News
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 WandererWe 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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