In The Guardian

Six poems

For a few years the Guardian ran a Poetry Workshop - a guest (and renown) poet would devise a contest or challenge, us learning poets would submit our pieces, and the shortlisted works would appear in the Guardian along with a comment from the Guest. It was very exciting! There are few opportunities for a new poet to receive genuine feedback on her works, and fewer opportunities for a new poet to get published in a journal as respectful as The Guardian. Over the years 2004-2005, I had six poems shortlisted and thought I’d share them all in one post. It’s an opportunity for poets and non-poets alike to see what comments on a poem from editors and judges can read like. Which of these is your favourite? 

Lost : Little Girl

Hair blonde eyes blue
green when near water
nose and chin small curving
white brow wide summer
smile last seen wearing
sand shoes holding shells holding
the wind last seen by the river
growing.

This is marvellous. It expresses very economically and beautifully the thought that every parent/grandparent has had many times ... Don't they grow up quickly? The lack of punctuation adds to the headlong rush of time that is part of what the poet is saying. I would have had no capital letters either, I think. The fact that "Lost" is part of the title makes it seem as though the adult looking back is regretful, even sad, about the loss of this child's youth, which brings a sort of shadow to the picture. It's as though the 'growing' in the last line is some kind of sinister process: something the poet might want to turn back if she could. Or maybe I'm reading too much into it. In any case, a good poem. A clear picture. Guest Poet: Adèle Geras

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Hush

Moon is a woman
The baby holds her string,
a balloon,
jerking through black trees,
Congratulations! spins and jumps.
The deep sky and stars are creased paper,
lining a cedar drawer,
her white hands caress the knits within,
fold and fold.
The road, a grey bow,
turns and knots around us.
The night is a gift,
its moon is a woman, punched.
Clutching herself,
she scuttles alongside our truck,
holding her womb while
inside the baby sleeps
and the black trees repeat
across her face.
The deep sky and stars
are the turning of a plate,
the high hum of the wheels
sing, her white hands
stroke and stroke
and the baby
sleeps.

I like the way this poem develops. The pace and rhythm are just right, and the title is good, too. I enjoyed the nicely poised last sentence, with its very effective use of lineation - a feature of the poem throughout, I thought. Guest Poet: Chris Greenhalgh

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How to survive a tornado

You'll need a heavy coat of metaphor
and fleece, some oil to keep you loose, and when
the winds thumb down upon your life pretend
to be a fish, transform your bones, explore
the bend, the slip of bodies fish adore.
There'll be debris as dreams and plans upend
and there'll be love, so spin your fins, extend
the feather of your gills and swim: for shore,
for light, the taste and press of scale to skin.
Be thin between the whorls and when the drain
begins the suck to draw you in, you'll need
to be a seed: sharp husked, a thorn within.
The storm will rage, constrict and spit. When freed
put down your roots. The sky will break like rain.

Perfect rhythmically, original and beautiful. Were you aware of the echoes you set going with internal vowel rhymes: swim/ skin/ thin/ begins/ in/ within/? Congratulations! Guest Poet: Anne Stevenson

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Wax Paper

I wake to the groan of your rising,
your morning rendezvous
with the edge of the bed,
head in hand. On your back our wedding quilt
has left a mark. I close my eyes, roll
them up and up until they ache,
until the shower
(eager) opens its wet hot throat for you.
I watch your shape concealed
by steam and dream
of turquoise, a radio
playing toothpaste jingles while someone's mother
butters 20 slices of white bread and wraps them in wax
paper. The coffee starts to perk. I think about years,
how they can make a place thicken, spread
their patina over
and over the wood. When you and the smell
of your soaps and slathering
foams return to our room, I don't move.
Let the darkness fake sleep,
let the bright bathroom be love. You leave,
of course. I slide over
to your pillow, lie in the crease of you.
Somewhere, the baby
stirs in her crib.

Of the 12 poems shortlisted, this one alone seems to have a positive take on domesticity and the day-to dayness of life. The woman is luxuriating in simply turning over in bed and watching her man shower and ready himself. There is a confident celebratory, sensuous note and the poem's finish is lovely. "I slide over to your pillow, lie in the crease of you" is wonderful. Well done! Guest Poet: Micheal O'Siadhail

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It's Saturday

He marinates the steak.
That's his job, and his to cook it
over the grill. Her job is to
cut radishes because he likes them,
slice the tomato thin,
tear the lettuce leaves
with her fingers so the blade
won't make them brown.
Sometimes they sing
Danny Boy or Wild
Irish Rose. Sometimes they say things like
beedado instead of potato
because they had children once
and kids talk funny. They say
Gladys Buns because Gladys
always brought the buns at Christmas.
Tonight he sets the table,
puts out the bone handled steak knives,
the old wooden salad bowls.
Then he sits, meat growing cold
on his plate, and listens for sounds of her -
low laughter on the green phone,
the click of a lighter, a kitchen
cabinet closing, a pencil filling in
crossword squares, the soft sigh
of her new wig
dropping to the floor.

Here the mixed feelings natural to elegy are very present. The details – each and cumulatively – are the bodily expression of love, they are its substance and, by means of lines of verse, they become its celebration. All the harder to bear then is the loss of them. The last two and a half lines have the keenness of poetry in the act of telling the truth. Guest Poet: David Constantine

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Curtain Call

Morning draws long shadows
across the water. I can already smell coffee
and bacon. My kids are asleep
in their warming tent, not yet bored
or unhappy. My boyfriend snores in the camper,
not yet drunk. Some kind of dragon-
fly skippers across the glassy lake.
Summer's mirror. And who's
the most beautiful today? Cloud
in her usual blue robes, or Heron
stepping long-legged from her
limousine of reeds. Suddenly
the air is filled with flash. Trout
has arrived with her following of minnow
and the early fishers flip their lures
and tippets into the air. It will be a grand
show today. In preparation, a butler wind
unrolls its velvet tongue.

This gives a fresh, vivid feeling of early morning by the lake, almost as good as being there! I love the heron stepping from "her/ limousine of reeds", and the humour and contrasts in the early lines. I'm not sure about the title, which suggests the end rather than the beginning of the show, and which establishes the metaphor perhaps too early in the poem. You might have another look at the lineation: it seems a bit broken-up and I wonder if you might try to have lines that follow the sense more, keeping "And who's the most beautiful today?" on one line, for instance. You could try longer lines, such a "Morning draws long shadows across the water" - that might reflect the wide landscape you are in. I wonder about the mixed metaphor, "butler" and "tongue", in the last two lines, though the lines do give a feeling of grandness and expectation. A delightful poem. Guest Poet: Jane Duran