Trim Poetry Competition 2020 Results

Unfortunately Trim Poetry Festival 2020 has been postponed and with it the Trim Poetry Competition prize-giving. We hope to run the competition and the prize-giving later in the year. But we are announcing the winner and runners-up and they have received their prizes.

Winner: 
Patrick Lodge, UK for his poem Postcard from Symi

Runners-Up
Maeve McKenna, Sligo for her poem Tree Felling at Lissadell
Matt Hohner, USA for his poem Bearing the Weight of Light

Shortlisted
Bird's Eye View by Catherine Conlon, Kildare.
In the Darkroom by John D Kelly, Fermanagh.
Light Rail by David Butler, Wicklow.
Little Snowdrops by Martin Sykes, Mayo.
Mizpah Ring, Man's, circa 1902 by Maria Isakova Bennett, UK.
Nature Lesson by Marian Brannigan, Louth.
Talking in Pictures by Karen O'Connor, Kerry.

Congratulations to the winner, the runners-up , the shortlisted and all who supported the competition.
Thanks also to judges, Orla Fay and Michael Farry.

Below Patrick Lodge reads his prizewinning poem

Postcard from Symi

On an arid island where every building

appeared to float on a cellar of water

and the sound of summer was the lazy

rhythm of cisterna pumps kicking in,

anything is possible. Such as the two

ranks of people, jittery as the waves

that brought them finally to this sunbaked

quay or will whisk them away for a day. 

Skittish, as if about to start a sousta simiaki

to the music leaking out of a taberna, all wait

for a leader to sort the next sinuous steps.

A bright-eyed policewoman strides forward.

The figure of a snake priestess in a hi-viz,

she opens her arms, seems to grasp the two lines,

keeps them apart, until, one, complaining, shuffles

under the Schengen portal: daybags packed,

passports waving a valedictory curse to the god

of delight deferred. Ahead, the Turquoise Coast,

Marmaris, shopping heaven: silver rings,

leather goods, fake labels, fake everything.

The world’s an unreal cornucopia — those

in the other line may feel that too. Held between

then and now in the grasp of the port police they accept

water, toothpaste, nappies with shy smiles.

“I had a house”, a lady says, answering

a question no-one has asked. She says it again,

unrolls a blanket on the quayside. A punctured

inflatable expires on the rocks below,

rocking in the wash of departing tour boats.

The tide is still coming in.

Patrick Lodge