The theme for this year’s National Poetry Day in the UK is stars. In conjunction with this, the Poetry Society ran a competition with the theme stripes for Stanza members.
I often wonder how judges can hope to choose ‘the best’ of a competition’s entries when all the poems are different styles and topics, so I definitely like competitions that either suggest a theme or demand a specific poetic form, as I feel there is then at least one identifiable point of comparison.
Or perhaps it’s simply that it makes it easier for me to choose which piece to submit to which competition.
I had no poems ready on the topic of stripes, so had to write a new one. In fact, I built one out of old fragments. And if you look at the results on Poetry Society web page, you’ll find it was commended. The winners are online, and the commended poems can be downloaded. This was my entry:
Lines as the sun rises above the pine copse
Dark across the lawn
gangling shadows stretch
between the honey promises
of cloverUnder the hedge
a cross-hatched fret of grey
hems brightening greenTucked in ivy dark
humbug snails hide
from the piercing sunOn the verandah
a single wasp investigates
a cricket corpseUpwards to the summer sky
two iridescent flies
spiral round a barley-sugar twist
of vibrant air.
And now I had better get back to working on a piece about the seasons and a Petrarchan sonnet, which are next on my list of competition themes.
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