Commendations
Eye
Pavilion
Ruth Aylett Edinburgh, Scotland
In
this poem, your routine bloods have come back normal
Kathryn Bevis Weeke, Winchester, England
Slepen
all the Nyght with Open Ye
Marilyn Bowering Victoria, Canada
Woman
Waking Early in Late Fall
Brian Brodeur Richmond, USA
MRI
Elizabeth Eger London, England
On
Seeing A Kestrel After Reading About Hypoxia
Suzanna Fitzpatrick Orpington, England
Private
Enterprise Takes Over the NHS
Nairn Kennedy Cookridge, Leeds, England
in
the pre-op assessment room
Laura McKee Bexleyheath, England
Donor
Hilary Menos Le Verdier, France
Don't Ask
Bryan Monte Zeist, The Netherlands
beginner’s
guide to gerontology
Mary Mulholland London, England
Uncle
Alan
Sue Norton York, UK
Signs
Thea Smiley Bramfield, Halesworth, England
confessions
of a former germophile
Laura Theis Oxford, England
Ingathering
Susan Utting Wokingham, England
Before
the Leaflet
Alison Wood Scarborough, North Yorkshire, England
Biographies and inspiration for the poems
Brian Brodeur is the author most recently of the poetry collection Every Hour Is Late (Measure Press, 2019). New poems and literary criticism appear in Hopkins Review, Gettysburg Review, Literary Matters, Southern Review, and The Writer’s Chronicle. Brian lives with his wife and daughter in the Whitewater River Valley (USA). He teaches creative writing and American Literature at Indiana University East.
Brian said: "Woman Waking Early in Late Fall emerged after a friend's father contracted COVID-19 and passed away during that initial 2020 surge. Like many of us unable to visit even the most seriously ill loved ones, I needed to do something while locked down that difficult year. The poem's blank-verse line, twelve-line stanzas, and occasional rhymes presented me at least with the illusion of control. In this respect, poetic form can be seen as useful--by providing us with, in Frost's terms, a temporary stay against confusion.
Hilary Menos is a poet and editor. Her first collection, Berg (Seren, 2009), won the Forward Prize for Best First Collection 2010. Her second collection is Red Devon (Seren, 2013). Her most recent pamphlet, Human Tissue (Smith|Doorstop, 2020), was a winner in The Poetry Business Book & Pamphlet Competition 2019. She is editor of The Friday Poem https://thefridaypoem.com
She said: "I started to write Donor after I gave my son Linus one of my kidneys. He had been ill with kidney problems when he was very young and as a teenager his kidneys started to fail. After his appointment with the consultant where we were told he might need a transplant, I put my arm round him and said don’t worry, I’ll give you one of mine, and so the decision was made. I remember being wheeled into theatre — it was all rather surreal. My pamphlet ‘Human Tissue’ is about my experiences of living kidney donation, the stories of some of the people who made organ transplants possible, and the wider issue of who to pray to in times of crisis, and indeed whether to pray at all. The transplant was in 2014. I finally finished Donor in 2021.”
Thea Smiley is a poet and playwright from Suffolk, UK. Her poetry has been shortlisted for the Bridport Prize, and commended in the Spelt and Sonnet or Not competitions. Her poems have been published in Spelt, Street Cake, Obsessed with Pipework, The Ofi Press, The Cannon’s Mouth, and are forthcoming in The Alchemy Spoon.
Signs was written shortly after the unexpected death of her father in Mexico in 2019. It was inspired by her time in hospital with him, and includes the translated notes from his EEG scan.
Laura Theis' work appears in Poetry, Rattle, Strange Horizons, Aesthetica, Mslexia and many others. Her debut 'how to extricate yourself' (Dempsey&Windle) won the Brian Dempsey Memorial Prize, was nominated for an Elgin Award, and chosen as an Oxford Poetry Book of the Month. An AM Heath Prize recipient and Forward Prize nominee, her other accolades include the EAL Oxford Brookes Poetry Prize, the Hammond House International Literary Award, and the Mogford Short Story Prize. She was a finalist for over forty other international literary awards including the Mairtín Crawford Awards, the Tom Howard/Margaret Reid Poetry Contest, the Alpine Fellowship, the BBC Short Story Award, and the UK National Poetry Competition. She lives and procrastinates in Oxford. http://lauratheis.weebly.com/
About confessions of a former germophile she said: "In the middle of the pandemic, there was a moment where I found myself wiping down every single item from my grocery shop with antibacterial wipes and it suddenly hit me how absurd all of this would have seemed to my younger self. And it made me reflect on the kind of child I had been, pretty reckless and fearless in the face of any and all germs. And how different it must be to be a kid growing up during these times when there is such a fear and awareness about the dangers of infections. And I think the poem was born out of this contrast of my former carelessness and all my new anxieties."
