THE WINNER OF THE FIRST CHRISTMAS FORTNIGHT PRIZE IS...

well, first, the shortlist... longer than usual because the poems were so impressive...

POETS SHORTLISTED FOR THE SPECIAL CHRISTMAS FORTNIGHT PRIZE 

1.     Ashish Kumar – ‘Jackfruit’
2.     Catherine Edmunds – 'Caney The Clown'
3.     Chris Kerr – ‘The Lorelei’
4.     Drew Milne – ‘Having A Pepsi With You’
5.     James Finnegan – 'Early December walk'
6.     Janet Dean – ‘Pin the Night’
7.     Jo Burns – 'Christmas Shelter'
8.     Jose Varghese –‘The Boy from the Mountains’
9.     Linda McKenna – 'Christmas Day on the Lord Sidmouth'
10.Marisa Silva-Dunbar –‘Body Parts’
11.Meg Eden – ‘Instructions for Speaking in Tongues’
12.Megan Pattie – ‘In Blakeney’
13.Molly Bess Rector –‘Retail Therapy’
14.Shadab Hashmi – ‘Empire Ekphrasis’
15.Siobhan Flynn – ‘Christmas baking without my mother’
16.Sofia Hafeji (Pen name Sofia Amina) – ‘1947. 2014. 2016.’
17.Teresa Godfrey – 'Waiting Game'
18.Zachary D’mitri Jackson – ‘Crucible’


The first prize is £240.

THERE WILL BE A SECOND AND THIRD PLACE PRIZE OF £48 AND £24.

The winner is:

Jo Burns – 'Christmas Shelter'

Second Place goes to:

Ashish Kumar – ‘Jackfruit’

and Third Place to:

Drew Milne – ‘Having A Pepsi With You’

Winning poems and poet biographies appear below.

Judges' brief comments:

Of course, all prizes are inherently preposterous - as Bob Holman famously says, the best poem never wins... and presumably, is not entered, or even written; and what best means is perversely impossible to pin down (which is a good thing). That being said, each moment in time the human mind is called upon to choose one act over another, and, as such, one ethical stance over another - an ethics of engagement with the world, experience, texts, entertainments, histories, ideologies... and since choice seems hard-wired into Being itself, to refuse to choose poems one would prefer to spend time with is vaguely dishonest. Would I repeat-watch Touch of Evil by Welles? Yes. Dukes of Hazzard - probably not... tempting though that may be. Will I re-read Dickinson, or Hill, or Pound? Yes. Will I re-read an already-thumbed Agatha Christie (enjoyed once, albeit)? Maybe not. Aesthetics is a branch of ethics, or perhaps economics, or both, in so far as it requires choice. In that spirit, here we go...

As usual, the Fortnight brings out a lot of talent, from all parts of the world where poets write poetry in English, which is everywhere (for good and ill) and this time was no exception. Some poets selected to submit religious, or Christmas, or seasonal poems, or a mix, others, like Milne and Kumar, seemed to focus less on one occasion than the idea of the poem as an occasion, or relating to one.

The three winning poems are all momentous, and serious, and very humane, even ethical, though in various ways, and, as Eyewear is eclectic, their commitment to differing poetic strategies is welcomed.

Burns' is perhaps the most searing of the three, and too good, and appropriately-times, not to demand attention; its ability to fuse critique and compassion made it deeply vital.

Kumar's exuberant work has something of the mouth-music of Heaney; it asks to be tasted. The succulence, and the imagery, is astonishing, and wholly convincing; that it is as much a meditation on its own deliciousness, as a mere simulacrum of such, is all the better.

Milne is a significant experimental poet, and critic, and this is a poem that, in the year of the death of Ashbery, refers to the New York School style, but is also very much its own beast. This sort of linguistic play across levels of discourse is impressive, when handled with skill, and Milne delivers the goods here - this is, ahem, the real, fizzing, thing, to ape the rhetoric of mainstream poetry blurbology.

So, three superb poems. A true Christmas bounty. Enjoy.

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Jo Burns - Christmas Shelter

In the refugee arrival facility

Beyond German Christmas market crowds,

evergreens slump useless, waiting to be crowned,

wishing a star, to grace new homes, to stand

tall and grand, spread out and proud.

Joseph finds it loud in the Unterkunft,

amidst grief. Only those displaced understand.

Penned-in days stretch into nothing, Fata Morgana

is tattered, his wife and child left behind.

His sorrow is foreign to us. His losses profound.

Then Mary skypes, from one of the orients

we’ve heard of, telling him this might be the last time

they speak. Her journey preparations are cancelled

and now, she and the boy are holding on to belief,

hoping faith will be the nails barricading doors

when night falls in and the soldiers storm.

The line crackles. Joseph hangs his head, in Asylum.

TV in the communal living room plays jingles for stores,

while families reunite in peace and good tidings.

In front of fairy lights, blinking, he cries

his son’s name. The angel on the Christmas pine stares,

wide-eyed. Overseas snow drops in frozen blood.

And here, in Frankfurt, another year is rolled up

to the Main, where swans huddle in puffed-up down,

accustomed to history’s repeat and sounds

of cracking. No one hears until Winter drives

the desperate from ice into our undergrowth.  Wires

plead overhead, as we melt into our concrete shells.

From the sandstone church, bell soliloquys ring

above walls, empty streets. Branches hang bare and thick  

over those whose last comfort was to arrive. Alive.

Born in Northern Ireland in 1976, Jo Burns studied biomedical science. She now lives in Germany. Jo's poetry has been widely published, most recently in The Interpreter's House, Southword and The High Window. Work is forthcoming in Acumen, Aesthetica and The Ogham Stone among others. A Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, Jo is one of Eyewear Publishing's Best New British and Irish Poets 2017. She was shortlisted for the Belfast Book Festival Mairtin Crawford Award and won the Shirley McClure Poetry Prize at the Irish Writers Festival in Los Gatos, CA.

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Ashish Kumar - Jackfruit

This was the ferocious time: a half-hour

long as a season in a place without seasons, 

jammed between math and social studies. 

In the backyard the trees put forth miracles

that bulbed sticky defiance, warrantless

and fantastic. The fruit were larger than the sun

and weighed as much, it seemed: on the ground,

they were luminous extensions of the Earth.

The flies were our conclave; our hands held

no terror. We laughed as the fruit burst against

the old school-wall, their weight like meteors against

our chests. On the concrete, spangled white bodies

in their hundreds, taut with life not so much tiny

as vehement. They leapt: hardened into fat whorls,

jewel-like, taut glossy fists that flickered into air

made alive with our shouting—as if in coming

into light hitherto unencountered, light which struck

like revelation, which banged off the windows

of the music-rooms, their forms had engorged

themselves against the noon, taken protest,

acquired new and livid purpose.

These days, this is what scares me: raw sense as trauma,

narration as surrender, days that slough off

into memory and despite it. Ordinary, faithless hatred

of life on the pavement, its struggle between

children’s fingers, of fruit exploded beneath the

sky. Shall I try to keep a speck of myself innocent,

fat and white, despite time? After all, flies keep

their private counsel, the worms do due diligence,

and even the trees demand no restitution.

Kumar was born in Singapore and obtained a BA in law and LLM from the University of Cambridge, graduating in 2015. Kumar currently works in Bangkok for UNESCO. Their poems have previously been published in The Kindling.

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HAVING A PEPSI WITH YOU

is even more fun than open mic poetry

or singing old adverts or dining out

 on the souls of plankton in fish pie

or being sick to the stomach all giddy

for the prospect of the latest chapbook

announcing that the revolution

has got going at last and not a moment too soon

for alliances to a once and future song

oh I’d like to teach the world to dance

to move so beautifully that activism

becomes the new ballet and fizzy drinks

are no more baby shambles than hot yoga

is the best way of spending sugar rage

while all plans to replenish greenwash

come as nought but fizzing distraction

just as out of the mouths of ideology 

flow forth great glugs of contradiction

such as the watersheds to be protected

from the industrial manufacture of rot

we’re talking remediation for river banks

and the viability scenarios of capital

chortle chortle cue handkerchiefs here

but there is more need of water than

there is water to go around and drought

is a polite word for systematic thefts

amid the carbon output of factory pop

in the distribution of total extraction

or shifts that would make them old news

part of the map of oblivion abstracted

and oh so flat over the coffee table

joined together by the black waters

and dark cocktails of a branded world 

Drew Milne was born in 1964 and grew up in Scotland. He lives and works in Cambridge with his wife, Redell Olsen, and two children. In 1995 he was Writer in Residence at the Tate Gallery, London. His books of poetry include Sheet Mettle (1994), Bench Marks (1998), The Damage (2001), Mars Disarmed (2001), and Go Figure (2003), and, with John Kinsella, Reactor Red Shoes (2013). His collected poems, entitled In Darkest Capital were published by Carcanet in 2017. He edited Marxist Literary Theory (1996), with Terry Eagleton, and Modern Critical Thought (2003). Since 1997 he’s been the Judith E Wilson Lecturer in Drama & Poetry, Faculty of English, University of Cambridge.

 

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all poems published with permission of their authors

and copyright 2017