that solstice evening
we had not thoughts for their direction,

we just wanted to see freedom after months of arguing
about its colour and form. And this was our solution –
while others wore robes and chanted
we held cans of beer

beside the open basket and watched
our symbols fly. What we'd wanted I can't say
apart from, each of us,
vindication that the I was right,

that the I was cleverer than the you . But as those birds flustered out
and we sat abruptly back on the dry mud
at the top of the Ring
while in the background druids droned,

we were skewed with the tackenabackness
of spectators at a circus,
beer foaming down our fingers
and the birds' wings stroking our cheeks.

We saw not only freedom, in the arching of each bird's neck,
in the powerful downpull of each muscle
creaking after imprisonment;
but we felt it, on our faces

and within us. we saw each other
across the basket, saw something
in the other's face we hadn't known,
alongside the solstice magic,

the cold attraction of beer, the strange sounds of the druids
and that look in the eyes of birds
tasting the wind
that we could never taste.

Third place: Norma Meacock – Standstill (Winter Solstice)

Standstill (Winter Solstice)

Outside, sharp intake of cold air;
her fingers freeze to the woodshed latch.
Numb to the touch they grip the helve
as she splits the logs with the sharpened axe

then stands a minute to stretch and stare
at a vista of pasture deep in snow.
She rests in the isolation there.
In the wait of winter the earth below

allows a spacious and cold respite,
harvest and seed alike interred.
Silence lengthens from earth to sky.
Only the snow and a lone bird.