2015 CREATRIX POETRY & HAIKU PRIZES
Congratulations to all the winners of the 2014 Creatrix Poetry/Haiku Prizes selected from Issue 26 to Issue 29.
Thank you to Sunline Press, Fremantle Press, Crow Books, Mulla Mulla Press and Tantamount Press for donating the prizes.
Thank you to Peter Jeffrey, Carolyn Abbs and Julie Watts for judging the Poetry Prize and Matt Hetherington for judging the Haiku Prize.
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Creatrix Poetry Prize Winners
First Place – Scott-Patrick Mitchell
makeup on midland line
Second Place – Rose van Son
Vincent van Gogh Paints Eugene Bloch, 1888
Third Place – Kenneth Hudson
Cambodia
Highly Commended – Jackson
The Secret Slip
Highly Commended – Rosie Barter
Cradle Moon
Highly Commended – Virginia O’Keefe
Summer Musing
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Creatrix Haiku Prize Winners
First Prize – Carl Seguiban
between beats
on the cardiogram –
patter of rain
Second Prize: Simon Hansen
end of season
a few ragged leeks
seed an acre
Third Prize – Pravat Kumar Padhy
desert journey –
camels follow shadow
after shadow
Highly Commended – Shloka Shankar
curfew –
a ragged doll remains
outdoors
Highly Commended – David Sergent
sick leave
all day watching
the window spider
David Sergent
Highly Commended – Helen Taylor
hair across her face
she turns
into the wind
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Creatrix Poetry Prize Winners
First Prize
makeup on midland line
she is a matisse, monet
in the way she dabs her
face to make up a mask
representing how she
feels
. train wheels squeal in
to motion & lotion is
applied to hide ravages
time enshrines: age in
lines
. she smooths grooves
to deflect & invoke an
illusion of youth, even
though she is young her
-self
. skull as parchment she
writes a poem upon her
face, stroking into place
phrasing so eloquently
traced
. an iPhone mirrors back
what her brushes attack
, lacquer a factor in her
arrangement of attractor
: self-portraiture
is a craft that arcs her
eyelashes as her eyes
spark, admiring the art
of self construction she
imparts
Scott-Patrick Mitchell (SPM)
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Second Prize
Vincent van Gogh Paints Eugene Boch, 1888
In Arles you meet a painter friend –
painted him in ochre blends
his jacket pinned, his nose pronounced
his face brush-stroked to his chin
In Arles, we too, meet friends
wave to them from the balcony
to street below, join them as they drink
that well-loved brew, a favourite blend.
From here the night sky canvassed
those other stars you paint recalled
the sky circled midnight blue
a portrait of Eugene tuned.
A halo smooth on his fine hair
you paint a radiance of which you’re prized
your colours warmed by star and sky
join parallels against a starry sky.
Two dimensional gold and green
draw ochre in that Yellow House
Eugene’s collar turned, his tie pin-striped
a candle-flame to light his face.
So we sit my friends and I
imagining your every word
and on our laps a melancholy glaze
to light those starry nights again.
Rose van Son
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Third Prize
Cambodia
I read Cambodia is full of ghosts.
Actually “Spirits of the dead”.
Are these exactly the same?
My head is often filled
with spirits of the dead.
Sometimes when I sleep at night
ghosts creep out
and I wake up in a prison bed
white coats telling me:
You’re not well again.
Perhaps I’m really Cambodian ?
I shouldn’t read such things
before I go to bed.
Under the blankets
the dead of night.
Kenneth Hudson
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Highly Commended
The Secret Slip
This is the point from which I always leave
I lock my baggage into a box
to free me while I wait
The key is a number
A secret printed
on a slip of paper
My instrument won’t fit
I have to carry it
This is the point
Under the table my instrument
crouches in its sheath
The locos stand on the lines
bellowing their punk
A sound like yellow streaks
in smoky black
I loved you so much I wanted to unlock
the boxes in your head
and write your healing songs
It doesn’t happen like that
This is the point from which I always leave
I’ll turn my back on the lines
I’ll wrangle my instrument
unlocker my baggage
and put them
on a bus
I’ll sit beside a cellist from Chile
who produces trance and trip-hop
I’ll throw away
the secret slip
Jackson
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HIGHLY COMMENDED
cradle moon
fine lick of moon
a boat
a grin
a cradle for my lust
it was September then
that same new moon
when you flew to her in Vienna
left me on the edge
in love with honey and lies
and that memory of you
a blond-haired boy
in a black-tarred schoolyard
who cared one humid day
when a softball cracked my head
as I drank from the tap
laid your cool hand on my temple
asked are you alright?
left your imprint in memory
like some kind of saint
forty years on when we met as lovers
you warned me of your lies
long sentences of silence came
before the postcard of Klimt’s Kiss
mailed in Vienna with her
too gentle to disappoint
longer still between the telling
of absentee truths
it took an age to let go
to see that cradle moon
and not you
Rosie Barter
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Highly Commended
Summer Musing
After the fires went through
some people rebuilt their houses.
Don’t know about their lives though.
And on the hill they’ve put in speed humps.
How can that help when the fire trucks run?
You can’t turn there unless you’re takin it slow.
Fireries are cowboys, Col says so and he should know;
he was one for thirty years till the beast
ate his home, they saved his sheds but…
He camps there now, hasn’t got the ticker;
too old, too slow, to put up
another Sitawhilelonger [sharply
etched in Bali teak and black burned wood].
You’d think the houses on the creek
would’ve been ok but who’s to say
when the wind’s from the east and the
blast from the desert hits the spark and
up she goes along the trees,
jarrahs exploding like penny bungers
on the skyline.
We fled of course. Had no choice.
They wouldn’t let us back for a week
but some blue shirt let us know. No point.
Now she cries and
I just can’t…
Virginia O’Keefe
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