LUPUS UK INTERNATIONAL POETRY COMPETITION CLOSING DATE (NOW EXTENDED TO) 30-JUNE-2011 Lupus UK International Poetry Competition 2011 This competition is administered by Excel for Charity in aid of LUPUS UK – a national charity helping people with the presently incurable immune system illness lupus. Lupus UK currently supports some 6,000 members through their Regional Groups and advise many others on the symptoms prior to diagnosis. Open theme. Maximum 40 lines long. Prizes: £150, £75, £40 and 2 x £10 Commendation Prizes. Plus publication in the Excel for Charity website. Entry Fees: £4/1, £7.50/2, £10.50/3, £12.50/4 and £14.00/5 (a third of entry fees goes to Lupus UK). Judge: Jim Bennett – award-winning author of The Man Who Tried to Hug Clouds, Managing Editor, Poetry Kit. Go to competition page
Barbara Smith lives on Ireland’s eastern seaboard. Poems recently published, or pending includes: Riposte, Electric Acorn, Ireland; nthposition.com and The Coffee House, UK; Garm Lu, Canada; Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, US and TMR, India. Essays recently published include west47online and VirtualWriter, Ireland. Smith has published two volumes of poetry: Gnosis and Poetic Stage; the latter enjoyed moderate success both inside and outside Ireland. www.writesight.com/writers/babsinead/
BARBARA SINEAD SMITH
A WOMAN’S WORK
(After Kavanagh and Heaney)
My granny used to soak the spuds too making it easy to peel them later. Part of morning’s ritual was topping their pot with water . Later, after fowl were fed and tae and bread were eaten she’d peel them slowly; humming all the while Moore’s medley of almanac songs. Steeping my potatoes now, as she did, brings her four green fields down the years to me. Scaly and red, my Roosters, instead of her soft Queens; mine tattle of tractor harrow; long scars that I smooth away with stainless peeler. I rinse them down, split them with a long broad knife and leave them by for dinner.
Notes: 1. Roosters, Queens – types of potatoes currently grown in Ireland. 2. Moore’s Old Almanac – an almanac giving tides, moon dates and other info. useful to farmers. 3. Four green fields – an Irish Ballad.
EMERGENCE
As the focus shifts onscreen, layers of fat and bladder give way to an image; teeth buds, skull, arms, hands. A curlicue spine all turned out from one fertilized nucleus; one zygote. And the focus shifts – the factory needed workers; they came in droves, with builders and roofers all tumbling after. No call was made; they just came. The suburbs rose from one side street, one city. Another slide show shows the glass house exposed; it’s inhabitants have been here fifteen years, watched by a greater being. Their queen laid a future (after a one night stand – and he died!) that emerged howling into the man-made storm of tomorrow’s world. So, we prod that mass, manipulate the medium; watch flora atrophy from the empty vessels fulcrum. We share a future grown by mould, fledged onscreen; reduced to zero and one and all the fractions in between.
SENTINEL LITERARY QUARTERLY POETRY & SHORT STORY COMPETITIONS, Every 3 months. Deadlines June 20th, September 20th, December 20th, March 20th. First Prize £150, Second Prize £75, 3rd Prize £50, Commendation Prizes 3 x £10. Entry Fees: £3 per poem, £12 for 5 poems. Judges, competition rules and how to enter online or by post at http://www.sentinelquarterly.com/competitions/
Getting Married with Gertrude Stein – Nicholas Y.B. Wong
Teaching English Poetry in Hong Kong – Nicholas Y.B. Wong
Thoughts on a Bad Day – Emanuela Puosi
Spock – Christian Ward
Tastes of Blue – Warren Paul Glover
Edinburgh – Warren Paul Glover
Voice in the Night – John Cooper
Leaving Day – John Cooper
The Age of No Dog – Mandy Pannett
Move On – Mark Borg
Please Destroy – Catherine Pitt
When Kieron Came – Heather Buswell
Dorm – Ilya Meylakh
Lines – Kate Barnett
Article
Adventures in Writing Competitions Administration – Nnorom Azuonye
Sentinel Champions #6
Winners & Commended work from the Sentinel Literary Quarterly Poetry & Short Story Competitions judged and selected by Geoff Stevens (Poetry) and Ivor Hartmann (Fiction)
We continue to share work from the Sentinel archives. These poems by Damien Fehrenbach are taken from Sentinel Poetry (Online) #25 2nd Anniversary Issue December 2004
DAMIEN FEHRENBACH
YOU
Jazz like rain falling cool against my skin as sit here the memory of your lips lingering. We jumped night trains fluid In the autumn rain Laughing you smiled at my soul And for the first time I knew you meant it That moment is acid Etched In my skull For eternity of course Eternity is only the length Of one life, Yours and mine
LINES FOR GINSBERG
He who once had visions of Blake, dead 7 years now, gone and still without him the world goes on, In your words I heard blood, King of May, son of the silent scream. Someday that will be me, 6 feet below the earth you once walked upon. Saint, now in the stars, holier than most, Shining down as I rode in American cars, I know I felt it They will call me crazy for saying so but that is the risk we take for being honest. Are you with Neal now or is there another? Its funny I never met you but I miss you anyway No more obscene literature from you bottomless well
Damien Fehrenbach is an American studying in the UK. He attends Bournemouth and Pool College while currently living in Sway.
Follow Sentinel Poetry Movement on Facebook & Twitter
We continue sharing gems from the Sentinel archives. These poems by Gill McEvoy are from Sentinel Poetry (Online) #25 2nd Anniversary Issue December 2004
GILL McEVOY
POT-HOLING “Don’t go,” I begged, but you would, so I did too. I watched the soles of your shoes escape from the thin beam of my torch and knew it was my turn to learn to burrow in the dark. I’m sorry I let you down: when I felt the Earth’s great weight against my ribs I knew I couldn’t do it. I’m sorry I screamed so loud: I’m glad that nothing fell on anyone down there. We don’t speak of it; the subject’s locked inside the tunnels of the mind. Sometimes the weight of it squeezes me so hard I must speak – but you just squirm away in a squeak of rubber shoe.
BIOPSY As you gently take my breast, ready to sink your needle in, I shudder, not from fear of pain, but where the loneliness begins. END OF RELATIONSHIP “Give it time,” they said and so she did: she gave it minutes, hours, days. He never gave it a second thought.
CONVERTED CHAPEL There are seven skylights now set into the roof and, probably, over the old beams a planked floor slung to make a sleeping platform. No stained glass in the old rose-window now: everything done to let in light. At night when you lie like a snug rat in your undisturbed, uncurtained loft, do you sometimes marvel at the moon?
Follow Sentinel Poetry Movement on Twitter
Submit your work to Sentinel Literary Quarterly
Enter Sentinel Literary Quarterly Poetry and Short Story Competitions, run every 3 months with deadlines: 20th June, 20th September, 20th December, and 20th March http://sentinelquarterly.com/competitions/
