2018 celebrates 10 years of Creatrix publications. In recognition of this milestone event the committee decided to award a special prize of $50 for the best haiku selected from those submitted to Creatrix #40 and the best poem that reflects what poetry is or what it means to them.
Winner of the haiku sections is:
argument –
the path divides around
a single trunk
Nathalie Buckland. Nimbin, NSW
and a Commendation was awarded to:
our conversation
banyan roots above
the soil
Basanta Kumar Das
2018 Occasional Poetry Prize
Joint Prize Winners
I Am For
Ships Of States
Highly Commended
Poetic Injustice
How Many People
The Poem Itself
Fiction Is Necessary
For The Words
Autopsy Of A Poem
Given the short deadline time that followed WAPI’s decision to take up Scott Patrick Mitchell’s suggestion that the 40th issue of CREATRIX should have an occasional prize on the theme of either ‘What does poetry mean to you’ or ‘What is poetry?’ our membership was quick to respond and came in with some 22 entries.
Peter Jeffery as the constant continuing selector alongside a roster of eight WAPI members donated a cash prize of $50 for the WINNING entry or entries and WAPI made a selection from its book collection possible for those entries that were HIGHLY COMMENDED.
The judges Veronica Lake and Peter Jeffery were very pleased with the standard of entries and have decided that there should be a joint First Prize splitting the cash prize.
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Joint Prize Winner
I Am For
‘I am for an art that is political-erotical-mystical, that does something other than sit on its ass in a museum’ Claes Oldenburg, 1961
———————–I am for a poetry
that is divorced from the unreal world
———————–I am for a poem
that shapes itself from the random leftover broken fragments of modern times
———————–I am for a poetry
that smacks you in the face as it cuts through political deceit
————-and slashes at the under-written codes of the lying masterclass
———————–I want a poetry
that stings my eyes with acidic bravado and washes my lips with desire,
that hints at a restless unknown zone, casting deep between forested clefts
————-that carry the scent and memory of a blissful past
———————–I am for a poetry
of the collective where singular poets sweat together in shaping words
————-and breathing sounds not yet emerged, nor even heard
———————–I am for a poem
that catches in one glance the screech of a galah chewing summer-brittle seeds
————-of liquidambar with the pulsating thrust-laden entry to sky of a jet departing tarmac
———————–I am for a poetry
that cries itself to sleep, that tosses through fractured night in fevered dreaming
where the shape and want of language transport the dreamer
————-to fields of aching, breathless fantasy
———————–I am for a poem
that speaks its mind without fear of arrest or execution,
where powerlessness gravitates to action and the oppressors shiver in their sleep
————-and shake with brittle anxiety in fear of equality rising before the ashes fall
———————–I am for a poetry
of the burning skies the swollen dunes the bleached forests the frozen oceans
————-the melting tundra. The tumescent songs of hope that arise from simply being
———————–I am for a poetry
of resistance, where words line up like howitzers and blow to shreds
————-the complicity and passivity of post-dronal citizens
———————–I need a poem
that whooshes through inner space in silence, a cruise missile
of pulsating electric text that shreds apathy, indifference and aggression,
that explodes in such a way that a spray of seething metal fire transmutes
————-without permission into a field of passionate wildflowers
———————–A poem
of forever, a few small words that when writ upon a page, dance gaily into receptive minds
————-and generate a long-lost harmony, a pungency of communality, hope and justice
———————–A poem
without words, which seeps like ink up a wick into this fearsome, addled world
————- – and softens the blow
———————–I am for a poetry
of birds, winged for flight, where words fly free
————-and perch at night to await a new dawn
Allan Padgett
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Joint Prize Winner
Ships of States
craft carved from hard words and soft,
coloured for the eye and sounded well,
and polished along the true,
tacked with perfume and fathomed for a spell.
argosy launched from the mire of mind
to sail in auditors’ ears,
and float in currents of readers’ specific
memory, bliss and tears.
tender (legal or outlaw) convoyed from hand to hand
rich koine valued by someone new
or poems pocketed lying idle
lost change hiding in plain view.
Ted Witham
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HIGHLY COMMENDED
Poetic Injustice
The mind of the poet
inhabits a timeless shifting realm
waiting
like a bear trap for
hapless metaphor to stumble in.
Betrayed by breaking twig
the captured beast galvanizes the poet
who leaps, hunting quill in hand
to subdue a creature
made of myth.
Alas, poor metaphor
who struggles to be tamed.
Alas, poor poet who swoons,
bleeding words as the elusive prize
slips into a dangling modifier.
The poet is nothing
if not persistent.
Creeping through the majestic
wilderness of words,
insight at the ready
he waits, spurning sleep
for the rhyme of his dreams.
At the edge of consciousness she lies,
beautiful in her obscurity,
yearning for discovery but
afraid of the clumsy pen
of her chosen lover.\
By moonlight, afloat on a sea of inspiration
in the vessel of hope,
the poet holds a single line
taut, alone and pleading
for a kiss from perfection.
Frances Faith
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How Many People
How many people, like me, hopeful poets,
are sitting, at this instant, finger poised
on the send button, anxiously.
How many people, like me, are convinced
that their creation might be worth something
and, at the same time, cannot be.
How many people, like me, tremble slightly
before waving their work goodbye
“like a child off to boarding school.
How many people, like me, are shattered
when they trudge home defeated and dejected.
as if it were the only thing that mattered.
How many people, like me, crumple up
the sae, but still have the guts
to file away the rejection comments.
How many people, like me, hope to learn
from them, but can’t bear to look,
ignoring them, like a child’s poor report card.
How many people, like me………….
Derek Fenton
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The Poem Itself
is where you want it
yet how you arrive
depends on where you’ve been
from hallways of regret or guilt
to beds of love or lust
there’s this place
more like a room
that becomes too crowded
and yearns for release
from a window to an afternoon
breeze – the Fremantle Doctor,
that sudden turn of words.
A life sentence in ways
of late nights and lost sleep
leaving promises to partners
you can’t always keep,
manipulator of time
from seeker to event
those urges that push you
unhinged become
the poem itself.
Mike Greenacre
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Fiction Is Necessary
but, upside down in the dark,
all the lyrics have fallen
to the bottom of the box.
turned, back to the dark ocean,
the strange wet lap of the beach,
and, as I risk vertigo,
riding a warm updraft to
hover and glide with the gulls,
all strokes, no answers, fending
off clocks and chess boards and clouds,
intravenous hits of doubt.
it’s a furred logic this, as
truth makes it’s slow osmosis.
but the trick? don’t read for plot
Kevin Gillam
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For The Words
Those –
that did exhume me
from my many lives
for those words I am turning
as this earth turns
into each new morning
alight, very quietly
And those –
once thrown like arrows
at my mother’s feet
yes those I collected with care
and later used to fasten my livery
hear me: they now are mine
become birdsong from no country
And for those –
falling as does every spring rain
perfuming my hair with loamy thus
and then sometimes rising unannounced
becoming pale mist on the mountain
“those steeped in the deepest russet
never carved like cold meat
for those I am turning
those I would want, would care
to have as final company.
Deeksha Koul
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Autopsy Of A Poem
The dead poem lies
on a paper-white surface.
Will dissection find
the faulty rhythm at its heart,
the missed beat that made
it stumble from the page?
A slow paring back of layers,
the seven laminates of skin,
reveals a network of stilled vessels;
a tangled jungle of nerves
edgy with adjectives.
Taut tendons and muscles,
sinewy with the strength of verbs,
hold strong, visceral nouns
identifying things organic and vital;
the four humours of ancient physic
filling the moody spaces with
uncertain chemistry.
And there!
flensed and gleaming,
the haiku bones
stripped down to the truth.
Mardi May
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