My poem recently won the Battered Moons Swindon Festival of Literature Poetry Competition

1. The Battered Moons
Poetry Competition
Presents the 7 winning poems
and three 'meteorites'
In association with the
SWINDON
FESTIVAL of LITERATURE
2011
Image Credit: Saturn's moon Phoebe
NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

2. Battered Moons Poetry Competition 2011
Foreword
Organising and co-judging the second Battered Moon Poetry Competition has been a
rewarding challenge and a privilege. There were over 150 entries, encouraging for a
competition in just its second year and offering no cash prizes. It was possible only
because of the generous effort of its supporters: Matt Holland as Artswords
development worker and Director of the Swindon Festival of Literature, co-judge
Lesley Saunders, registrar and advisor Hilda Sheehan, Mark Stopforth in his arbitrator
role. To all of them my admiration and gratitude.
But the real headliners are the people who sent their poems. These are, ultimately,
what Battered Moons is all about. However isolated and lonely your word-craft may
appear, you belong in this creative community, and we wanted to hear your voice.
You proved determination and courage in sending your poems for us to consider and
made the effort worthwhile. Thank you.
Among in the poems submitted, there were those that caught our attention for their
accomplished style. They brought language alive, grabbed our attention, had resonance
and staying power, conjured intense, vivid scenes and drew the reader into their world.
Their flashes of insight, invention and know-how made them memorable and invited
the reader to come back to them. We would like to share them through the publication
of this booklet. The order of the winning poems follows a personal reflection of how
they work best as a sequence. I sought some contrast between one poem and the next.
Appearances lent itself to opening the series, with its slower pace and breathing
spaces, and a very suitable title. I aimed at an alternation of pulses and style that
moved towards the rhythmic buzz of The Honeysuckle Corridor of Certain Doom,
sensing their arrangement almost as a recital of chamber music.
Alongside the 7 winning poems you will find three by the people who were more
closely involved in the competition process. As poets, we would like to approach you
with a sample of our own work, rather than merely our names and credentials.
We look forward to hearing the winners read their poems at the Swindon Festival of
Literature, where we will also have the pleasure of listening to our guest poet Paul
Farley, a lecturer at Lancaster University and recipient of numerous awards and
recognitions, including the Arvon Poetry Competition, the Forward Poetry Prize for
Best First Collection, a Somerset Maugham Award, an Arts Council Writers' Award,
the Whitbread Poetry Award, was named Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year
1999, and has been shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize. To the Battered Moons Poetry
Competition winners, our warm congratulations and best wishes for their future work.
Cristina Newton, co- judge and organiser, April 2011
Image Credit: Saturn's moon Phoebe
NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

3. Appearances by Gavin Salisbury
Gibraltar Point National Nature Reserve, 12 August 2008
Under an umbrella on the beach
binoculars raised to the waves
in back-handed
salute to the passing storm,
I stand just outside
the breeding-bird exclusion zone.
The world mists up
in glass. Two Arctic skuas
black-capped sea marauders
sally from the sand
harry sandwich terns for their catch,
settle again to watch me
watching. I resign the face-off
and walk back inside the dune line
to the managed edge of the salt marsh
to be greeted by
the sudden sky.
V-winged, up float
the land harriers
Montagu's and marsh
as if turned on by the sun,
dark solar
panels lifted in relief.
They scour the green earth for a living.
Within minutes
I am down to a T-shirt.
More slowly
as the harriers drift
away in opposite directions
the last mist clears
from my second sights,
filling me with
empty horizons.

4. Ophelia by Linda Snell
These yellow flags, they are everywhere;
they will not catch my eye on this burst bank.
Only the struck white of their fingers swirls
in blacker light. My sight washes down at them.
Stems are for needling, I think; there is
yellow again in strung marigolds and dark long
purples. They come to hand; weeds lap
at my knees. Stems can be wrapped in such
a green blanket. Teach me to care and not
to care; teach me to lie still. The willow slants
forsaken; she weeps across the stream. I can
see the glaucous in her leaves; they lift and fall
lift and fall quickly. These are vicissitudes.
Do you like that? Oh. You are not here and I
forget it. Tell me the truth. See if you can.
I have made now a circlet. Yellow eyes peep
at me. Where shall I hang it? Nettles forbid
yet there is a branch. It reaches out to me. Falling
they say is a fast thing; hoops make a slowness
of it. How they settle on the surface, circle
after circle; how my hair flows under water.
It is my element: cold and numb with black
for a colour. I breathe in bubbles; plants give
still life to me. Through lenses, the sky
seems even blue. I wait without hope, for
there is no hope, not even for the differentness
of an ending. I hear only his words; they
float from a pocket. Ink dissolves in the water.
He said, 'Doubt not my Love'. Did he mean it?

5. the hanger on by John Richardson
When I saw your collection of meat hooks,
their silent silvered gleam piercing the darkness
in the garage full of well-worn ropes, the blocks
and tackle; it was then I remembered that tough test
initiation. All those ladders, brushes and paint,
the long, long climb to your first globish, waxy
moon, its blacked out wane, twice-fortnight feint
and now it's all the cranks, levers and jacks He
has you to pull on the shrouding sky each night.
The same laddered up haul, the back-ache climb
to carry another star, another hook, another bright
glitterati to hang in the black drop, the dime after dime
thumbed in the meter and still not content He expects you,
at every turn, to rubbish the star gazers trying to amaze us,
knows their rheumy-eyed recounts will be out. (One or two
delusional, think they've got it all sussed). But you, without fuss
let my hands smooth salve into rope-worn scars,
let me undo your ligaments' toil of knots, rub tender balm
in the rack of your back. So I took your fingers, that've held stars,
into my mouth to taste the night's contentment; the calm.
It was then I knew,
without a spark,
it was you, and only you,
that could light my dark.

6. The unbearable consequence of putting your head inside someone
else's then trying to get it back out again without them noticing
by Michael Scott
I wanted to fill your heart
with cellophane winged dragonflies
but choked your head
with wasps instead
my eyeless thoughtless
buried in gut concrete
pins me to earth
real now gasps words
back to my tongue
selfish escape not undone
heavy unable
clogs your ears
last night's adrenaline
sticky useless today
I stain
mouthless indelible breathless
albatross arms cling you
stoop friend
feel how weighty my me is
I complicate
defuse now
booby-trapped thud wired to my ribs
cut red
cut blue
run

7. Ditched by Elinor Brooks
She sits by the roadside
crunching an apple
his ripe corn dolly
off-duty barmaid
hair blond and braided.
He flattens the field with her
plaiting her platinum
limbs underneath her
tying her neck
in a bright tight knot.
He tramples the husks of her
into the ditch
then spinning the spokes
of her battered back wheel
he walks to his car
Sunday driver
going to the pub
to eat his lunch.
* * *
What was she doing,
out in the countryside
all by herself?
Asking for trouble.
Tomorrow he'll move
back up north.

8. Coming to light by Janice Booth
The distant headlamps of a solitary car, eyes
yellow as a feral cat's, define the lonely journey
of a Fenland road, where vacant window panes
stare out at flinty fields. Along the sluices,
water shivers in the easterlies at Eau Brink,
Magdalen, where pumping stations squat
against the sky. Pink footed geese trail
in the thermals of the morning Fenman,
white wings effortlessly messaging the widening sky
with upward loops that lift the loosening day.
I know this land – the way dull irrigation dykes
flame pink along the flat horizon
in the sun's first blast of light. And how,
like calotypes upon a visceral dawn,
our mirrored selves squint through the glass
- to see the metamorphosis of night.

9. The Honeysuckle Corridor of Certain Doom
by Heather O'Neill
Each day I test the sonic boom
Facing down the honeysuckle
Corridor of Certain Doom.
'Cause magic happens when you buckle
Up to speed beyond all noise.
Away from the drone I tuck all
Into a dot so dense I'm poised
To surf on the edge of collapse
To new worlds, avoiding asteroids
I'm not there to hit - I'm that fast.
My boom are wings of shields of save
Me steel. I make the sound. In fact,
Black notes. I make time stop on the stave.
You're knocked out by my inflatable
Silence. I wind through a crystal maze
To be anywhere but here and stung
By such a lonely buzz. My heart swells,
I hold my hands and run.

10. Watch by Lesley Saunders
In their hearts they are the island nation,
race of islanders, even the inland tribes
who have only the dream of sea are obsessed
with horizons and the voluptuous possibility
of ships. Unassailable as cliffs they have gone
to the end of the earth to the edge of the land
to see for themselves how war looks like a sail.
On the outskirts of towns there are artichoke beds
and the serene mooring on a slow-moving Frome
and after lights out the late night shipping news.
Still their eyes have the scrimped sheen of sea-glass
and in the simple dawn they bandage their hearts
like world-forsakers against the bottomless crossing
through fog to the outcrop, atoll, holm.
Written as part of a residency at Acton Court and first
published in 2010

11. A Tragedy from a Bathtub by Hilda Sheehan
I listened to my father recite Shakespeare,
from his bathtub, my ear
to the bathroom door.
He was my jewel set in a silver sea,
my mighty Caesar.
Our mother, Juliet,
was downstairs
staring at the washing up,
dreaming of Romeo,
her lover,
who'd mown our lawn
rough and rude as love;
cut tree branches dagger sharp.
After his bath,
my father found the washing up had not been done;
it sat in the swamp of the sink mourning
for my mother who was found on the lawn,
presumed dead.
Romeo lay above her,
speared by the branch of a tree,
blood dripping our white roses red.
When mother awoke,
she tackled the washing up,
but found life too dull without Romeo,
so she left through a door
I could never find in the cellar.
I listened to my father recite Wordsworth,
for he believed no harm could come of daffodils,
and I was lonely as the cloud he lay on
while our washing up grew
into a crockery mountain.

12. Speechcraft by Cristina Newton
I write his speeches for him.
He can sleep in peace – he knows
he can leave the rigmarole
of fetching metaphors to me.
I slide current notions into a sleek-swung sling,
and lithium phrases broadcast their buzz
on the see-saw sways of counterpoised analogies.
I set them to a mnemonic beat
that he wears well. His voice melds
the scores into a corollary that just slides down.
He memorises lines like lyrics, lists,
rehearsing as he shaves, mock-lecturing
the mirror in the lift, self-addressing
safety-glazed reflections in the back of cars.
He beats himself to it; in record time
he digests the cud he chewed, while he chews
the turf he grazed. Now it's his role to stand in the red-shift
of public light, and distill the logic of stellar parallax.
The words I wrote and he delivers have become
himself. The world spins, tilts on a blunt ax-
is. The picture is now the eye
that shuts down for the night.
In his sleep, I edit his peace speeches.

13. The Winning Poets
Janice Booth has seen her own children grow up in Swindon but she herself started
life in Norfolk. Meaningful landscapes and a working life committed to East Asian
philosophy and medicine are two ongoing sources of inspiration. She finds writing
a comfort, making sense of the muddle of the mundane, and when a winning poem
comes along – joy!
Elinor Brooks: "There is a thin line between the time-bound world of our senses
and the world of our imaginative empathy: I like to cross these borders in my
poetry. I was born in Edinburgh, love romantic landscapes, and when I'm not
writing can be found in the pub playing an Oriental strategy board game called
Go".
Heather O'Neill is a Swindon housewife, raising two small boys. Previously she
worked as, among other things, a secondary school teacher and a 70's disco
wedding singer. A late comer to poetry, she's still regularly surprised by how useful
and enjoyable it can be.
John Richardson: "I've been writing poetry since my early forties; with interests
ranging from the Tang dynasty, through Argentinian, Greek, Russian, Spanish to
20th Century American poetry. My poems are about: family, friends, relationships,
love and cheese. My poetic influences are John Ashbery and J.H. Prynne. I've
published three collections and am a founder member of BlueGate poets".
Gavin Salisbury has been writing and publishing poetry and fiction since the early
nineties. His latest solo publication is The Far Sense, a collection of speculative
fiction short stories, which was published by Sam's Dot Publishing (USA) last year.
Visit Gavin's website at http://gavin-salisbury.com for more information.
Michael Scott
Michael loves words, his favourite word is lagrima. / A Koestler Trust Poetry
Mentor, he believes that poems / have no walls, doors, locks, railings. / Poems are
not made of glass. / Michael harvests poetry from alcoholism, Peruvian street-life/
and Swindon word soup. / Michael reads poetry in Swindon, Bath, Bristol, /
Cheltenham and London. / Sometimes he is allowed back.
Linda Snell is the rose pruner at Sheldon Manor, near Chippenham. She has had
poems published in: Equinox, Envoi, The Interpreter's House, South, Obsessed with
Pipework and Iota. She won first prize in the Wiltshire poetry competition last year
and was also short-listed in the Grace Dieu poetry competition. She is co-founder
of the Corsham Poetry Society.

14. Registrar and advisor
Hilda Sheehan's poems have appeared on the BBC Website, The Rialto, National
Poetry Society Website, The New Writer and South magazines. She performs her
work at poetry events all over the South West region. She gained a distinction in
creative writing with the Open University. Hilda is Assistant to Swindon Artswords
Literature Development Worker.
Judges
Lesley Saunders is a published poet with several volumes to her name, including
Christina the Astonishing (with Jane Draycott), Her Leafy Eye (with
artist/photographer Geoff Carr) and No Doves. She has held several poetry
residencies, written various commissions and won a number of major poetry awards,
including the Manchester Poetry Prize in 2008. See www.lesleysaunders.org.uk .
Cristina (Navazo-Eguía) Newton published poetry in Spanish in two collections and
five anthologies before moving to Swindon, where she is involved in education,
poetry workshops and reviews, wildlife projects, hondo-flamenco singing and raising
her children. Some of her English poems have appeared in journals and become
finalists at Bridport, Gregory O'Donoghue, Strokestown and Aesthetica.

15. Battered Moons Poetry Competition 2011: REPORT
The Swindon Festival of Literature, now in its 18th year, attracts large audiences for
its guest writers and speakers. So it is exciting and appropriate that Swindon also has
its own poetry competition. This is the second year of the Battered Moons
competition, for adult poets from Swindon and its 'moons' – all towns and villages in
the SN postcode area.
The judges in 2011 were published poets Cristina Newton, organiser of the
competition, and Lesley Saunders, who has several awards to her name. Both judges
read all poems. They looked for the general qualities that help to make a poem good,
including:
•originality of thought and expression
•the ability to attract and sustain readers' interest
•an element of surprise, some unique and unpredictable idea, image or turn of phrase
•technical accomplishment: control of language, image, patterning and structure.
A good number of submissions, including the seven winners, were all enjoyably
original in terms of their chosen subject matter or in their treatment of a theme; and
in many entries there was a sense that the writers really wanted to put their words out
into the world, to be heard and understood. Some poems also contained surprises, or
– even better – were clearly the expression of a practised individual 'voice'.
Technical accomplishment was where the winners stood out – they showed a
developing command of their medium, an ability to create and control their verse-
forms, words and images, so that the poem was able to bring an occasion or idea or
feeling vividly to life. These were the poems that used language (from the title
onwards) in fresh rather than second-hand ways; that, even when the theme was a
familiar one, like time passing or old memories or nature, tried to find the new thing
to say about it; and that, however short or long they were, knew when to stop. The
judges were struck by the unusual images and inventive, allusive turns of phrase that
each of these poets had created and that made the judges want to read the poems
more than once, in order to experience the inner or outer world with this particular
person's eyes and ears.
The competition was an evident success and judges would like to thank all the poets
for their entries and the organisers for creating this opportunity for local writers. We
would also like to take the opportunity to acknowledge the support of the Swindon
Festival of Literature and Artswords, its organiser Matt Holland's advice and
assistance, the hard work and efficiency of our registrar and advisor Hilda Sheehan,
the cooperation of arbitrator Mark Stopforth and all those who have contributed by
publicising and promoting the competition in the press, online and on radio.
Lesley Saunders, March 2011 (A fuller version of this report can be read at
http://www.bluegatepoets.com/ )
Image Credit: Saturn's moon Phoebe
NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

16. Judges:
Lesley Saunders and
Cristina Newton
Arbitrator:
Mark Stopforth
Registrar:
Hilda Sheehan
Supported by the
Swindon
Festival of Literature
and Artswords
“Dim, dusty moon in second-hand light,
worn and well-battered, but going.”