The 2024 Spelt Poetry Competition Winner Poems
As judged by Gregory Leadbetter
Spelt Nature Poetry Competition
We are delighted to announce the three winners of the Spelt Nature Poetry Competition 2024:
1st Place: Tom Mclaughin – My Father’s Garden
2nd Place: Lydia Fulleylove – Shepherd’s Chine
3rd Place: Rachel Jeffcoat – Next, She Asks to be a Pine Tree
Scroll down to read the winning poems.
1st Place:
Tom Mclaughin
My father’s garden
I lie in corpse pose thinking about the garden
he coaxed from the wind-scoured landscape of his childhood:
the stones we plundered in bucketloads from Malin,
the lobster creel and the sea-sleek driftwood,
the flaring skewers of the montbretia’s brilliance
which sprouted in a lonely roadside ditch once.
He coaxed from the wind-scoured landscape of his childhood
a magpie garden made of stolen things
that took root in the scrubby soil and withstood
the winter storms, flourished in the cold springs.
I concentrate on taking even breaths
and think about this rather than his death.
The stones we plundered in bucketloads from Malin
were once worn smooth by the sea’s uneasy churn.
Now when it rains, each one begins to glisten
with a seal-skin sheen, their colours seem to turn
the way the sky turns in the pre-dawn gloom
when sunlight dithers at the world’s rim.
The lobster creel and the sea-sleek driftwood
contort themselves into unlikely angles
as if to show their mutual outsiderhood
from the garden’s fold, their kin to tide and shingle.
They speak in muted tones of black and brown,
whittled to essence by hard use and brine.
The flaring skewers of the montbretia’s brilliance
explode like showers of sparks into the night.
I think of roman candles, their phosphorescence
etching jagged messages in light,
children rapt while seconds pass like years,
and picture the montbretia’s blazing spears.
They sprouted in a lonely roadside ditch once
and caught my father’s eye. He took a spade
and shucked them from the soil and now they dance
at the garden’s edge where they flare and fade
each year, leaving a sad gap in the corner
where brilliance will, we hope, return next summer.Tom McLaughlin is a Derry-born poet who grew up on both sides of the Irish border. His debut pamphlet, Open Houses, was published in 2021 with Marble Press. He completed an MA in Creative Writing at Royal Holloway and is a practice-based PhD candidate at Surrey. His poems have recently featured in anthologies by Arachne Press and Broken Sleep, and he won first prize in Cannon’s Mouth 2024 Sonnet Competition. Find out more here: tommclaughlin.uk
2nd Place:
Shepherd’s Chine Her bike by the fence at the top of the chine, close to the knickpoint where stream cuts clay, a sculpting, always eroding, carving deep fissures down to the sea. Soft rush, fleabane, first flush of teazle fading, ragwort and rosebay, cinquefoil creeping, her feet tip-tilting to the beat of the path, scuff and dust sheering away, a shifting of routes through droughts and floods, faint scribbles showing the lines of the years, meadowsweet, loosestrife and alder brushing the stream, restharrow and ribwort, linnet and greenfinch, dark flames of dock burning on dry crusts of mud. Wherever she is – the wide V at the foot of the chine with its hold of sea, her shadow drawn slant in the earth all she is – the bundle of separate self left behind by the knickpoint at the top of the chine. By the knickpoint at the top of the chine the bundle of separate self left behind, her shadow drawn slant in the earth all she is. Wherever she is – the wide V at the foot of the chine with its hold of sea. Dark flames of dock burning on dry crusts of mud, restharrow and ribwort, linnet and greenfinch, meadowsweet, loosestrife and alder brushing the stream. Faint scribbles showing the lines of the years, a shifting of routes through droughts and floods, scuff and dust sheering away, her feet tip-tilting to the beat of the path, ragwort and rosebay, cinquefoil creeping, soft rush, fleabane, first flush of teazle fading. A sculpting always eroding, carving deep fissures down to the sea. Close to the knickpoint where stream cuts clay, her bike, by the fence at the top of the chine. Lydia has published three collections: Notes on Sea & Land, (HappenStance 2011) Estuary, (Two Ravens 2014), Ampersand, (Valley Press 2022). Night Drive was shortlisted for the Forward Best Single Poem. Her writing can be found in a range of publications, including Chalk Poets, Salt on the Coals, (Winchester Poetry Prize), Scintilla, Smoke, Words for the Wild, National Association of Writers in Education Journal, The Guardian. She works in collaborative arts projects, including healthcare and prison.
3rd Place
Rachel Jeffcoat
Next, She Asks To Be A Pine Tree
After Robert Wrigley
In this life she inhabits years
like seconds, her thoughts patient,
decade-slow
and such anxiety as she knows
is for the small things who must live
loudly and in brief. Her own
nascent softness is soon
over, and her adult armour marks her
in great assertive gouges
from throat-hollow to heels.
She has forgotten pain. Feels love
like the echo of a word said
at creation: as necessary, as long
ago. She hums in sunlight,
heart sap easing perfume
from her pores, and she is tall,
and never afraid, and when the storm
tears her up by roots
she lies careful
across the lake’s bright glassery,
and pulls water birds to her breast.Rachel Jeffcoat’s work has appeared in a wide variety of publications, including Under the Radar, Tears in the Fence, Clarion, Off the Chest’s Spaces of Significance anthology, and a Ten Poets anthology from Sidekick Books. She was one of the winners of the 2024 Candlestick Press competition, Poems of Light. Raised in West Yorkshire, she now lives in Hampshire, in an old house full of small children and books.
All three poems will appear in issue 12 of Spelt Magazine