2016 Poetry Contest
Poetry London is pleased to announce the winners of this year's contest!
Congratulations to:
Marta Croll-Baehre, Erin Walker, Emma Croll-Baehre, and David Huebert.
And many thanks to Laurie D. Graham for being this year's contest judge.
Watch for the winning poems to be displayed at branches of the London Public Library during Poetry Month, April 2016!
The theme: The Streets of London
1st Place:
4 corners made bare
by Marta Croll-Baehre
~
2nd Place:
London, night
by Erin Walker
On the second night, London is
lukewarm wind and emptied sidewalks.
Out the windshield, stolen street names and the
thousand yellow window glows
recede to cricket stillness.
Behind the university
the deer’s eyes
flash in the high beams.
I drive through your collected hours as
a ghost, witnessing eternal bedtime.
London is a preview, watched alone
in a darkened cinema.
Even the projectionist
is looking the other way.
~
Honourable Mention:
above sunday three o’clock
by Emma Croll-Baehre
~
Honourable Mention:
Grate, Dundas St.
by David Huebert
Face a Christmas of marquee light,
you stood on transplant streets, watched
grated steam rising eerie, rising slow.
Followed that shudder-still tornado and
dreamt a secret city in the depths: engines
boring and you diving weightless, diving low
through granite chasms, through wastelands
of steam. You saw stalagmites weeping,
saw black tears oozing wearily below.
A child among the drilling minions
raised a hand—one finger, one thumb,
three stumps churning the underglow.
The child became a man, holding out
that hand for change and you went slack,
dreamsick, heard yourself muttering no.
You walked away thumbing change—what
change could sack a secret city, turn fingers
into lizard tails, help coral labyrinths grow?
Like stitches melting into wounds you saw
the bridges and the dams dissolve, watched
concrete wilt, rode the rivers’ rage and flow.
~
