2010 CREATRIX POETRY & HAIKU PRIZES
Congratulations to all the winners of the 2010 Creatrix Poetry/Haiku Prizes from Issue 7 to Issue 10.
Thank you to Planet Books, Sunline Press, Fremantle Press, and Maureen Sexton for donating the prizes.
Thank you to Peter Jeffrey and Andrew Burke for judging the poetry competition.
Thank you to Rose van Son, Maureen Sexton, and Dean Meredith for judging the haiku competition.
Thank you to all of the poets who contributed to Creatrix in issues 7 to 10.
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Creatrix Poetry Prize Winners
First Prize – John Ryan
Under the Wattle Scrub, Coalseam Park
Second Prize – Flora Smith
Addiction
Third Prize – Kevin Gillam
The Anaesthetist’s Share
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Creatrix Haiku Prize Winners
First Prize – Amanda Joy
goodbye note
porous nature of paper
Second Prize – Meryl Manoy
patchwork shadows
among pine needles
woman knitting
Third Prize – Cynthia Rowe
earth hour
threading beads
by moonlight
Commended – Amanda Joy, Sally Clarke, Liana Christensen
Special Mention – Meryl Manoy, John Bird, Jack Prewitt, Quendryth Young
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First Prize
Under the Wattle Scrub, Coalseam Park
For Frank Cook
When I want to whisper to those long gone,
I go to the fields of everlastings
And hold still watching the taut yellow dawn.
A friend who has drowned, my father indrawn
Both becalmed like tallships at half-masting,
When I want to whisper to those long gone.
All the ones who have been too early drawn
By cancerous rot or the blue clasping,
I hold still watching the taut yellow dawn.
Frank, here you are with your tall sapphire brawn
Wide as the flowered hills and unlapsing
When I want to whisper to those long gone.
Under the wattle scrub, shimmering lawn
With the lissome Irwin River grasping,
I hold still watching the taut yellow dawn.
The arid lands east, the kwongan heath on
To the Indian Ocean’s rare lapping;
When I want to whisper to those long gone,
I hold still watching the taut yellow dawn.
John Ryan
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Second Prize
Addiction
I remember we were sea people.
Sea seekers together;
reef waders, fishers and sailors.
I was a reader of rock pools, gleaner
of treasure from seaweed and storm-wrack.
Our speech was sea-sound,
a soft swish and sigh swish and sigh.
Our love all the rhythms of sea,
advance and retreat, breaking and thunder.
He would have his days as storm-maker
when I knew to take to the cliff paths alone.
That day, his voice all great black boomers,
my high sea-bird cry, piping and piping.
I came home, sea-calmed from the cliffs:
heard only the rasping of my shoes on shell
as I tried to claim his torso from the tide.
But I do not remember weeping.
Flora Smith
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Third Prize
the anaesthetist’s share
am breathing in sunshine, in silence,
in an afternoon still as regret.
you’re not with me, off and not,
on the tongue, all that’s unsaid.
we are vespers, we are all sung,
we have been out here, bush-fired sunsets,
cinders of betweens. and there is you,
ghost limb, collection bowl, a throb,
a guilt, a staining, as if am
moth-wing fingered, as if have been
mouthing hymns, forgetting, like
losing North, surrendering the
anaesthetist’s share. but am breathing out
fret and make-believe to this
smashed up sky, to twigs on doorsills,
am setting traps.
but, turning left, moving right,
with the hum of wires, this seagull heart,
words long as notes, not yet
at the crossing of leaving/longing,
in the could of did. this smeltered now,
blood and time and water,
or, perhaps, the weight of silence,
bar lines through hours unplayed.
perhaps bark has ceased book-ending.
where are the small deities
for frail thinking, the lakes for intincting?
where sits the drum of scalded leaves,
your gun-powdered maps and creeds?
Kevin Gillam
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