Hope you don't mind me duplicating your thread, Chris, but I've been posting the LitRev results for some months now. (I know I haven't been around here much lately but my sense of duty still prevails! 
)
Bazza, aka Iain Colley, claims yet another prize - the man is unstoppable! 
Here are the winning poems and the Deputy Editor's report:
REPORT BY TOM FLEMING
THIS MONTH'S TOPIC was 'islands', and Bill Webster's fine take on the subject has won him first prize and £300, generously sponsored by the
Mail on Sunday. Alison Prince came in second, and she wins £150. lain Colley's witty entry gains him £10.
I read recently that Wordsworth wrote 'Lines Composed Upon Westminster Bridge' while on the roof of a coach
en route to France. No wonder he waxed lyrical about London: he was on his way out. On his return at the end of the month, he wrote another poem complaining that the city was overcome with 'rapine, avarice and expense'.
For next month, please write a sonnet about a place of your choice. Poems must - of course - rhyme and scan, and they should reach these offices by 28 June.
(That's 44 Lexington Street, London W1F 0LW or editorial@literaryreview.co.uk)
FIRST PRIZE
The Wake by Bill Webster
A fenman to the marrow of his bones
*****He gloried in his place of birth;
*****Would never move from good black earth
To country cursed with clay or sand or stones.
By choice he faced the East horizon's line
*****Where land stretched flat to meet the sky,
*****Not Southward where what held the eye
Was Ely squatting on its banked incline.
An island once where Hereward, they said,
*****Had used impenetrable fen
*****To make safe refuge for his men,
Who knew the one sure solid track to tread.
Half myth, half fact, the tale was in his blood,
*****The art of tactical retreat,
*****Of holding out against defeat
With nature's moat of creek and marsh and mud.
Unreachable throughout that final year
*****He made his own defiant stand
*****On dwindling and uncertain land
Which one last unseen wave made disappear.
The coffin lay in lapping candlelight
*****Surrounded by the chill church air:
*****We knew what was - and was not - there
To be closed round with earth as dark as night.
SECOND PRIZE
Islands by Alison Prince
Missing the sea, cast up like bladderwrack
beyond all tides to dry black in a sun
blocked off by square, high building tops, I am
aching with desperation to be back
on the island where each casual gaze
is outward to the linking, steady line
of the horizon. Yet struggling to find
ease shows that the eye has subtle ways
of reassurance. Buddleia has grown
fat purple blossoms halfway up a wall
and further on a dandelion unrolls
its gold in a crack between paving stones.
Here is a tree that the Council has put
in a littered gap. See how it tries
to prosper. Chopped by its leaves, the sky
is the same sky that will glow at sunset
over the far-off sea. This time will pass.
Meanwhile, these little skerries of relief
offer a hopscotch of non-urban life,
rock after rock. Privet, a patch of grass,
a gutter puddle left from last night's rain.
Such things do not perceive human distress
or know themselves as lovely, effortless
islands of safety for a marooned brain.
THE SENTINEL by lain Colley
Pedestrian islands are my sphere.
I monitor the driving here
and note the addicts of
Top Gear
whose conduct grates.
I plant myself and shake my fists
at rude or careless motorists
and draw up conscientious lists
of number plates.
The police of course don't wish to know.
It's 'thank you, grandad, off you go.'
Their attitude just goes to show,
my voices say.
It's still a satisfying task.
I take my sandwiches and flask,
my notebook, my pollution mask,
and stay all day.
I cannot tell the family,
A viper's next who think of me
<--This is how it appears in the magazine; it obviously should be 'nest'
As not all there. I'd only be
locked up again.
A gun is what I wish for most.
I'd love to make boy racers toast.
But pending that I'll man my post
come wind, come rain.
LitRev Results for June 2011 + next comp
Linear Mode
