Secondary
Winner: Aimie Baxter
Second: Poojal Mapari (Delhi Private School Academy, Dubai)
Joint Third: Alex Mitchell (Ralph Thoresby)
Joint Third: Lewis Bird (Ralph Thoresby)
Primary
Winner: Anna Turton (Horsforth Newlaithes Primary)
Second: Nathan Gray (Whitkirk Primary)
Joint Third: Lois Akomah (St Peter's C of E Primary)
Joint Third: Louis Appleyard (Westerton Primary Academy)
Joint Third: Kai Payne (Blenheim Primary)
School/Class Prize (Secondary)
Ralph Thoresby School
School/Class Prize (Primary)
Westerton Primary Academy
Adult Winner: Moira Garland (scroll down)
Runners-up: Ian Harker, Oz Hardwick and Drusilla Long (scroll down)
Blackbird from Scandinavia*
Wings that droop like
a sad
man stooping
in the corner on the pavement
below the feeder
on the flag stone
with the discarded seeds
cheerful beak yellow/black
you come in close
I think of
your melodious song the pleasure
seeing you
hearing you
feeding you with the other 88%
and I can’t
see the difference.
*It is estimated that 12% of blackbirds
in the UK winter have flown in from Scandinavia.
Some observers say that their beaks are
black rather than yellow.
Moira Garland
Papers
I spent the day adrift, waist-deep in paper,
scrabbling for one note I’d folded away,
a list of strangers’ names. The air was hot,
like coarse wool scratching at my face, and panic,
urgent, bubbled up through the bare floor.
With open eyes, I dreamt all night of waves,
my muscles clamped tight as parched throats
that can neither beg nor scream, while beneath the moon,
expendable cargo snored, imagining light,
their rigid forms breathing ragged, dreaming
words to life, like sinews of a new monster,
frighteningly beautiful, with paper skin shining.
Tomorrow lurched in the cough of the failing engine,
was slapped down hard with mismatched oars.
* * *
I unfold a simple map with just a cross
and one word in a language I don’t recognise.
Fearful of my neighbour’s eyes, I see instead
nothing, bounded by walls and wire, endless
queues to join other endless queues, to pronounce
the unknown Home, to see myself captured
on a flickering monitor screen, and to call myself Free.
Oz Hardwick
LOINER
The deckhands put me off at Hull.
It was all I could do to stand up with the new country
listing under my feet worse than the ship and the stink
of the docks and the sick in the back of my throat.
They took one look and said Leeds – threw the word
into my arms like a half-full sack – they knew me for a Jew
and Jews are tailors and Leeds is cloth. I carted that word
through flat fields, held onto it and didn’t look back
till the city broke around my ears like light
at the end of a tunnel, smoke and dosshouses and hard luck,
no English like I’d ever heard, my few words bad pennies
that came back as we slept ten to a room in the Leylands
and I lay awake as the trams bashed past
and I counted the hours and I changed my name.
§
Leeds was cloth alright – the river blinkered and dragging machines.
All English cloth smells of water – water’s in the weft
and the wool, every Englishman up to his stiff white collars
in water and in Leeds it’s the Aire and that’s how they talk.
§
Half my life I’ve been waist-deep in offcuts,
the other I couldn’t hear myself shout for the machines,
miles of stitching running through our fingers.
Briggate was offcuts of arms and legs, people sprawled
on the cutting room floor covering themselves in rags –
everything pushed out of shape in the seams of the streets
and what I dreamed of wasn’t success – warm and fat
in the palm of my hand – it was my accent fading
like band music on a Sunday. I wanted to put the rag trade in a tin
so it rattled at the bottom of a drawer and take it out sometimes
for the grandkids – the machine smell still clinging to bits of hem
and measurements and I tell them what it was I did
and they look at me from out of the England they take for granted
and they tell me in their soapy Yorkshire voices
that they don’t believe a word of it.
Ian Harker
Refugee Girl
Silent girl, a thousand miles away from home,
Like a frozen icicle slowly melting,
Before grey men, in grey suits, in a grey room,
Dissolving in the heat of harsh questioning.
Where are your mother, father, brother,
Why come here? How old are you? Where are you from?
‘How to speak of the beloved mother?’
Silent girl, a thousand miles away from home.
‘The harsh screeching of the wind through the sands
Sand in our hair, in our mouths and our eyes,
Mother falling, her neck cracks as she lands,
Little brother, the wind sweeps away our cries’.
The brother, they are demanding, what of him?
‘How to explain how he slipped through my hands,’
Pale eyes, straight mouths, and faces grim,
‘The harsh screeching of the winds through the sands.’
Speak silent girl, for those forever silent.
Like the iceberg calving, splits and cracks and parts,
The groaning sounds of calving words has rent
The peace in grey rooms, and splintered frozen hearts.
Drusilla Long
Winner: Aimie Baxter
Second: Poojal Mapari (Delhi Private School Academy, Dubai)
Joint Third: Alex Mitchell (Ralph Thoresby)
Joint Third: Lewis Bird (Ralph Thoresby)
Primary
Winner: Anna Turton (Horsforth Newlaithes Primary)
Second: Nathan Gray (Whitkirk Primary)
Joint Third: Lois Akomah (St Peter's C of E Primary)
Joint Third: Louis Appleyard (Westerton Primary Academy)
Joint Third: Kai Payne (Blenheim Primary)
School/Class Prize (Secondary)
Ralph Thoresby School
School/Class Prize (Primary)
Westerton Primary Academy
Adult Winner: Moira Garland (scroll down)
Runners-up: Ian Harker, Oz Hardwick and Drusilla Long (scroll down)
Blackbird from Scandinavia*
Wings that droop like
a sad
man stooping
in the corner on the pavement
below the feeder
on the flag stone
with the discarded seeds
cheerful beak yellow/black
you come in close
I think of
your melodious song the pleasure
seeing you
hearing you
feeding you with the other 88%
and I can’t
see the difference.
*It is estimated that 12% of blackbirds
in the UK winter have flown in from Scandinavia.
Some observers say that their beaks are
black rather than yellow.
Moira Garland
Papers
I spent the day adrift, waist-deep in paper,
scrabbling for one note I’d folded away,
a list of strangers’ names. The air was hot,
like coarse wool scratching at my face, and panic,
urgent, bubbled up through the bare floor.
With open eyes, I dreamt all night of waves,
my muscles clamped tight as parched throats
that can neither beg nor scream, while beneath the moon,
expendable cargo snored, imagining light,
their rigid forms breathing ragged, dreaming
words to life, like sinews of a new monster,
frighteningly beautiful, with paper skin shining.
Tomorrow lurched in the cough of the failing engine,
was slapped down hard with mismatched oars.
* * *
I unfold a simple map with just a cross
and one word in a language I don’t recognise.
Fearful of my neighbour’s eyes, I see instead
nothing, bounded by walls and wire, endless
queues to join other endless queues, to pronounce
the unknown Home, to see myself captured
on a flickering monitor screen, and to call myself Free.
Oz Hardwick
LOINER
The deckhands put me off at Hull.
It was all I could do to stand up with the new country
listing under my feet worse than the ship and the stink
of the docks and the sick in the back of my throat.
They took one look and said Leeds – threw the word
into my arms like a half-full sack – they knew me for a Jew
and Jews are tailors and Leeds is cloth. I carted that word
through flat fields, held onto it and didn’t look back
till the city broke around my ears like light
at the end of a tunnel, smoke and dosshouses and hard luck,
no English like I’d ever heard, my few words bad pennies
that came back as we slept ten to a room in the Leylands
and I lay awake as the trams bashed past
and I counted the hours and I changed my name.
§
Leeds was cloth alright – the river blinkered and dragging machines.
All English cloth smells of water – water’s in the weft
and the wool, every Englishman up to his stiff white collars
in water and in Leeds it’s the Aire and that’s how they talk.
§
Half my life I’ve been waist-deep in offcuts,
the other I couldn’t hear myself shout for the machines,
miles of stitching running through our fingers.
Briggate was offcuts of arms and legs, people sprawled
on the cutting room floor covering themselves in rags –
everything pushed out of shape in the seams of the streets
and what I dreamed of wasn’t success – warm and fat
in the palm of my hand – it was my accent fading
like band music on a Sunday. I wanted to put the rag trade in a tin
so it rattled at the bottom of a drawer and take it out sometimes
for the grandkids – the machine smell still clinging to bits of hem
and measurements and I tell them what it was I did
and they look at me from out of the England they take for granted
and they tell me in their soapy Yorkshire voices
that they don’t believe a word of it.
Ian Harker
Refugee Girl
Silent girl, a thousand miles away from home,
Like a frozen icicle slowly melting,
Before grey men, in grey suits, in a grey room,
Dissolving in the heat of harsh questioning.
Where are your mother, father, brother,
Why come here? How old are you? Where are you from?
‘How to speak of the beloved mother?’
Silent girl, a thousand miles away from home.
‘The harsh screeching of the wind through the sands
Sand in our hair, in our mouths and our eyes,
Mother falling, her neck cracks as she lands,
Little brother, the wind sweeps away our cries’.
The brother, they are demanding, what of him?
‘How to explain how he slipped through my hands,’
Pale eyes, straight mouths, and faces grim,
‘The harsh screeching of the winds through the sands.’
Speak silent girl, for those forever silent.
Like the iceberg calving, splits and cracks and parts,
The groaning sounds of calving words has rent
The peace in grey rooms, and splintered frozen hearts.
Drusilla Long
