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International Poetry Competition

Fourth poetry competition winners

The Fourth International Poetry Competition closed on November 1, 2005. Deliberation over the final line-up of winners was long and hard, but by February 2006 the following successful entrants were announced:

Winner

Congratulations to Roland Bastien of Vancouver, Canada, who wins £500 for his poem "Mother".

Roland Bastien is a multimedia artist, composer (new music) and poet. He started his career in Montreal's Avant-Garde scene in 1979. His works were performed at Tangente Danse Actuelle, vehicule-Art, the temples for new ideas in performance at the time, also Vancouver (Western front), Toronto, (PowerPlant) New York and Italy (Venice, Milano).

The international library of poetry has published his poems in two books: Who's Who in poetry in 2004 and The best poets in 2004. In 2005, Masque publishing in England, in their Decanto Poetry Magazine has published his poems in their April 16th issue and October 19th issue. The American Poets Society has published his poems in Reflections,a compilation ISBN 0-9743429-6-3

You can order by email his 3 CDs from live concerts. If you need a background sound and graphic for your poems, contact him at roland_rimsky@yahoo.com. To visit Roland's website go to www.poetrypoem.com/rolandbastien

Mother

Hitherto, the Nymph
Lulled to sleep
Dreams
Brought by the winds
Shrilled in the dark
To her lair
Under a lump.
Eclectic sounds
In dodecaphonic mode
dotted the air
Nights and days
Vanished in the flood
Of tumular light
And sprinkled with froth
The city of stones.
Milk gushed from her breasts
Peered at the door
Thus, girded the lump.
From her tits
Lips read
( Fondled like a child )
Crystal notes and echoes
Dropped one by one
To ease the sham.
Hitherto, fiddle
Became gleam
Brought by the wind
Shrilled in the dark
Under a lump.

US runner-up

Congratulations to Marisha Huber, of Kansas, who wins $150 for submitting the best entry from the United States with her poem "To the Victor".

To the Victor

There's really nothing of me left -
Straight-knifed harpies sliced peace(s) off me;
Long-backed strong bears ripped my soft shift of skin.

Who wins? Someone should.
There's supposed to be a victor in death.

So where's my ribbon, forked-blue, pinned down tight?
And where's my flag, kiting its wave across the sky?

There should be a bell, round bellied,
A Buddha-laugh tumbling down halls.
But there's just silence.

And I am crossed and folded and asking
who has won?

UK runner-up

Congratulations to John Powell of Southampton, who wins £100 for entering the best runner-up poem from the United Kingdom, "Lekker".

John Powell is a business professor in his 50s who has been writing for many years. He has previously won competitions with work which reflects upon nationality and ethnicity and on the relationship between ourselves and our environment. A continuing theme of his work is language and identity and he is influenced by Robert Frost, Dylan Thomas and RS Thomas, the latter two springing as he does from the Anglo-Welsh culture of South Wales. His website is at www.j-h-powell.com

Lekker

The hard ecchs of your southern tongue
Fit neatly in my western mouth
Like a hot dry key into a rainy lock.

Learning your sunburnt words,
Drawn from the Boer soil like roots
Is a homecoming to a warm fire.

Your talk of your hiraeth and your brown birth
Draws me closer to you.
We share the discomfort of great neighbours.

Seeing you smile at my attempts
To trap your elegant African vowels
Is a sunrise in my dark and rainy west.

Soon I will tell you of my rainy love
In your own dry tongue,
Deep, timeless as your Afrikaner soil.

Lekker.

Special commendations

Ten special commendations go out to the following entrants (in alphabetical order):

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