Thursday 10 April 2014

Sussex Poets

Delighted to have written this one a few years ago. Even more delighted that it won the Sussex Poets Competition, judged by John McCullough



Graffiti 

I will write my name with a lump of steam coal
on the side of a lorry parked up at a roadside caff.
Or with raw steel, pig iron, scraped on a fence
newly painted. Or fence-paint itself, stolen,
smeared on a sheet drying on a line,
flapping its pleas to the breeze.
Or in black earth churned to mud 
with water from the outside tap 
that rattles against the bricks. 
Or coded in the click of stilettos
tapping the night away on paving slabs,
like the stick of the blind man who catches
the voice of the marshalling yards carried on the wind,
and hears the clinking of a chain ferry.


Collage made by the Rottingdean Writers Group, who organised the competition


'The Farmyard' by Philip Bentall took second place, and third place was awarded to  'Everest' by Brian Fogarty. 
The winning poems can be read here, on the Brighton and Hove Arts Council website -  http://www.bh-arts.org.uk/2013-sussex-poets-competition

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5 comments:

  1. So good to see your feisty poem making a name for itself.

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  2. Congratulations! Get that one framed up nicely and kept in storage somewhere safe! That win is going to be one for the grandkids :)

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