Poetry Competition 2005

On a balmy August night as part of Bideford Folk Festival, the festival Poetry Competition and title Festival Poet 2005 was won by Bideford folk singer and poet, Len Stevens, with his poem ‘Headroom'.

In addition to the £50 worth of Walter Henry's Book Tokens Len was the first recipient of the perpetual ‘Tappit Hen Tankard', kindly donated by David Wyre of Wyre Engravers & Jewellers of Mill Street , Bideford.

The prizes were presented on the night by Farren Gainer the ‘Bard of Exeter' dressed in his robes of office. Farren had previously entertained us with two sets of his unique ‘theatre de la veritie'. The Second prize of £25 worth of Walter Henry Book Tokens was won by James Bell with his poem ‘The Wren'. The Third prize of £10 worth of Walter Henry's Book Tokens was won by Marianne Richards with her poem ‘Sky'. Other readers at the Poetry event held in Tantons, Kipling Suite were local poets; Frances Thompson, Mary Maher, Jeremy Bell and Di Calvert, who also judged the competition.

1st Prize

Headroom by Len Stevens

What if these tiny points of light
We call the stars
Were unthought thoughts
Ideas in embryo hovering in the mindless pools of space?
A vast silent womb
This black ocean with its timeless tides
Washing over the imprint
Of some spaceman's boot
(That small step for mankind is already
Just a dusty memory
Of an expensive holiday
On a dead dry rock)
The others still wait in vain
For some fertile brain
To explode these bright encrusted suns
Upon an apathetic world
And shock us into new orbits.

They need no instruments
To track their weightless walks,
Slapped into life
Hanging head down
To whimper softly round our ears
Or bawl raucously on bare nerve-ends
Curdling the blood-shot eye-flesh
Skin taut-drawn across the cheekbones
Eyelids drooping dreaming drifting back
To Mother Earth
We plod along our peasant paths
And curl up again
Comfortable and shut away

---A close confinement
What if these tiny points of light
Were
Unthought thoughts
Ideas in embryo?
We'd let them die
or contracept them
Before we'd let them burst
Into those mindless pools of space
We call our heads.

2nd Prize

The Wren by James Bell  
Each time we visit there is the need,
like everywhere else on earth, for water,
 
for shelter, and warmth around our feet –
each time there is a note of survival
 
in air that is not urban fresh, is fresher
than clear days in a town or city
 
and this is a best beyond all others;
though it has too become an element of desire.
 
Each time I have to unlock the shed
to turn the water on, listen for the miracle
 
and idly flash the light over our seasoned wood
we will need for warming us this late or
 
early in the year just come or gone –
usually then there is a sound, a flutter
 
of small wings I home my torch in on.
Each time it has become a ritual to greet
 
one another with a short time of silence,
as one's small claws cling to wood then
 
disappear into the woodpile, the other to go,
quietly retire and switch some electricity on.
 

3rd Prize

Sky (after an experience of clear air turbulence in a motor glider)
 
Let no-one underestimate the power of sky
she's as fickle as a woman
and we're her playthings when we fly.
 
When truly crossed the signs are clear,
and she's best left alone,
dark-faced, she glowers in her rage,
leave her be to rant and moan
 
Some days her mantle blue lies soft,
the sun lights up her face,
her gentle breath lifts us aloft,
we rise into her soft embrace.
 
But do beware those dev'lish moods,
which lure us to her den,
where she coaxes us and lets us go so far with her…
but then…
gives vent to some imagined slight
pursues us with a frightening might
we beg her loose her grip so tight
 
and let us slink back home,
 
To catch our breath
and still our pulse.
Relieved to land and walk away-
we'll try again another day.