Winners Announced in the Annual KES Poetry Competition

This year’s Poetry Competition was judged by poet and journalist Imogen Russell Williams and inspired by her debut poetry anthology The Women Left Behind – a collection of verse written from the perspective of the marginalised or silenced women of literature – Rosaline from Romeo and Juliet, Louisa from Hard Times, Piggy’s Aunt from Lord of the Flies. This inspired the theme of this year’s competition: Unheard Voices. 

The chance to give voice to the voiceless really resonated with KES pupils, with more entries pouring in than ever before. Imogen found the task of judging incredibly hard. ‘I was exceptionally impressed (not to mention made terrified and envious) by the standard of the work submitted - there was a turn of phrase or an image I found arresting in every poem I read,’ said our judge. ‘The environmental and political passion was also hugely inspiring, as well as the deep-felt empathy for others.’

All the award-winning poems will be published in the KES 2020 edition of Anthology, along with the winners of the Short Story Competition which was launched in a special World Book Day Assembly this week. The theme will be ‘The Other Side of the Story’ and entries are due in by the end of term! So, congratulations to our winning poets and get scribbling those stories!

Year 7-8 Category

Highly Commended:

The Voices Beyond the Land and Sky by Patrick Hewett

I liked the sense of scale in the oceanic chorus here, the 'bull of abyssal-black' and 'symphonies of long-forgotten chords'. It reminded me of stories of drowned towns in fairy tales - very atmospheric and powerful.

31st January 2020 by Joseph Walker

The simplicity of the repeated verbs, the impact of the single-word lines (‘Vulnerable,/Restricted,/Diminished’), the clever use of brackets to isolate (me) within the line - all convey sadness and anger and defiance with great aplomb. A proper heartbreaker.

A Sailor's Voice by Isla Byrne

I love the assurance with which you interweave Binyon's lines with yours, and the passion with which you champion the less-remembered war dead. Very poignant.

Voldemort the Misunderstood by Elijah Fraser

As a confirmed Potterhead, this delighted me. The repetition of 'trust me' in the last line of each stanza, the sly (but justified!) advocacy for the most feared dark wizard of all time - I bet this poem would be brilliant in performance, bringing out all its guileful humour.

Runners Up:

Barcodes by Anna Winkelman

The form here - with the columns of text to evoke a barcode - really adds to the meaning and impact of the poem. The sense of place is very successful - all the detail of the cars, the cashier, and Marilyn misplacing her broccoli 'for the second time'; and the culmination in the 'kind of light that comes from a scanner when it/ Recognises  a barcode', that moment of connection, is superb.

Unheard Voices by Jeremy Hewett

 I love the way the refrain anchors this poem, and the refrain itself ("Just a fern, barely seen/Unheard voice of green.") The scope of the poem is so ambitious and includes so many striking images - the 'hawk sized dragonflies', 'whispering wheels of leaves', 'jurassic bluster' - what a great phrase! The sense of sizzling anger and reproach to humanity for wrecking so much havoc in such a short time also comes across all the more strongly for the quiet voice of the fern, almost hidden at the poem's end. Lovely.

Winner:

Goldfinch by Lawrence Moore

I love the balance of humour and threat in this poem - the intensely birdlike behaviours ("gorging themselves on peanuts", "they all went into a flap") and invented vocab like "squirps" are deeply evocative. The meditative goldfinch narrator, set apart from the other feeding birds as the only thinking witness to the sparrow's death, is compelling, and the division into uneven stanzas, with assured variation in line length, gives it shape and cohesion. It reminded me a bit of Ted Hughes' Hawk Roosting. The final rhyme just nails it home. Wow!

Year 12-13 Category

Highly Commended: 

The Emerald Necklace - Regina Beaufort by Poppy Wreford Brown

Abandonment, shame and bitterness come through strongly here, and the use of colour, from the emerald necklace of envy to the bright yellow roses of triumph to the adulterous scarlet letter, provides a nice understated progression. I love the last two lines, coupling the shame of notoriety with the bitterness of being forgotten.

Come Home, Soldier by Madeleine Williams

The idea of the narrator as a drifting ghost, a detached, dream-haunting phantom, is a powerful one, and the hinge of the poem, the middle stanza with the emphatically repeated 'MARCH ON', suggests the compulsion which has led to that feeling. I like the warm note of hope at the end.

Runners Up:

A Look Out the Window by Tess Xiao

The mirroring of the opening and closing verses, demonstrating the narrator's gradual change in attitude, the metamorphosis from 'unfortunately' to 'fortunately', is sophisticated and works well. I really like the repetition of "I hit send..." - something about that ellipsis perfectly evokes the uncertain feeling of sending a text!

Pen by Ally Darnton

A playful take on a villanelle, with some superb images and lovely progressions ("Spider's scrawl upon a canvas of white/A web of ideas on an envelope") to suggest the infinite possibilities contained within a pen, whether '"dreamy" or "fatal". Elegant! 

Winner:

Lily of the Valley by Meg Lintern

Some gorgeous imagery and description here, that feels almost tangible - "glowing with/submissive cordiality", "frost-fanged winds", "sweat-thick air". There's also a delicacy throughout which really evokes the idea of the girl-as-flower, fragile and shortlived. Lovely.

Year 9-11 Category

Highly Commended:

Entomological Warfare by Rafee Jabarin

The contrasts in this poem work really well, from the "polka dot dresses" of the ladybirds to the tanks of woodlice. You do a great job of evoking a whole plethora of insect life fighting and devouring each other -and I love the tiny font and the drifting white butterfly at the end, suggesting perhaps that's all humans can perceive.

Unheard Voices by Alfie Myers

I really like the moment here when the narrator's voice 'kicks in' ("But when I shot it felt slow/As I squeezed my finger on the trigger,"). That movement from the general to the particular, and then all the ways in which we go on to see the narrator - as vain young would-be hero, shell-shocked survivor, relic and dusty toy - do a great job of conveying the complex cost of war.

The Expedition by Joe Reece

Your use of rhyme is very evocative, especially the half-rhyme 'softly'/'frothy' - a lovely juxtaposition of a mother's tenderness with waves whose 'froth' is deceptive and dangerous. I like the way you go from rhyming second and fourth lines to rhyming first and third, enabling you to end on that dramatic colon - it perhaps encourages the reader to fill in a final line rhyming 'cried' with 'died', leaving your struggling passengers forever trapped in a limbo between life and death. It's clearly a passionately felt poem, and it packs a real punch.

Runners Up:

Muses From the Mouse of Abbey Road by Ed Goodwin

This concept just makes me smile helplessly. The cocky little mouse, with his authoritative voice ("I told him that I did not like it.", "They listen to me." "Rude.") and his high opinion of himself as music critic (I was trying to work out who might have listened, and who ignored his criticism!) I like the diary dates to give shape, and the absurd humour of the whole thing.

My Butterfly Called Hope by Grace Burn

This poem vividly calls up both a sense of suffering ("harrowing toil", "melancholy hours", "dehydrated days of work in the sun") and the tiny flutter of hope that allows the narrator to survive it. It feels precarious - the repetition of the idea that the butterfly 'might just fly away' emphasises how easy it would be to give up - but also strong. A moving poem, honouring truly unheard voices.

Winner and Overall Winner of the Poetry Competition 2020

O My Lady (based on Grendel's mother) by Elise Withey

The idea of giving voice to a 'monstrous' female character is always my cup of tea - and if I'd written this poem, I'd be incredibly proud. The line breaks, deployed with such rightness and assurance - the imagery of the pondweed hair and pebble eyes, evoking the queen of the hinterland spaces - "the places between" – gave me SHUDDERS of delight! I've read it over and over again and it gets better every time. Every word and phrase carries the right weight, from the drama of the gathering conflict to the glorious detail of the 'shore-ghost' heron and the moorhen's 'clamour of feathers'. And the last three lines – ASTONISHING! Write more, for goodness' sake.

O My Lady (based on Grendel’s mother)

From the reeds I came,
pale and silent and dripping, my
lips blue as bracken flowers. Hair clung
like pondweed to my face, and from behind it
my eyes glinted black, two river pebbles
polished smooth by the stream.

Through the reeds I came,
and the lilies snaked up my neck to
crown my ragged head. Queen, the midges
whined, darting arrow-like across the ripples.
Queen of the bogs and fenlands, queen of
the moors and the swamps and
the places between.

To the shore I came,
and you trembled, fell still. For there was
marshfire in my eyes, burning the cold blue
of sea-ice, of winter sunshine. Choked by the muddy
water, the faint daylight seemed a distant memory.
The promise of violence slid slick and oily
through the marsh.

To you I came,
and the sword gleamed cold in your hand. Bright
steel, forged by peat and marshfire and perhaps
a little magic, that too. A heron bowed its
long neck, shore-ghost, and a moorhen
took flight in a clamour of feathers.

To you I came,
and there was silence in the cave. My eyes
shone like lamps in the darkness. A mother’s hatred
burnt in those hollows, and slowly –
slowly – a smile split my face like a wound.
With my son’s blood on your blade,
with death singing through my marsh,
you came to me.