RESULTS OF THE MANCHESTER CATHEDRAL INTERNATIONAL RELIGIOUS POETRY COMPETITION 2007

This year's competition was a great success.  We are most grateful to all who took part.

The winners are as follows:

First Prize of £300 and the title:

Manchester Cathedral Poet of the year 2007,

Maitreyabandhu, London, Visitation

Second Prize of £150: Pat Borthwick, North Yorkshire, Guest Room

Third Prize of £75: Joan Michelson, London, Love Boat

Our Seven runners-up whose poems were ‘Commended.'

Mr Trevor Barnett, Withington, Manchester, The Carpenter's Apprentice

Ms Carol Beadle, Nottingham, Jacob's Deam

Mr Mark Cobley, New Mills, Derbyshire, In All the Air

The Revd Rachel Mann, Stretford, Manchester, The Fruit

Ms Deborah Trayhurn, Crieff, Perthshire, Across Infinity of Silk

Mr Atar Hadari, Hebden Bridge, Tabernacles

Mr Anthony Watts, Hatch Beauchamp, Tauton, The Village Churches

The above poems have now been published in a small booklet.  These can be obtained from the Cathedral, price (including postage) £2.50.

Our congratulations go to all our winners.

Click on more to read the winning poems.

The Cathedral's 2007 Poetry Prize and the title: ‘Manchester Cathedral Poet of the Year 2007.'has been won by Maitreyabhandu, a London Buddhist with his poem Visitation.

Strange that you should come

like that, without any form at all,

carrying no symbolic implements,

without smile or frown

or any commotion,

as if you had been there all the time,

like a pair of gloves left in a pocket.

As if I had been looking that way,

into the wide blue yonder, and you were

beside me, enduring my hard luck stories

with infinite patience.  Not even waiting –

the tree outside my window

doesn’t wait, nor the ocean wedge

with its new, precise horizon – just there

like the shadow of a church

or a quiet brother.

And how I saw you, in the mess of things,

was as a slant of grey,

the perfect grey of house dust,

and absolute neutral, with no weaving,

no shimmer of cobalt

and light-years away from Byzantium.

Grey. And I want to add, like light,

as if a skylight opened in my skull,

and into the darkness fall

a diagonal of pure Bodmin Moor.

But even that’s too bright,

too world-we’re-busy-in.

Call it ‘dust’ then, or the bloom

of leaf-smoke from an autumn fire.

.........

Second Prize of £150: Pat Borthwick, North Yorkshire

Guest Room

Some tiny creature

right outside my window,

woke me.

It might have been

the warm-up act, a solo,

centre-stage in the bracken

or hedge bottom

but it was highly metabolic

and pitched above angels.

Imagine a chandelier in Versailles

shaken with the speed of light:

a canteen of cutlery

falling from a plane’s baggage hold –

then you’re close.

And imagine,

over the tick of my alarm,

the muscle of a little fragrant heart.

.........

Third Prize of £75: Joan Michelson, London

Love Boat

The family from London came for Christmas,

and took her out.  It was summer in New Zealand.

Her grandsons helped her walk into the shallows

and feel the water rising.  Nothing better

could she wish for – there where she had swum

for fifty years.  Then they helped her with

the coffin.  They fashioned it themselves in pine,

as she wanted, painted it sky-blue.

When dried, they drew on it, and wrote farewells.

Then with stones and shells from her collection

that she chose, they jewelled the sides and lid.

That wasn’t all.  As if on fire, her ‘love boat’ -

which she called it – might slide through water and house

and hold her spirit.  In one end, they cut

a hand-size door and fixed a handle with

a plum stone from the garden.  Done, ready

they stood the ‘love boat’ upright in the carport.

It waited there until a day in May.