2nd Prize winning poems

George Crabbe Memorial Competition 2015 – Second Prize Adjudicator: Robert Seatter After Liz Berry I’m the last lady eel catcher, know the waterwaysas well as the veins in my wrist, spend my daysgoing up and down the river like a bead sliding on a string. At sunset I setmy trapsContinue Reading

Crabbe Memorial Competition 2018 – Second Prize Adjudicator: André Mangeot for GWW A poet showed me round his violin.He held it with a reverence all his own. His teacher left it to him in her will. The fingerboard is smoothest ebony.A poet showed me round his violin. Two types ofContinue Reading

The George Crabbe Memorial Poetry Competition 1996 Crabbe Memorial Competition – Second Prize Adjudicators: Susan Wicks and William Scammell Here cometh the scarecrows. They drift in from lonely farmsteadstired of drunken farmersand the relentlessness of the weatherthe high spirits of country children exhausted by crows they gather on the lawnsContinue Reading

The George Crabbe Memorial Poetry Competition1997 Crabbe Memorial Competition – Second PrizeAdjudicator: Jo Shapcott For three weeks I have been walking,Away from my village, my history and my home.I have left my garden behind me.There the ground is full of the ochra and the beansThat I planted, and watered, andContinue Reading

The George Crabbe Memorial Poetry Competition1998 Crabbe Memorial Competition – Second PrizeAdjudicators: Martyn Crucefix and Judith Kazantzis Beyond the Assembly Hall, Nolly’s classroom for Classics – five windowfulls of a cedar’s lower branches. Alwaysa stampede when the bell went – cues, triangles, scoreboard markers sent travelling back to zero, theContinue Reading

The George Crabbe Memorial Poetry Competition1999 Crabbe Memorial Competition – Second PrizeAdjudicator: John Mole Bones have a cool, carved brilliancewithin the ebb and flow of flesh:age, not appetite, is their undoing.Oblivious to the excessesof fitness, fashion and foodthey remain slim yet curvaceous.She’s wise, she knows that bonesare the true mirrorContinue Reading

The George Crabbe Memorial Poetry Competition2000 Crabbe Memorial Competition – Second PrizeAdjudicator: Anthony and Ann Thwaite The “Chicken Girl”they called you, those whose tutted, cluckedbut wouldn’t “interfere” or helpthe mother who, moustached retard,couldn’t cope, left you at home all day,all night, with feathered foster aunts.Among the dust, the dried sickContinue Reading

The George Crabbe Memorial Poetry Competition2001 Crabbe Memorial Competition – Second PrizeAdjudicator: Anne Beresford The hand is raised.Clay and water dribble down the fingersSettling darkly beneath the broken nails.Her hand. My hand. Your hand. Fingers touch across the gapBut leaves no matching lines.Prints dry though the ambitions wither.Languages may dieContinue Reading

The George Crabbe Memorial Poetry Competition2002 Crabbe Memorial Competition – Second PrizeAdjudicator: Rodney Pybus Opposite me on the tubemy father’s ghost looked tired.He’s been shopping, posthumouslythe bags at his feet not quite real. He’s hard to see, but I can tellhis soul’s wrapped stillin the worsted coathe said would lastContinue Reading