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iYeats poetry competition winners announced

Judges Vincent Woods and Rita Ann Higgins have chosen the winners of the Hawk's Well's second iYeats Poetry Competition. The number and the standard of entries was very high and the winners have been invited to read their poems at a prize-giving ceremony at the Hawk's Well on Monday 26th July, during the Yeats International Summer School. You can read the winning poems below.

 iYeats Poetry Competition Winner

Jane Clarke: Light House Keeper

Emerging Talent Winner

Matthew Ryan Shelton: Nostos

Highly Commended

Jane Clarke: Resin and Gaza

Lizann Gorman: Let Us Take The Chair

Michael Farry: Townlands

Richard Begbie: Cape of Wishes

Mags Treanor: View From A Ditch

Shirley McClure: Labels

Connie Roberts: Quiet Time

Diane Myers: Beating the Bounds

Richard Halperin: Croke Park

Winifred Mc Nulty: Mahon

 

Light House Keeper, by Jane Clarke

 It's twenty years now since they unmanned the lantern,

 

left it unwatched and sent me away,

and still I dream of that broad beam of light

sweeping the white caps, combing the waves.

 

Some summer's day take the ferry to Clare Island,

see a black and white tower overlooking Clew Bay,

where I first heard my mother say the rosary for sailors,

watched her fry herring on the wood-burning stove.

 

Where myself and my father cleaned rain-battered windows,

polished brass instruments till they gleamed like stars,

peered through the telescope at kittiwakes and guillemots,

searched for the Seven Sisters in dark, winter skies.

 

These landlocked days I'm washed up like wreckage,

remembering gannets diving for mackerel,

grey seals sleeping on rocks pummelled smooth,

echoes of footsteps on spiral stone stairs.

 

And all I could wish for is tussocks of sea pinks,

a cormorant poised on perimeter wall,

the boom of the foghorn,

howl of wind hammering on iron-cast front door.

©  Jane Clarke

 

Nostos, by Matthew Ryan Shelton

         i. The Wanderer

We saw him we did, my brother Jimmy and me

Down by Ciarán's Well.  Seven times round he made

The Turas Deiseal, like the sun.

I'd seen him once before

Nearby Dún Aonghasa on a rusty bike,

 

Watching the walls.  When he let slip from his fingers

The last stone he went to the lip of the well.

Dipped his hand he did in clear cool water and drank.

Jimmy palmed a rock, but I shook my head.

He pocketed it with a word to himself.

 

The man took water to his face then,

And the back of his neck.  His lips

Were moving.  Straightening he turned seaward

And I wondered why he stood so long.  Reading

The waves he seemed, his face gaunt and wind-flush.    

 

But Jimmy was scuffing rocks with his good shoes

So I told him -C'mon, making for Poll an Bhradáin

Where Éanna hooked the salmon, Jimmy close behind.

But I stopped, turned once more to sea I did,

And the strange man, before I kept on.

 

            ii. Ogygia

The cabmen speak in a language he does not

Understand, looking out to sea and motioning

With two joined fingers, pointing.  Dawntide

 

After a heavy rain, the cloudshoal banked

On the horizon.  Someone has carved a circle     

In the sand of the bay, down from the quay-wall.

 

The night before, he dreamt of a moonlit hall,

A fount and golden pillars.  A palace built

On rocky shores.  -Bád fartha, they say again.

 

He thanks them, smiling, and makes for the pier

To the ferry that will take him to the mainland,

And thence a ship westbound for Phaeacia.

© Matthew Ryan Shelton

 

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