Poetry Competition for the Younger Muses

The Word (Writers in Lancashire - check their website out here even if you aren't interested in the competition)
will judge a great new poetry competition for children who love Preston North End.

Aged between 5 and 15 years old and always wanted to try your hand at poetry?
In conjunction with the Preston North End South Ribble Supporters Group we’re looking for the top poets in Lancashire in three age groups

• 5 to 7 years
• 8 to 11
• 12 to 15

There is no limit to the length of the poem and no restriction on the type of poetry – rhyming couplets, limericks, haikus and ballads are all welcome – but the poem must be about Preston North End.

Closing date – January 11th 2013
Winners announced – January 28th 2013

Full details including prizes and entry details can be found here.

New Year New Venue

Merry Christmas everyone, have a wonderful time and also a happy New Year. Next year the Poetry Society has found a new venue this is St George's Church at the bottom of  Lune Street.

***Please note : The venue is not available on the first Thursday of the month so it is booked for the THIRD Thursday. Our January meeting there will accordingly be on the 17th January. ***

Latest Newsletter

Just a quick post to say the latest Newsletter can now be downloaded from this link. 

Preston Guild Poem Winner: Proud of Preston by Lorna Smithers

(Congratulations Lorna! Here is the Preston Guild Poem for everyone to enjoy)

Belisama*:

Proud of Preston heed my entry
Hear the voice of ancient memories
Hearts purloined by Roman sentries
Like a river shining bright.

Proud of Preston born free traders

Made by commerce and hard labour
Merchants gilded artists favored
Like the Brigantes warred in tribes.  

Mechanics shift the scene of battle

Raise the red brick smog industrial
Cording hearts like twisting material
On the wheels of the cotton lords.

Step the Chartists to the engines

Pull the plugs release the tension
The rioters face the sentries
Dye the river dark with blood.

Grey arise the business faceless

Fake fulfillment for the faithless
Mass the market for the tasteless
Selling life for capital. 

High in the stone fortress

The sentries hold their rule
Beyond the mall and office
Do you hear a river call?

Proud of Preston I have carved you

In my sweeping spirit formed you
Through your veins floods dazzling water
My Setantii shining bright.

Will you hearken to my entry

Drown false dreams in ancient memories
Will the proud of Preston
Like a shining river rise?

*Belisama is the goddess of the Ribble

Jackie Hayes Poem Winner: Dancers, Avenham by Melissa Lee-Houghton

The couple were dancing, under the pavilion, grotty and not

unscathed.  In dark blue and black three figures lurched and held on
to each other like cannibals.
 
The woman held onto shopping bags, only half full,
and with bleached hair and new trainers she scuffed her shoes
kicking at the ground as though to find water.
 

On a Monday afternoon with the sun petering out

In the jaundice rain that could sink a dinghy
there were worse places to be and these three knew it –

an excursion to Avenham park with its lawns mowed so perfectly

And the little roof over their wet heads,
The sky the colour of the flesh of an apple.

The couple were dancing. Grotty, not unscathed. Black and blue,

three figures holding on like cannibals,
the sun receding.  No music, the company of new scars.

Shopping bags and bleached hair, singed eyelashes,

she scuffed her shoes having not worn heels for a decade,
and a can of coke was cheaper than water.

The sun petering out, in rain that

if you were dying, would be magnificent-
she rocked on her heels, looking out –

perfect lawns and shelter; wringing their hair dry –

they could make their own warmth if they danced,
This sky the colour of the bitten flesh of a ripe apple.

Runners up Poem 4: City of Grace by Mike Ellwood

I

Plungington Road and the bucking bus

Is STOPPING at Adelphi Dentists’. In trackie and trainers,

Nike, plastic-black with white tick and wedges,

She foots the buggy’s break and parks it in the aisle.

One hand, tattooed with the Lamb and Flag,

Extended, grips the metal bar. The packed bus lurches,

But the child is safe: Mum holds hard the pram

To battle with the brake-surge. Stopped, the bus exhales

And bows. She struggles off, having thanked the driver.

II

Under the City Coat of Arms she waits for service.

 Hollow-cheeked, buck-toothed, lank grey hair,

 “It’s about a bus-pass,” she begins, leaning on the counter.

“But you don’t look old enough,” kids the man,

Words that will be repeated to a busy stacker

In the aisle at Aldi, and later to a patient neighbour.

At bed-time she wipes the mirror,

“But you don’t look old enough,” she whispers,

And kisses, in air, a sweet face that was younger.

III

Pale disc of sun through drizzle transforms: slates gleam,

Leaves shine out. It tickles her nose and chin.

With a tissue she clears her spectacles of moisture.

That evening at the Centre there’ll be show-time,

Tambourines, the pretty music teacher

And friends and parents to applaud her.

This is her city, a source of grace, a place of wonder.

Her eyes sometimes dwell on the face of the lamb:

Serene, triumphant; she feels love surround her.

Runners up Poem 3: Remembering 1942 by Dorothy Nelson

My father, like me, was a carpenter,

content with his mouth full of nails.
He made castles and soldiers, a house for our Lizz;
she cried when I filled it with snails
tucked into doll’s beds, with rags under their heads,
the floor stained with silvery trails.

He was proud when he built the beech platform

and a banner to show off at the Guild.

In hazy half-light he’d work into the night.

We’d hear him tap-tapping, the banner flip-flapping.

When the news came the Guild would be cancelled

that year, he silently broke up the stage;
loaded the van and took off, a crazed-man.
He wouldn’t let on, but the beech planks had gone.

He took me one day for a walk in the copse

to a sun-dappled spot he had found,
where a tree-house, majestic, sat high in the branches,
where a rope-ladder dropped to the ground.

He left the next weekend for somewhere abroad.

We’d wait in our look-out for spies,
for parachute drops, or the sound of a plane;
didn’t know then we’d not see him again.