In the 2016 competition, two hundred and sixteen original unpublished poems were submitted on the theme:

A way through the woods

The winners received their prizes at the poetry evening during the Binsted Arts Weekend, 
in Binsted Church, West Sussex, BN18 0LL, on Saturday 11 June at 7.30.  

The Winners and those with Commendations read out their poems,
supported by a commentary from Maggie Sawkins.

The competition judge, Maggie Sawkins, won the Ted Hughes Award for
New Work in Poetry 2013, for her Live Literature production ‘Zones of Avoidance’.

 

Winners

First Prize: 

Rose Bray, from Steyning, West Sussex, for ‘Raising the Bowman’

Second Prize:

Margaret Jennings, from Waterlooville, Hampshire, for ‘Bramble’

Third prize:

Ken Sulllivan, from Reading,  for ‘Congo Boy’

 

Commendations

Michael Langrish, from Walberton, West Sussex, for 'Song Thrush'

Phil Vernon, from Tunbridge Wells, for '1955'

Sue Davies, from Fareham, Hampshire, for 'Wytham Woods'

Dana Littlepage, from Exeter, for 'A Way through the Woods'

​Geoffrey Winch, from Felpham, West Sussex, for 'Lignivores'

Jenna Plewes, from Alvechurch, Worcs, for 'Private Woods. No Trespassing.'

Claire Pankhurst, from Brighton, for 'Island'

Mark Haworth-Booth, from Swimbridge, Devon, for 'Trespass'

Pat Murgatroyd, from the Isle of Wight, for 'Return to the Forest'

Malcolm Watson,  from Hull

 

The Poems

First prize

 

Raising the Bowman   by Rose Bray

 

If her father had not fancied mushrooms for breakfast

she would not have gone into the woods at Binsted

to forage for the pink gilled treats

between the fallen trees.

 

If the early sun had not been shining

on the clearing where she knelt,

the archer may not have seen

her simple grace

and sought her hand in marriage

and she would not have borne his son.

 

If he had not been middle aged

he may not have been so patient with the child,

making a small bow for his play

as soon as he could walk,

bending, shaping each yew branch

as he outgrew the other.

 

If the boy had not grown so tall

and become a master bowman,

he would not have been a chosen one

to serve on Henry’s flagship.

 

His mother would not have stood on Portsmouth’s Hard

waving off her firstborn son

as the Mary Rose sailed on the morning tide.

She could not have guessed,

amongst the nit combs, the wooden bowls

beside his scattered arrows,

her son would lie

five hundred years

rocked gently on his bed of sand.

 

---

Second prize

 

Bramble by Margaret Jennings

 

( Blackberry brambles can be stripped of their thorns and used to fashion baskets and other useful artefacts)

 

The first man clips off her thorns one by one,

turns her placid and tractable,

cuts her off close to the roots,

twists her into something useful,

something of his own making.

 

The second man threads her through a hole

in a tin which tears off her thorns,

shreds her pristine flesh.

This task makes a sound like a strimmer,

reshaping, remoulding, destroying.

He puts string in her carcass.

 

The last man leaves the thorns that defend her,

allows her blossom to feed the bees nectar

and helps her grow the fruit

that might bloody his fingers,

applauds as she strives for the tops of trees,

rejoices as she waves at the sun,

becoming all she was meant to become.

 

---

Third prize

 

Congo Boy   by Ken Sullivan

 

Seep of wet through toes and sound

of breathing, heavy as night, no dipping

stars or wind to warp.

 

The forest listens, Mother said.

I am sweet and the soot black waits

for me, a hungry, singing mouth.

 

I take the forest road.

Sliding mud to the river and then, like a tree,

I listen to the men talk.

 

Planning, joking me with threat of

teeth, guns at a cocky

jaunt and glowing tobacco tip.

 

I try to remember. Oh Mother!

They beat it from me if I don’t

make it up good and quick.

 

A slow walk to freedom,

a way through the woods,

sliding mud red to the river.

 

Ducking lights of the camp

fires, across the field of rice

and buffalo bird.

 

Under the eyes of the dead,

the night owl cries to the crocodile.

Snap of bean sticks.

 

Old man of the river, I hear you.

Mother, I hear you.

Mountains, you are calling. I hear you.

 

Onward the red path, the slow way

through the woods, listening

like a tree, inching a way to freedom.

 

---

Commended poems

---

 

Song Thrush     by Michael Langrish

 

In the woods alone

- or so I thought -

until, upon a stone,

my eye was caught

by a memory of childhood:

 

a thrush

upon a bush.

 

Bright of eye,

head cocked,

his gaze upon mine

was locked,

 

intent

upon what I meant;

 

the snail within his bill,

half housed already

by relentless steady flicks

against the wall -

 

his dinner

interrupted.

 

Later it is not my eye

that knows he’s near

but now I hear

his song, his sigh,

 

his flute’s

repeated note.

 

Always shy,

as, when a boy, was I;

and now - so rare  -

even more a thing of joy

 

in that cool

seclusion.

 

---

1955    by Phil Vernon

i.m. Richard Langridge * 

 

Magpies love a rabbit halfway dead –

to peck its weeping eyes, disdain the rest

then nonchalantly pause and lift their heads,

hop down and pick their way along the vale

of pain to blind and leave undead, the next.

 

Romans loved rabbits, too: their settlers sailed

with does and bucks, as well as laws and peace.

We love them less – we've placed them on a trail

where gun-green birds glint in the April sun,

imperious at their casual charnel feast.

 

We met the halfway dead, half hidden among

the dead, as we advanced towards Berlin.

 

I lift the stricken rabbits one by one,

take cover from their blank and aimless stare,

then break their necks and set them down within

the shadowed margins of the coppice, where

last autumn's leaves lie cold and half decayed.

 

The magpies scatter but they reappear.

 

I'm tired of asking if this horror show

would have me save or kill, or kill to save,

and – as I watch myself deal every blow –

if Romans' clearer view of dying made

them kinder. Perhaps the feasting magpies know.

 

* Lt. Langridge helped liberate Belsen concentration

camp in 1945. Mixomatosis was introduced to Britain

on his farm in Kent in 1953. Two years later,

he shot himself, by which time the number of rabbits

in the country had declined by 95%.

 

---

Wytham Woods    by Sue Davies

 

We left Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds playing

on the turntable, the music splintering

 

to jazzy riffs of songbirds, stepped out barefoot

on tussock grass and took the gentle path

 

through the woods. Tilted forward, you toddled ahead,

pale as a wild orchid just sprouted from the earth

 

not yet made solid by light, unlike the throng

of small creatures – ants staggering, bundles in pincers,

 

earwigs, and stag beetles, the trees skiddling

their leaves.  Your insistent This? This?  - a revelation

 

that everything is given a name – tried patience.

But you gave generously, gubs for celandines,

 

and skitty-skits for bluebells, my borrowed Pussy-

willow and Catkins on your breath nevertheless

 

charmed against the silence of dark hollows.

Pockets lumpy with woodland relics, we climbed

 

the hill lording over the meadows, the roads like

mourning bands wavering to the troubled

 

island of Cyprus where finely turned to little else –

neither the squint of sea through the olive trees,

 

nor the Bee-eater’scry on the wire, but the deranged

ram of clouds, enemy planes swooping low

when we ran for cover in the lemon grove.

 

---

A  Way through the Woods   by  Dana Littlepage

 

My parents wait by windows,

watching deer shape-shift

the leafless space between the trees.

Taupe grey, the forest walks.

We wake. Sip coffee, eat eggs

off old maple planks

my father planed. Forty years

go by: the woods, our witness.

Water moccasin, cicada dreams.

When my parents leave

the oaks bear down,

Acorns drum on slate.

The blue owl sings.

 

I go back to find the house

enclosed by sumac, pines.

By my parents’ bedroom window

a doe and buck sleep.

I kneel in leaf meal, touch

the earth, still warm. Fragrant

with furred rain, the sweet radish

whiff of something I cannot name.

Their lives. The mystery of red moon

rise. Maples’ winter arms snow-sleeved.

 

Tonight I find my parents out

in the cold for one last walk.

A neighbour has laid boards

down through the woods.

My father’s wheel chair sinks.

My mother’s knees are stunned

by fallen trees.

Her heart cannot bear---

 

And so they leave. Again.

Back in their city flat,

my father googles whippoorwills.

They listen to bull frogs mate,

fall asleep in chairs, the woods

alive inside them.

 

---

Lignivores    by Geoffrey Winch

 

we harvest trees  

and re-shape their wood

to feed our exotic desires 

 

we rank as waste

broken branches and twigs in bud   

then consume these with our fires  

 

we burn the fingers of the gods

who planted trees in our

progressive ways    

 

while creatures

of another breed

cultivate a hundred million seeds

 

these friends of trees 

as if noble g

replace the trees on which we feed

 

their trees are promissory notes:  

future generations will inherit 

woods through which to walk 

 

yet as we walk

through our woods

of grubbed-up roots and ashes

 

we have a clear view

of where we’re heading 

while the friends of trees

 

have no clear view

of the future or understanding

of our intentions 

 

---

Private Woodland. No Trespassing     by Jenna Plewes

 

No Access – black letters on a lopsided gate,

unhinged, padlocked, chained shut.

 

No-one will follow her here, a woodpecker

drums a broken heartbeat, a thin rain roll

off the needles of hemlock and pine.

There is no path, animal tracks meander,

 

double back, disappear. Fears

burrow under bramble wires, thoughts

 

step-change, root where they land, wildlings

rustle the dry leaves of her days, wood anemones

 

thread small white beads through her sleep.

She places one foot in front of another,

 

waits for light to break through the canopy

guide her back to the gate.

 

---

Island by Claire Pankhurst

 

a bracelet of rocks

circles the forest with charms

of heron, seal and otter

surrounds the green melt

of moss and pine needles

gashed with red cedar

 

in the silence

fanned by the eagle’s wing

there is always something falling

or poised

ready to fall

 

snow still fastens to bark and pine cone

but a startle of buds

interrupts the comfort of frost

 

branches push against the sky

break the light into fragments of

grey glass just the right size

for birdsong to fall through

to seep into bracken

settle under stones

a coded message

its letters dissolved in leaf stain

 

---

Trespass     by Mark Haworth-Booth

 

OK, if I get stopped

I’ll just point to my binoculars

and say I think I’m lost.

 

Whoever owns this land

must be selling the logs

in that old shed beside

 

the dead quadbikes

and the full-length bath –

woodland bric-à-brac.

 

A barrel swings in the breeze –

DEOSAN RED LABEL HYPOCHLORITE –

now a bin for pheasant feed.

 

Further up the track,

a little tunnel shelter.

Inside it a spring trap.

 

This old quarry is a dump

for plastics, white goods,

cisterns, oil drums.

 

What’s at the top of the field?

A video-den in brown

and green – camouflaged –

 

but the roof is off. TV,

kettle, gameboy, torch,

pillows, microwave.

 

Squeeze through a wire fence.

This place has an earth mound

about the size of a horse

 

topped by a china book –

In loving memory of someone –

and wilted roses in a crock.

 

There’s part of a lavatory stand,

the bulbous white piping –

there’s always a lavatory stand.  

 

This is owners’ nature.

We do what we like here.

Our property. Our affair. We can.

                                                                                    

---

Return to the Forest    by Pat Murgatroyd.

 

Long before, they’d drained the blood from the last black boar

over centuries of beech nuts on the forest floor.

 

Ferns unfurl, a man approaches the forest asleep,

crossing meadows where he used to holler home sheep.

 

Round his neck a tusk, a trophy claimed by grandf'er Dan

when the men beat a path, when they ran

 

chasing squealing piglets through the wood,

sharpened poles to spike suckling sows. Smear their blood.

 

The silvered tusk protects the youngster in an ice-bound land

where cold grips men's thoughts with an iron hand.

 

Day after day he flays flesh, soused in oil-stink, hardly breathes,

hears night screams of glaciers, dreams of light through leaves.

 

He scrapes his dreams into scrimshaw tales where bear and boar

cavort with whales on the woodland floor.

 

Ferns unfurl, a man wanders forest paths in his sleep.

Hollering for home, he dreams and weeps.

 

He craves the truffle-scented moss, grass verges where once more

in a scatter of what might be fallen trunks appears a bristled boar.

 

It snouts the ground with the lopped smile of a broken tusk

like the one round his neck that he grasps for luck.