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For my latest class on "Ascent to Holiness" I was given the task to choose an essay on an aspect of holiness. I chose the following broad topic: "Examine in detail a work of art or of literature, a drama, film or musical etc. that seems to you an exposition of holiness and explain why."
Methodological approach. I decided to choose the text The Way of a Pilgrim. I read, re-read, and carefully listened to the audio version. Line by line I took "relevant quotations" from the book that pointed to holiness. Having listened to course lectures delivered by Rev. Dr. Nikolai Sakharov, Dr. George Bebawi, the late Archimandrite Ephrem Lash and numerous others, I looked for quotes that would 'fulfil' class definitions provided. What you read below is my first attempt at connecting notions of holiness with actual text from The Way of a Pilgrim. As I was analysing the "text", I also used Leximancer to identify the major thematic concepts of the book. The word "holy" appears 39 times and appears in the top 20 concepts of the book. I also analysed each of the "four tales" in like manner. Provided at the end of this paper are also pages of references I sought through to come to a clearer understanding of what holiness means. My next steps is to severely prune this essay back to explicit quotations that describe holiness and support them with direct references/sources on the advice of my tutor Fr. Alexander Tefft.
Note: What is holiness? Holiness is not doing "good works" or being "virtuous". Holiness is something that God possesses and we acquire from God as we are made in His image. How do we acquire this? By "abiding in Him", by calling on Him more and more to reside in our hearts. We love our enemies because we see God in them, we love His creations because He made them.
Disclaimer: the below essay is an early draft of my first attempt. Note: all errors are my own. I am studying towards a Certificate.
Holiness through the Jesus Prayer as Depicted in The Way of a Pilgrim
Katina Michael
This paper uses the book titled The Way of a Pilgrim to describe the path to holiness through prayer. In this 19th-century work, first published in Kazan with the title "Candid Narratives of a Pilgrim to His Spiritual Father" found in an Athonite monastery, the narrator takes the reader on a pilgrim's journey across Russia while practising the Jesus Prayer. It is not known whether the book is a literal or fictional account of one pilgrim's journey but the book demonstrates the power of invoking the name of Jesus through the biblically-based prayer: "Lord Jesus Christ Son of God have mercy on me a sinner" (Luke 18:13). The authorship of The Way of a Pilgrim is unknown although the four tales seem to be based on the original work of Archimandrite Mikhail Kozlov (1826-1884), entitled The Seeker of Unceasing Prayer. The exhortation by Saint Paul the Apostle in 1 Thessalonians 5:17 to "pray constantly" is a call toward unceasing prayer. In effect, it is a call to God to reside within our heart at all times through the Holy Spirit in a synergistic manner. For it is said by Saint Paul the Apostle: "we are God's fellow workers" [i.e., Gk <<συνεργοί>>]. And again the Apostle states in James 4:8, if we "draw near to God", He will draw near to us. Such is the striving toward a state of holiness, where we can open the door to God to reside within us, given we are made in His image. The Way of a Pilgrim demonstrates the importance of interior silence through the recitation of the Jesus Prayer guided by a spiritual father with the aim of uniting one's mind and heart. The more we pray, the more God is able to work through us to effect change in our own hearts and that of those around us. The ultimate aim of unceasing prayer, as demonstrated in The Way of a Pilgrim, whether living a celibate or married life, is union with God, that is, theosis.
The Path to Holiness is Prayer
Holiness is not a state in which we can reach on our own accord, no matter how hard we try, no matter how many good works we do. Holiness is a mystery and it cannot simply be attained by the "learning of the schools". It has unspeakable depths. The pilgrim is clear in stating, that "we must pray more often to God to teach us to pray without ceasing". When our mind and heart is "continually yearning" and we have an "unappeasable desire" toward God, then it cannot be in a state of sin. It is "the testing of the harmony of your own will with the voice of God". The misconception of many Christians lies in the belief that "good actions and all sorts of preliminary measures render us capable of prayer" when in fact the reverse is true, "prayer [is that] which bears fruit in good works and all the virtues". Furthermore, we are told in The Way of a Pilgrim that while the Christian is compelled to perform good works, that without prayer these cannot be accomplished. "Without prayer he cannot find the way to the Lord, he cannot understand the truth, he cannot crucify the flesh with its passions and lusts, his heart cannot be enlightened with the light of Christ, he cannot be savingly united to God. None of those things can be effected unless they are preceded by constant prayer."
A wise staretz (spiritual elder), tells the pilgrim that "the continuous interior prayer of Jesus is a constant uninterrupted calling upon the divine name of Jesus with the lips, in the spirit, in the heart, while forming a mental picture of His constant presence, and imploring His grace, during every occupation, at all times, in all places, even during sleep." The prayer: "Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me" interlinks a person with God, and after some time, he/she "can no longer live without it". The prayer takes root in the heart on its own accord, casting "all other thoughts aside". The admonition is to "repeat the prayer of Jesus as often as possible". Of course, at one level, The Way of a Pilgrim, sets conditions for the hesychast "to cut off from everything else" through the Jesus Prayer, and yet on another level the book also describes how all forms of prayer (e.g. the Lord's Prayer) can also be recited within a family context. God calls all of His children to holiness, not just those predisposed to monasticism. And this of course is demonstrated in the sanctification of Saints who chose either the path of marriage or virginity. Our goal should be to be with God as often as possible, "to cleanse the soul from all sensuality". But it is a constant striving, once the prayer has manifested in one's heart, like a well-oiled machine it must be cared for and nurtured, if it will go on "working still longer". The directive is to be awake in "prayer as often as you wish and as often as you can… without counting the number of times." It is to "seek after God in the simplicity of a loving heart" and to allow Him to "lead you into the right path."
The effect of recollecting our Lord Jesus Christ so often is a feeling of unutterable peace within the soul. The pilgrim describes his feelings thus: "I felt absolute peace in my soul. During sleep I often dreamed that I was saying the prayer. And during the day if I happened to meet anyone, all men without exception were as dear to me as if they had been my nearest relations… All my ideas were quite calmed of their own accord… my heart began of itself to feel at times a certain warmth and pleasure. If I happened to go to church, the lengthy service of the monastery seemed short to me and no longer wearied me as it had in time past. My lonely hut seemed like a splendid palace…" The pilgrim emphasises the importance of the instruction of a staretz in the recitation of prayer. He describes his joyful prayer as a "slight pain" in his heart as he imagines himself in God's merciful embrace: "I pictured myself, if only I could see Him, throwing myself at His feet and not letting them go from my embrace, kissing them tenderly, and thanking Him with tears for having of His love and grace allowed me to find so great a consolation in His Name, me, His unworthy and sinful creature!" The pilgrim, recognising his sinful nature as a fallen human, is given the grace by God to feel His presence within his heart. The pilgrim endures a transformative process uniting with God through the Holy Spirit while invoking the name of Jesus. We are reminded by Saint Paul's first epistle to the Corinthians (1 Cor. 6:19-20): "Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God? You are not your own; you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body."
Union with God
The two books that the pilgrim carries with him throughout his journey are the Holy Bible and The Philokalia. The pilgrim is shocked by the amount of knowledge he gains from The Philokalia, supported also by the prayer of Jesus which the holy Fathers said was "a summary of the Gospels". He noted, that his heart was kindled with a "desire for union with God by means of interior prayer". In Psalm 82:6, we are told, "You are gods, sons of the Most High, all of you." What greater glory could a human attain than this theosis? The pilgrim writes: "I began to see the meaning of such sayings as "the inner secret man of the heart," "true prayer worships in the spirit," "the kingdom is within us," "the intercession of the Holy Spirit with groanings that cannot be uttered," "abide in me," "give me thy heart," "to put on Christ," "the betrothal of the Spirit to our hearts," the cry from the depths of the heart, "Abba, Father," and so on". It was in this way that the pilgrim observed all natural things around him as "delightful" and "marvellous" singing praise to God constantly: "[t]he trees, the grass, the birds, the earth, the air, the light". And yet at the same time, all of these creations equally "witnessed to the love of God for man." We see here deeply the mystery of God's love which is revolving. God does not want us to do good works from the "fear of hell", but from "love for Him and zeal for His service; He wants us to find our happiness in uniting ourselves with Him in a saving union of mind and heart." In walking with name of Christ on our lips, in our thoughts, and our heart, ceaseless prayer helps maintain our path to holiness, bringing us closer to the meaning of the Cross and Resurrection, and the eschata (that is the last things).
The pilgrim describes feeling "overwhelmed with bliss" on the calling upon the name of Jesus. As he recites the prayer day and night, month after month in solitude, he becomes acutely aware of the meaning of the passage "[t]he kingdom of God is within you" (Luke 17:21). The pilgrim states at this point, "[m]y soul was always giving thanks to God and my heart melted away with unceasing happiness." Indeed, holiness is to allow the heart to "melt away", doing away with negative recollections that weigh heavy on the heart. It is to love one's enemy, to love all people as if members of the one family. The pilgrim writes that the rosary (i.e. prayer rope) can bring one to sanctity: "[w]hen the soul is made holy the body becomes holy also". He explains, "[e]veryone has his own gift from God… [and that] [e]veryone does what he can, as he sees his own path, with the thought that God Himself shows him the way of his salvation". The pilgrim cites St. Gregory of Thessalonika in conversation, in his love for others and his want to reveal to them to power of the invocation of the name of Jesus: "we are bound to reveal it and teach it to others, to everyone in general, religious and secular, learned and simple, men, women, and children, and to inspire them all with zeal for prayer without ceasing". Over and over again, throughout The Way of a Pilgrim, the message is conveyed as to the sweetness of the boundless love for Jesus Christ one attains when they are praying constantly. The Jesus prayer we are told by the pilgrim is a "comfort", makes his "heart bubble", is "delightful", is "consoling", provides "tears of joy", and such "gladness of heart" that he cannot find the words to express his feelings. To be united to God so closely through prayer must give such peace and innocence that is indescribable.
Some way through the Russian spiritual classic, we learn the reason why the pilgrim has chosen to live a wanderer's life. The pilgrim recounts many a story that demonstrate his path to holiness. He is not mad at his brother for causing a malady in one of his arms so that he cannot work rendering him a "cripple". He is not mad at his brother for burning down the home he and his wife shared. He is not mad at God for taking the "worthy and sensible" girl he had married prematurely. He is not mad with the townsfolk whom he helped so much but later accused him of wrongdoing with a young girl who was betrothed to another man. He is not mad with the men who robbed and struck him, even taking his knapsack, Holy Bible, copy of the Philokalia, and dry bread. In his interactions with others he showed great love, did not sin against them, and though he felt pained at times beyond what could be written for his treatment, he continued to love. To the men who had struck him "senseless" he gave 1 ruble and told them: "Repent and pray! Jesus Christ loves men; he will not forsake you." In essence, the pilgrim becomes "Christ-like" and fulfils the highest aspects of love that lead one to holiness. He reflected in his narrative: "If thine enemy hunger, feed him," and Jesus Christ himself said, "Love your enemies," "And if any man will take away thy coat let him have thy cloak also." He not only believed in these New Testament commandments, but lived by them whole-heartedly.
While the narrator paints a picture of a solitary life (i.e., monastic life) that is underpinned by prayer and fasting for Jesus and complete preoccupation with Him and the Saints, the narrator by no means takes away from the propensity for holiness in a family setting. When he encounters two children on his way, they insist that the pilgrim must meet their mother, and later the mother insists the pilgrim must meet her husband who is a magistrate. She tells the pilgrim: "He [the magistrate] reverences every pilgrim as a messenger of God. If you go away he will be really grieved not to have seen you. Besides that, tomorrow is Sunday, and you will pray with us at the liturgy, and at the dinner table take your share with us in what God has sent." The family lives by the Gospel and fulfils Matthew 25:34-39:
34 Then the King will say to those at his right hand, 'Come, O blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; 35 for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, 36 I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.' 37 Then the righteous will answer him, 'Lord, when did we see thee hungry and feed thee, or thirsty and give thee drink? 38 And when did we see thee a stranger and welcome thee, or naked and clothe thee? 39 And when did we see thee sick or in prison and visit thee?'
The pilgrim writes "I was astonished as I listened to what she said, and I asked myself whether I was talking with a human being or with a ghost of some sort." The reader, likewise, is left feeling deep love and hope that there are people who actually exist like this. Indeed, the whole scene is reminiscent of Paradise. The pilgrim continues: "The more I saw and heard of all this, the more surprised I was, and I thanked God for letting me see these devout people." The mother is symbolic of the Virgin Mary as she proclaims to the pilgrim that she does not rest. Holiness in this case is defined as being "fond of beggars, and brothers in Christ, and pilgrims." Rev. Dr. Nikolai Sakharov adds only "enemies" to this list under the instruction of Fr. Sophrony Sakharov who believed being Orthodox was plainly described as "loving your enemies".
The mother in this scene recounts her mother's blessing: "as her last will and testament she urged us to live as good Christians, to say our prayers fervently, and above all try to fulfill the greatest of God's commandments, that is, the love of one's neighbor, to feed and help our poor brothers in Christ in simplicity and humility, to bring up our children in the fear of the Lord, and to treat our serfs as our brothers. And that is how we have been living here by ourselves for the last ten years now, trying as best we could to carry out mother's last wishes. We have a guesthouse for beggars, and at the present moment there are living in it more than ten crippled and sick people." Later, the pilgrim proclaims: "'You are in God's own paradise here… Here is the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, and His most holy mother, and the blessed saints! And there… are the divine, living, and everlasting words of their teaching." It is reaffirmed by the pilgrim that God's strength is made perfect in weakness, and that neither the monastic path or the married path is easy, but that God grants what is needed to each accordingly. He says to the family:
"Of course, for hermits they give special and higher methods, but for those who live in the world their writings show ways which truly lead to interior prayer." And returning to the Jesus Prayer, he conveys to the family: "One must learn to call upon the name of God, more even than breathing—at all times, in all places, in every kind of occupation. The Apostle says, 'Pray without ceasing.' That is, he teaches men to have the remembrance of God in all times and places and circumstances. If you are making something, you must call to mind the Creator of all things; if you see the light, remember the Giver of it; if you see the heavens and the earth and the sea and all that is in them, wonder and praise the Maker of them. If you put on your clothes, recall Whose gift they are and thank Him Who provides for your life. In short, let every action be a cause of your remembering and praising God, and lo! you will be praying without ceasing and therein your soul will always rejoice." There, you see, this way of ceaseless prayer is simple and easy and within the reach of everybody so long as he has some amount of human feeling.'"
The pilgrim continues to say that interior prayer has shed more light on the mystery of God than anything else and that it can be "done by anyone". That "[i]t costs nothing but the effort to sink down in silence into the depths of one's heart and call more and more upon the radiant name of Jesus." In a critical passage, the pilgrim comes close to defining and explaining what holiness is- a deep relationship with God. It is worth quoting this passage in full:
"Everyone who does that [interior prayer] feels at once the inward light, everything becomes understandable to him, he even catches sight in this light of some of the mysteries of the kingdom of God. And what depth and light there is in the mystery of a man coming to know that he has this power to plumb the depths of his own being, to see himself from within, to find delight in self- knowledge, to take pity on himself and shed tears of gladness over his fall and his spoiled will! To show good sense in dealing with things and to talk with people is no hard matter and lies within anyone's power, for the mind and the heart were there before learning and human wisdom… The trouble is that we live far from ourselves and have but little wish to get any nearer to ourselves. Indeed we are running away all the time to avoid coming face to face with our real selves, and we barter the truth for trifles. We think, "I would very gladly take an interest in spiritual things, and in prayer, but I have no time, the fuss and cares of life give no chance for such a thing."
The pilgrim cites the saying of Saint Nicetas Stethatus in The Philokalia who wrote: "The nature of things is judged by the inward disposition of the soul,' that is, a man gets his ideas about his neighbors from what he himself is. And he goes on to say, 'He who has attained to true prayer and love has no sense of the differences between things: he does not distinguish the righteous man from the sinner, but loves them all equally and judges no man, as God causes His sun to shine and His rain to fall on the just and the unjust.'" In like manner, Metropolitan Kallistos of Diokleia in The Orthodox Way pointed to holiness as the "calling out of an individual from their sinfulness, into the true selves that God intends for them to be as they participate fully in their eschatological destination: God's own self" (Kangas 2014). Dying to the world through the prayer of the heart, the pilgrim doubts that there would be a "happier person on earth" and whether there "could be greater and fuller happiness in the kingdom of heaven." The state of holiness he has attained, not only provides light for his own soul but for "the whole outside world" as well. He felt, "[e]verything drew me to love and thank God: people, trees, plants, and animals. I saw them all as my kinsfolk; I found on all of them the magic of the name of Jesus… Sometimes I felt as joyful as if I had been made czar."
The pilgrim places great emphasis on holy prayers aided by the Holy Spirit that are pleasing to God. The pilgrim recollects throughout his journey the words of Christ: "Abide in Me, and I in you" (John 15:4). He writes that:
"every intention, every impulse, even every thought which is directed to His glory and our own salvation is of value in His sight. For all these the boundless loving kindness of God gives bountiful rewards. The love of God gives grace a thousand fold more than human actions deserve. If you give Him the merest mite, He will pay you back with gold. If you but purpose to go to the Father, He will come out to meet you. You say but a word, short and unfeeling— 'Receive me, have mercy on me'—and He falls on your neck and kisses you. That is what the love of the heavenly Father is like toward us, unworthy as we are. And simply because of this love He rejoices in every gesture we make toward salvation, however small. It looks like this to you: What glory is there for God, what advantage for you, if you pray a little and then your thoughts wander again, or if you do some small good deed, such as reading a prayer, making five or ten acts of reverence, or giving a heartfelt sigh and calling upon the name of Jesus, or attending to some good thought, or setting yourself to some spiritual reading, or abstaining from some food, or bearing an affront in silence—all that seems to you not enough for your full salvation and a fruitless thing to do. No! None of these small acts is in vain; it will be taken into account by the all-seeing eye of God and receive a hundredfold reward, not only in eternity, but in this life."
Furthermore the pilgrim continues:
"Truly boundless is the love of God for us sinners. Is it not marvelous that so small an action—yes, just taking his rosary out of his pocket and carrying it in his hand and calling once upon the name of God—should give a man his life, and that in the scales of judgment upon men one short moment of calling upon Jesus Christ should outweigh many hours of sloth? In truth, here is the repayment of the tiny mite with gold. Do you see, brother, how powerful prayer is and how mighty the name of Jesus when we call upon it?"
The Way of a Pilgrim urges the reader to be united to God through prayer. It is the calling especially to unceasing prayer that asks God to light up our hearts and to warm them toward a path to holiness which encompasses love not only for God Himself, but all of His creations. The more we pray, through the recitation of prayer, whether it be the Jesus Prayer or the Lord's Prayer, under the instruction of our spiritual father, the more we will ignite the fulfilment of God's commandments as delivered in the New Testament. God promises that if we "come" to Him and "follow Him", we will receive "treasures in Heaven" (Luke 18:22). We can follow Him through our interior prayer, whether we are celibate or married, whether we recite the prayer of the heart with our lips or inwardly, whatever the means, we should seek to be with Him as often as possible. While it is paradoxical to ask the source of love and life, God, to grant in us a prayerful heart, because He becomes both the power and source of love and its preoccupation, it is He who gives life to all other actions: "I can do all things in him who strengthens me" (Philippians 4:3). Indeed, I can pray more when I ask Christ to have mercy on me, and He will give me the strength to love my enemies, love my neighbour, and love myself. This revolving action becomes a constant pursuit of love- God toward His creation, a person toward God and his fellow neighbour. Prayer becomes self-actuating and self-propelling, it is co-working in synergy toward holiness. Holiness in man does not mean perfection, but attests to the constant striving toward the love of God through the Holy Spirit, the minimization of sin, toward transformation to living a divine life in Christ.
Ranked Concept List


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Saturday Night Music Byte
Cheap Trick is an American rock band from Rockford, Illinois, formed in 1974. The band consists of members Robin Zander (lead vocals, rhythm guitar), Rick Nielsen (lead guitar, backing vocals), Tom Petersson (electric bass, backing vocals), and Bun E. Carlos (drums, percussion).
Cheap Trick created a substantial fan base through its own brand of power pop music with a hard-edged yet melodic pop sound that combines the tunefulness of The Beatles with the speed and energy of punk rock. The Los Angeles Times has remarked that "Cheap Trick gained fame by twisting the Beatlesque into something shinier, harder, more American."Their biggest hits include "Surrender", "I Want You to Want Me", "Dream Police", and "The Flame." Cheap Trick also performed a cover version of Big Star's "In the Street" as the theme song for That '70s Show from the second season onward and the theme song "Baby Muggles" for The Colbert Report.
As of 2009, Cheap Trick continues to tour with their most well known lineup. They have often been referred to in the Japanese press as the "American Beatles". The Illinois State Senate has declared April 1 to be "Cheap Trick Day" in the State. The band was also ranked #25 in VH1's list of the 100 Greatest Artists of Hard Rock.
Please enjoy Cheap Trick performing their 1978 hit "Surrender" in Budokan, Japan.
Posted on May 16, 2010, in Songs, Uncategorized and tagged Cheap Trick, Songs, Surrender. Bookmark the permalink. 1 Comment.
Loved this band–part of my sister's collection. Thanks for this.

subset: commoncrawl


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While I'm on the last leg here of the tour, you can still check out what others have had to say. Be sure to follow the full tour for reviews, interviews, excerpts, and the inside scoop on Stacey Rourke and the Gryphon series. To celebrate the third book in the Gryphon series, Stacey Rourke is offering one lucky fan an awesome prize pack. Enter below.
The Summary
As much as she'd like to have a pity party for one, there's no time for that now because wedding bells are ringing in Gainesboro! In between dress fittings and rehearsal dinners Celeste will have to fend off attacking demons and leering pirates. As if the Dark Army wasn't scary enough our heroine is faced with the horrifying trauma of attending a bachelorette party with her mom and watching Grams do Jello shots. Is a walk down the aisle even possible for a member of the Garrett family when the Dark Army is out to destroy them? More importantly, will the Dark Army Glee Club sing at the reception?
Raise your glass to the happy couple, and get ready for a wedding…Conduit-style.
Buy the books for 99 cents each!
Amazon and Smashwords
My 2 Cents
If you haven't had a chance yet to read The Conduit and Embrace, I would highly recommend reading them before diving into Sacrifice. While Rourke summarizes enough at the beginning of the novel to refresh the reader's memory of the previous two books, you'll want to get to know the characters from the beginning.
I'm not sure how many of you out there have kids that insist on always watching the Disney channel, but I'm going to make a reference here and I'm hoping that maybe one person will get what I'm talking about.
Celeste has a fear of gnomes. Her new spiritual guide is a gnome. (Dun dun dah!) But seeing as how I've been brain washed by Disney channel, I could only ever picture this in my head.
I'm not trying to make fun or joke. I am for real. Whenever I hear gnome, I'm always going to think of the Gravity Falls episode where the gnomes try to marry Mabel.
Gnomes aren't her only worries, though. Celeste had to make some seriously tough choices and I kind of wanted to throw a pity party for her. I felt bad for her. And of course through all of her heart ache, her brother is getting married and she has to put on a bridesmaid dress. (Can I just say that the dresses that my bridesmaids wore were beautiful. Just needed to go on the record with that one. Celeste would have had to have liked mine. Right?)
In this novel, the reader gets to see a different side of Rowan, the pirate demon. I would equate him to vampire Eric from the Sookie Stackhouse series or True Blood, for those of you who haven't read the books. Basically, he's a supernatural dude up to no good, but you learn to like him anyway. Hunky, self-centered, has a thing for the leading lady; yeah, he's Eric and Johnny Depp all rolled into one.
Rourke needs to come out with the forth book immediately, because I have to know what happens next. Signing up for this book tour opened me up to her writings, and I going to read whatever she publishes. If you like Buffy, Sookie Stackhouse and Stephanie Plum, check out this series.
Rourke needs to come out with the forth book immediately, because I have to know what happens next. Signing up for this book tour opened me up to her writings, and I going to read whatever she publishes. If you like Buffy, Sookie Stackhouse and Stephanie Plum, check out this series.
Author Bio
Young Adult and Teen Reader voted Author of the Year 2012.
Stacey Rourke is the author of the Gryphon Series. She lives in Michigan with her husband,
two beautiful daughters, and two giant, drooly dogs. Stacey loves to travel, has an
unhealthy shoe addiction and considers herself blessed to make a career out of talking to
the imaginary people that live in her head. She is currently hard at work on the
continuations of this series as well as other literary projects.
Social Media Links
Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/pages/Stacey-Rourke/
Twitter @Rourkewrites.
Enter the giveaway to have a chance to win some great stuff!a Rafflecopter giveaway
A GWR Publicity promotional tour paid for by the author. Girl Who Reads is an Amazon advertising affiliate; a small fee is earned when purchases are made via the above links. Rose Petals background is a public domain image courtesy of Виталий Смолыгин.


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Posted by: Dr. Byron E. Lennon, Sr. on Wed, May 14, 2008Ladies please wear dress or skirt attire during the fellowship on Saturday. Please be casual as the women's retreat.
God Bless you and thank you for being on one accord!
Discussion: Dress attire/Women and Teens Fellowship on May 17th
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Poetry Space Competition 2019
Rules and guidelines for entering:
The fee is £5 per poem
Friends of Poetry Space can enter 2 poems for every one they pay £5 for.
Poems must be previously unpublished.
Poems must be 40 lines or under to be entered.
Entrants must be over 16 years of age.
Please pay for your entry by Paypal in the online shop pr send a cheque to Poetry Space Ltd, 2 North st, Beaminster, Dorset DT8 3DZ
Entries can be sent as word attachments by email to firstname.lastname@example.com
with no identifying marks on each poem – please include a cover sheet with your name and contact details (postal address, email address and a phone number) and your poem titles. Multiple entries are allowed.
Pay for your entry here in our online shop
Our 2019 competition will be pretty special. It is our 10th year and we have an exciting bunch of prizes:
The top three poets will receive:
1st Prize: £500
2nd Prize: £250
3rd Prize £100
Highly commended and commended poets will receive £10 plus their choice of a book from the Poetry Space online shop.
There will be a prizewinners anthology and all poets included in there (20 poems) will receive complimentary copies and the pamphlet will go on sale.
Rules and guidelines for entering:
The fee is £5 per poem
Friends of Poetry Space can enter 2 poems for every one they pay £5 for.
Poems must be previously unpublished.
Poems must be 40 lines or under to be entered.
Entrants must be over 16 years of age.
Please pay for your entry by Paypal in the online shop pr send a cheque to Poetry Space Ltd, 2 North st, Beaminster, Dorset DT8 3DZ
Entries can be sent as word attachments by email with no identifying marks on each poem – please include a cover sheet with your name and contact details (postal address, email address and a phone number) and your poem titles. Multiple entries are allowed.
Introducing our judge for 2019
Biographical note:
Pay for your entry here in our online shop
Then send your entries as word doc. attachments by e-mail or post to:
Poetry Space Competition, 2 North St, Beaminster, Dorset DT8 3DZ
Introducing our judge for 2019
Biographical note:
Caroline Price is a violinist, teacher and prize-winning poet living in Suffolk. She has published four collections, most recently Picnic on the rocks, with frog (Shoestring Press 2017) and is co-editor, with Myra Schneider, of an anthology of women's poetry, Four Caves of the Heart (Second Light 2004). She has also published short fiction and in 2015 was runner-up for the Society of Authors' Tom-Gallon award for a short story. She has worked as writer-in-residence in secondary schools in France and is an occasional tutor for the Poetry School.
Brief statement re the Competition:
I'm hoping to be surprised and delighted by new takes on a wide range of subjects. And ultimately I'm looking for those spine-tingling moments: the discovery of poems which convey through their energy and emotion their utter need to be written and at the same time show an awareness and control of poetic technique – through their language, form and pacing – that invites the reader to experience that emotion as if it's their own as much as the writer's…
Pay for your entry here in our online shop
Poetry Space Competition Results
1st Prize
The Washing Machine – Pamela Coren
Its creamy benignity has the comfort
of background processes, reliable rituals.
Feed it, and round the house you hear
its bumble-dumble-dum, its whizz and whirr,
and under the stop-start plumbing
a suck and guzzle, little flat splashes.
It is undecided which way to turn,
but serves without comment. Takes your smells,
runs them out. Calms your clothy troubles.
Not baptism, just renewal, a low ablution.
If all else fails in the day, if you feel nothing,
you did the washing. When you say this
it will not insist on its part, but sit quiet,
its drying mouth making an O of relief,
a factory hand clocked off, snap tin empty.
Pamela Coren was born in Rochdale, studied at the Universities f East Anglia and Kings' College London, and went on to teach Medieval and Renaissance Literature at The University of Leicester. She has published academic work on Spenser, Sidney, Donne, lutesong, Gurney, Hopkins and Bunting. as a poet she has published in many magazines, had poems placed in a dozen competitions, and has one full collection The Blackbird Inspector published by Laurel Books in 2016. She is currently studying to translate the lyrics of the twelfth century Chinese woman poet, Li Ching-chao. She is married and lives in Sedburgh, Cumbria.
Pamela's reaction to winning:
I'm very pleased to have won this year's competition, as I've been more or less out of action since I moved to Cumbria. I'd been knocked off my work-balance by the visual overload of the Western Dales, the richness of the green life at my doorstep. I shook myself out of it at the beginning of this year, and determined to 'do something every month – submit poems to a magazine or enter a competition. And so far its been great, and the publications are coming in again. Poetry Space is a friendly organisation with an open reach, refreshingly free of glitz and fads. So thank you all for the opportunity.
2nd Prize
Reading Henry James in Hospital – Carole Bromley
What Maisie Knew. I haven't read it
for fifty years. I knew nothing then,
only the rhythm of his prose,
that Maisie was the centre of consciousness
that I would need to sit up late
to finish it before the tutorial,
swigging from a tooth mug
the port I stole from formal dinner.
For me the book will always taste
of peppermint and port and the summer of love.
I turn the pages with my cannula'd hand,
wander away from Sharon glued to Corrie,
from Jean flipping through Take a Break
from Joan's painful voyage to the toilet.
'I say, I say, do look out', Sir Claude
quite amiably protested. Sister trips
over the zimmer Jean parked by my bed,
tells me not to keep my frame there
I do not have a frame, I protest.
Jean looks up from her article, Yet.
Carole Bromley lives in York where she is the Stanza rep and runs poetry surgeries for the Poetry Society. Winner of many prizes, she has three
collections from Smith/Doorstop: A Guided Tour of the Ice House, The Stonegate Devil and, most recently, a collection for children, Blast Off!
Carole's reaction to the news that her poem had won second prize.
I was delighted when Sue emailed me to tell me I had been awarded second prize. I have been writing a sequence of poems recently about a stay in hospital and have just started sending them out so it was very nice to get this feedback from Gill McEvoy, a poet whose opinion I value.
3rd Prize
Tool Setter – Michael Docker
The setter's right hand has no fingers.
He uses it to club steel plates
into place, catch scrap slivers
like an angler catches fish.
The thick skin
On the old scars tears,
Bleeds, but he doesn't feel
The setter's words have no finesse.
He uses them to say what he means:
'Screwdriver', 'Maintainence'..
Like a river over a weir
Mending and making flows around
Him. He sets and checks
The setter's days have no finish.
He uses them to catch money
For a future seen in
His dreams, where scars and tears
Are healed by a river, by an angler's
by slivered fish; where he won't have to say
Highly commended:
From the spot where we found a dead Northern Emerald – Susan E Holland
Hemiola – Jane Newberry
Stefan's Confession – Cathy Whittaker
Parma Violets – Pippa Little
The Loneliest Whale – Cheryl Pearson
Hope – Julia D. McGuinness
From a layby behind the dunes – Susan E. Holland
On your way to somewhere else – Cathy Whittaker
Erasing the future – Claire Cileman
Why can we not stay silent like the trees – Anna Saunders
Pronouns – Margaret Beston
Bells – Helen Rear
Hearts and Bones – Gillioan Lambert
Than to Arrive – Aidan Baker
Requiem – Pamela Coren
A man rakes ash from an oven with a shovel – Sally Davis
Bellows – Tia Cole
In the architect's Garden – Jeff Skinner
Judge's Comments
You cannot hope to read through an entire batch of competition entries one after the other so my method is to divide the poems into piles of 20 and lay these piles round the edge of my dining table and work my way through, pile by pile, reading each poem twice and reading aloud the 'possibles'. These then go into a pile in the middle of the table to make the
longlist, 60 poems on this occasion. I divided these into piles of 10, repeated the procedure and got a shortlist of 30 poems. Further piles, of 5 this time, and I reluctantly discarded 10 poems. Then the hard job of deciding on the order of merit of these 20 permitted poems. This meant a great deal of re-reading and reading aloud, but I have to say I found it very enjoyable and managed to reach a decision.
Forests, single trees, poems to individual flowers, falcons, candles, relationships, and machinery were among the subjects revealed in this batch of competition entries. A wonderfully mixed bag! I want to say a sincere thank you to all of you who entered; it gave me great pleasure to read your poems and also some degree of heartbreak when I came to choose the winners and commended since so many poems almost made it to the short list.
But there can only be one winner and the extraordinary poem about the washing-machine really stood out both for its onomatopoeia and its aural loveliness when I read it aloud. In reading the short-listed poems aloud I was sorry to find that some of the poems looked good on the page but didn't succeed when read out loud.
Thus the second prize went to Reading Henry James in Hospital which sounded satisfyingly rhythmic, had a wonderful contrast between youth and old age, plus a chilling final word.
Third Prize went to Tool Setter which I found a very touching poem about the monotony and implied noise of the work described, compared with the longed-for peacefulness of angling and the relief of silence.
Warm congratulations to the winners and all the commended poets. And to everyone else, keep writing, keep reading poetry, and keep entering competitions – you never know when it will be your turn to win.
Gill McEvoy 2018
Poetry Space Competition 2018 is currently being judged by Gill McEvoy
Winners will be announced in September.
Poetry Space Competition, 2017
Winning Poems
1st prize: Bumping into John Lennon – Carole Bromley
2nd prize: Saltburn – Carole Bromley
3rd prize: Around the Edges – Eileen Carney Hulme
Commended Poems
Editing – Ama Bolton
Rebellion – Sue Wallace -Shaddad
After the flood – Liz Byrne
Navy blue sling-backs – Liz Byrne
Loose Thread – Maurice Franseschi
Moving On! – Angie Butler
Something about the way you named trees – Eileen Carney Hulme
Tumour – Anthony Watts
Disputation – Christopher Grogan
On your mind – Angie Butler
The Natural – Keith Hutson
Not As Planned – Dorothy Baird
I give up, I tell – Andrew Soye
Becoming a Sliver Moon – Carolyn O'Connell
CODES OF BEING – Greta Ross
Almost – Moira Andrew
Conversation – William Dixon
Judge's Report
Judging the Poetry Space Competition, 2017, was indeed a pleasure – and a challenge. After reading all the poems at least twice, initially, I divided them into three piles. After further readings, certain poems from the middle pile fought to join the first pile and sadly, some poems from that pile had to give way – a sort of literary cross-fertilization starting to take place! However, it must be said, that the winning three poems and, indeed, most of the listed commended poems held their position throughout the judging process. That said, it was very difficult, at times, to leave certain poems off the commended list that had singular virtues of their own.
I was also pleased to notice that the winning three poems, especially, displayed the qualities I was hoping to see and which I outlined in my pre-competition address. However, all the poems entered were worthy attempts. Many of them powerfully articulating universal themes of love and loss, tragedy and comedy. There were also poems that raged against the status quo and berated the establishment wonderfully. Perhaps the difference between the twenty poems selected and the ones that didn't make the cut, so to speak, was that with the former poems more had been done to articulate, succinctly and economically, their chosen subject, comprising detail powerfully through individual form and conceit to deliver the poem successfully.
I offer my warmest congratulations to the three winners, the seventeen commended poets and, indeed, all who entered this year's competition.
Mike Di Placido
Here are the top three winning poems for you to enjoy.
Bumping into John Lennon
The signature specs had gone,
he had that myopic, sore-eyed peer
all contact-lens wearers have.
He'd also ditched the white robes
and had a crew cut. I bought him a drink
and I think it was a relief to talk.
He told me Yoko had become a bit much,
that he couldn't keep up all that showering.
She got the money. He started again,
took a City and Guilds in woodwork,
started a business doing sash windows.
He showed me the scar. A flesh wound.
He had an allotment, loved cycling,
would set off every Sunday at 5 a.m.
in fluorescent lycra.
Once or twice he crept into the back
of Macca's concerts but, to be honest,
couldn't take the hair dye, the terrible lyrics.
The last time I saw him
he was up a ladder fixing a pane,
whistling Maxwell's Silver Hammer.
Carole Bromley
1st prize
August Bank Holiday and Elijah
wants to fly his kite, a red and yellow bird.
Plenty of wind and he soon gets the hang.
Run, says his dad, keep running
and he does. Running, running, afraid to stop,
towards Redcar and the steel works,
towards the town where his great great grandad
built the whole High Street,
and lived at no 129 from where
you could cut through to the beach
carrying a bucket for sea-coal.
But Elijah knows nothing of this.
To him, intent on keeping his kite aloft,
there's only this running, running
away from the pier and the cliff lift
and the flapping windbreak,
away from the candy floss and ice cream,
away from the day trippers
towards the still winding gear
on his skinny, sparrow's legs,
the great bird casting its shadow
over the long, ribbed sands.
Carole Bromley
2nd prize
Around the Edges
We name the pain as clouds, reference
good and bad days. I arrive with a DVD
and chocolate eclairs, tell you there
are swans in the sky, your response
nimbostratus, nothing fluffy about that.
We take the eclairs and you shuffle to
the coffee machine, longing for air, a soft
sea breeze, a curling cirrus. We settle
to watch Truly, Madly Deeply, laugh at
cloud-faces and dancing wooden spoons.
Before the ghosts depart you are asleep.
The doctor appears and I step out of
the room with the fragility of rain.
Eileen Carney Hulme
3rd prize
Eileen Carney Hulme's third collection of poetry, The Stone Messenger, was published by Indigo Dreams in 2015. She has been a winner in several competitions and her poems have appeared in many magazines, anthologies and internet poetry websites. She had a poem set to music by Mark Keane award winning director of Music at Tuam Cathedral, Co Galway and this was performed at The Cork International Choral Festival. She has two poems transcribed on to wall space in The Nicholson Art Gallery in Forres, Scotland and she was also their first Poet in Residence running various poetry events.
I was thrilled when Sue phoned to say I'd been placed and commended in this year's competition. I'm grateful for all her hard work organising it and a big thank you to Mike Di Placido for choosing two of my poems, it's truly heartening.
Poetry Space Competition – 2017
I am delighted to announce that our judge for the next competition will be Mike Di Placido.
The competition will open for entries on 20th November and remain open until the deadline of June 30th, 2017.
The competition is in its 8th year and there will be prizes of £250, £100 and £50 for the top 3, along with publication of the winning and commended poems (20 in all) in the prize winners' anthology.
It is just £5, to enter a single poem on any theme. Friends of Poetry Space ( ie supporters who pay a small yearly subscription to support our work ) can enter 2 poems for £5. There is no limit on entry but no poet can win more than one cash prize.
Entries accepted from anywhere in the world. Poems must 40 lines or less and all poems must be previously unpublished.
No entry form required. Simply pay online by PayPal or send cheque ( payable to Poetry Space Ltd) . Or if you are in the UK I can take card payments over the telephone.
Then send your entries as a word attachment to email@example.com adding a cover sheet with all the poem titles and your full contact details: name, address, email address and telephone number. Please do not put names on the entries.
If you prefer to send poems by post the address is:
21 Davis Close
Barrs Court
Short Biography:
Mike Di Placido graduated with an MA in Poetry from Huddersfield University in 2000. He has since had two collections of poetry published: Theatre of Dreams (Smith/Doorstop, 2009) and A Sixty Watt Las Vegas (Valley Press, 2014). His work has appeared in The Rialto, Pennine Platform and The North (where he has also reviewed poetry), and anthologies by Templar Poetry, Valley Press and Live Canon's recent 154 – a response by contemporary poets to Shakespeare's sonnets. He has read at Manchester, Wakefield, Bridlington and Scarborough Literary Festivals, and a youtube clip of him reading his poem 'Scarborough Castle', at the launch of A Sixty Watt Las Vegas, can be viewed online.
Mike was shortlisted for The Bridport Prize, in 2010, and is among the current winners of The Poetry Business's 2015 Yorkshire Poetry Prize, judged by Billy Collins. In 2010, he was the sole judge in The Poetry Business's World Cup Poetry Competition. His poems have been broadcast on British and European Radio and translated into German and Romanian by the web magazine PoetryPF. His poems also feature in a CD entitled Scarborough in Verse (Stephen Joseph Theatre, Oxford Playhouse and Live Canon, 2014).
As well as working on a tribute to Ted Hughes, Mike is currently engaged on other projects, including a poem and film sequence on Scarborough's literary, historical and cultural legacy; an expanded account of his 'magical trial' at Manchester United in 1970; and a verse play, centred on the malevolent dragon of Old Norse and Germanic myth, legend and literature, entitled: Delivering the Dragon Stone.
What will I be looking for in the poems entered for this year's competition? Well, perversely, I'd like to approach the question in a slightly differently way and ask, instead, what will the outstanding poems activate in me? Same thing, perhaps, but this slant gives the energy and the power to what will prove to be the outstanding poems, I think. My attention will be held – whatever the poem's length or form – and I will be taken with the freshness of the writing – the words, images and ideas – which will articulate something important to the writer, something they have needed to express and convey. There will be a unique-ness in the strongest poems and a fidelity to subject matter – whether humorous or serious – and a demand for them to be re-read. And re-read. They will stay with me.
Not all our attempts in writing our poems work as well as we would wish, of course, but I like to think we do our best with them before we send them out into the world – that we care about them and wish them well. They have a lot to do: transmitting their messages out there on their own.
I hope you enjoy the whole process of writing and drafting. Good luck with your submissions! I 'm looking forward to reading them all.
Mike Di Placido
Poetry Space Competition 2016 – results
First of all a big thank you for Myra Schneider for spending a couple of weeks of her summer with her head in poems submitted to Poetry Space Competition, and a sincere thank you to everyone who submitted poems. We had 249 entries and Myra read them all. All the top twenty poems will be published in a prize winners' anthology hopefully before Christmas.
1st prize Poppies – Isobel Thrilling
2nd prize Panther – Shirley Wright
3rd prize Open air opera – Caroline Price
Please scroll down below the commended poets to read the top three poems and find out a bit about the winners. The three will receive prizes of £250, £100 and £50 respectively.
Congratulations to Isobel, Shirley and Caroline and to the poets below.
Commended poems:
The Murder of Anne Cluysenaar by her Step-Son, November 2014 – Dilys Wood
High Wire Wedding – Jenna Plewes
To Cornwall – Lizzie Ballagher
Ruby of the Sky – Kate Dempsey
Three Piece Suite – Rachael Clyne
Seaside Soap – Di Coffey
Burrs – Tony Hendry
Technophobia – Tony Hendry
The Tsarina at Tobolsk December 1917 – Sheila Jacob
The Social Worker – Isobel Thrilling
To the Writers of Novels – Isobel Thrilling
Paris Church -Kate Foley
Matryoskhka Factory – Victoria Gatehouse
Bombweed -Victoria Gatehouse
Sky to Sea – Rachel Plummer
Frances Dreams Up The Fairies – Victoria Gatehouse
Life story in eight sentences – Diane Jackman
Ist Prize
They have spread to the fence:
big, scarlet vanes like grounded
Jurassic moths,
Low buzz
from thick, black pollen
earthed in the tough,
green nets of Essex grasses.
Gift from my father:
petals as big as my hand grow
a red to depth-charge
the heart
break open the psyche
and now,
this sintering
of the light when he was dead.
Isobel Thrilling
Isobel Thrilling was born in Suffolk, and brought up in a mining village in the north-east of England; she read English at Hull University and spent many years as Head of Service for Teaching English as a Second Language in a London borough. She first started writing after eye-operations that saved her sight. She is married, with a son, a daughter and two grandchildren. She has been widely published in magazines and newspapers, and her work has been included in many anthologies from publishers such as O.U.P, Longman, Hodder Headline and Macmillan. Her poems have been broadcast on BBC Television, ITV; and BBC Radio 3 and 4.
Hearing this news was like a blast of sun on a grey, lumpy day, as if an evening primrose suddenly lit up the dark. I felt supported and my work appreciated. Thank you for all the work you put in to organising the competition.
Isobel Thrilling
2nd Prize
He has sucked the light
from the stars,
swallowed day and night,
tucked the moon
into a velvet pelt
so thick I struggle to breathe.
Matt black has never felt
more like swimming in soot
fathoms deep as he
paces the lengthy of bars
there to protect me.
I would tear them down
If I could, replant
the Amazon and howl
like a baboon. But I can't
conjure the jungle's roar,
the covenant of wild and real.
Instead, I watch him circle,
take his photo, flinch as I feel
his glance graze my skin.
Shirley Wright
Shirley Wright is a regular member of Bristol's Poetry Can and Random Women Poets and also The Bath Poetry Cafe. Her poems have appeared in various magazines and she has won prizes at. for example the Wells and Teigmouth Poetry Festivals. Her first poetry collection, The Last Green Field, came out in 2013 with Indigo Dreams Publishing and her second, Sticks and Stones will be published next year, also with IDP.
I shall have to think of something special to do with my prize money! And how lovely to be able to choose a book as well. I've had a look in your shop and rather fancy "Chester City Walls", by Julia McGuiness. I'd like to say a big thanks to you for running this popular competition and to judge Myra Schneider for liking my poem enough to place it among the winners
Shirley Wright
3rd Prize
Open air opera
This weather is a curtain
that can't be pulled aside. The real leaves
shudder in the deluge, a stiff breeze whisks the voices
over topiaried lawns and out to sea.
The audience huddles knee to knee behind a shield
of splayed umbrellas while from a crack in the marquee
the conductor waves his baton like a high-speed
windscreen-wiper, water coursing freely down his sleeve
as rain beats a drum roll on the canvas, leaps
from roof and sides. The orchestra within
plays gamely through the din, the scream of aircraft
picked up by the hidden microphones, for them each scene
a still glimpsed as the wind tugs free
a pleat of tent: now a boy creeps down a slope
on stilts; now the chief fire-juggler struggles to keep
his brands alight, crouching
beneath a tree; now the hero, streaked
with greasepaint, pleads with the heavens from a dripping seat
which in an act of hopeless chivalry
he dabs at with a handkerchief as he awaits
his girl; now she, defiant in clinging sea-green drapes, her hair
unravelled weed, slips
in the mud and from her knees and in the teeth
of this English summer hits a perfectly pitched top C.
Caroline Price
Caroline Price is a violinist and teacher living and working in Kent. She has published
three collections of poetry, most recently 'Wishbone' (Shoestring Press),
and is currently working on a fourth. She has also published short stories
and in 2015 was runner-up in the Society of Authors' Tom-Gallon Award for
short fiction.
I was absolutely delighted to receive your phone call yesterday. As I said, once you've entered a competition you tend to put it out of your mind, and so news like that always comes as a wonderful surprise. And one of the most satisfying things about winning a prize is the knowledge that something you've written has communicated itself to someone else… It's very encouraging!
Caroline Price
Myra Schneider's most recent collections are What Women Want (Second Light Publications 2012) and The Door to Colour (Enitharmon 2014) Other publications include fiction for young people and books about personal writing – in particular Writing My Way Through Cancer, a fleshed-out journal with poems (Jessica Kingsley 2003) and the resource book Writing Your Self with John Killick (Continuum 2009). She is a tutor for The Poetry School in London and consultant to the Second Light Network for women poets. She has co-edited anthologies of work by contemporary women poets, most recently the acclaimed Her Wings of Glass (Second Light Publications 2014) She was shortlisted for a Forward prize in 2007.
Judge's Report
From the 249 poems entered for the competition I put aside just over sixty to consider carefully. From these I produced a short list of 35 before making a final selection of 20 poems. During this process I reluctantly ruled out several poems with lively, poignant or thoughtful material in them which either hadn't been fully transformed into poetry or else had dense detail which wasn't taking the poem forward. By the time I'd picked out 20 poems I was very aware of the three which are the prize winners. Each of these poems is exceptional for the way it is shaped and the use of language.
Myra Schneider
Poetry Space Competition 2015 – FULL RESULTS
I am pleased to announce the winners and commended poets in this year's competition, selected by John Siddique. There were 322 entries and John read them all and send his thanks to everyone. Prizes of £250, £100 and £50 will go to the top three poets. All winners and commended poets will receive a copy of the prizewinners's anthology which will comprise the top 23 poems chosen by John.
The Winners:
1st Prize : After the Storm. Ama Bolton (UK)
2nd Prize: Weeding. Corin Greaves (UK)
3rd Prize: I Know The Moon In All Her Phases. Victoria Gatehouse (UK)
Commended poems:
Ghosts. Susan Castillo (UK)
Storm Wren. Lizzie Ballagher (UK)
My Grandmother's Angels. Victoria Gatehouse (UK)
Fingernails. Gail Dendy(South Africa)
The Challenge. Wendy Stern (UK)
Bramble Picking. David Mark Williams (UK)
Next Time I Will Smudge The Painted Sky. Jeanne Ellin (UK)
View From A High Window. Lizzie Ballagher (UK)
Struck. Helen Ford (UK)
Nocturnal. Joanne Key (UK)
Pieces of Suffering. Wendy Stern( UK)
Rainbow, Eleni Cay (UK)
Garden Birds. Gail Underwood (Cumbria, UK)
When I Think Of You. Michaela Ridgway (East Sussex, UK)
Flower Power. Sue Kindon (France)
I Never Trusted The Light Again. Beverley Ferguson (Bath, UK)
This Place. Eileen Harrison (The Netherlands)
In A Good Place. Pat Edwards (Wales, UK)
Early Morning Swim. Caroline Carver (Cornwall, UK)
Jesse Garon. Susan Castillo
Poetry Space will be publishing a prize-winners' anthology in the late Autumn. In the meantime please scroll down to read the top three poems and find out a bit more about the poets.
Ist Prize
After the Storm
sunshine on late roses,
a queue of swallows on the wire,
the sky washed clean and spread to dry:
she finds his gloves in the hall-table drawer:
leather moulded to the curl of his palms.
The smell of him,
Left, right, she draws them on.
Key deep in one pocket, jar in the other,
she gathers boots, lead, walking stick.
The spaniel dances at the door.
On the hill the wind shakes leaves
and jackdaws out of the sycamores.
Her coat flaps flightless wings.
She climbs until the sea
rises into sight, a flake of silver.
The dog bounces through heather.
Clouds hurry into the east.
Her gloved hands unscrew the lid
and tilt the jar. The last of his dust
streams out on the wind.
Ama Bolton is a member of the Wells Fountain Poets. Her work has appeared in Magma, Obsessed with Pipework and Blithe Spirit and in several anthologies, and on-line at The Stare's Nest.
What can I say? I'm surprised, thrilled, sopra la luna! I wrote this poem while walking in the Quantocks on a windy autumn day, and am delighted that it has found a home with Poetry Space.
John's report
This poem is poignant and truthful. I love the images in it, the key in the pocket, the flapping coat. As soon as I read this poem I knew it was a winner. This is a poem that will stay with me, for all the best reasons. I feel like I met the people in this poem, and its story is delivered with grace and love.
2nd Prize
i used to feed the weeds
in our garden as a child
never understanding
the difference between
one petal and another
for the same reason
i picked her bony stem
and if we were ever to marry
i would lay fistful, upon fistful
of dandelions at the altar
and weeds would have their day
Corin is currently studying History and Philosophy at Bath Spa University. Once she graduates she hopes to teach. She has always had a passion for poetry, particularly the work of e e cummings and Anne Sexton, but only recently started seeing her own poems through to completion. Interested in writing intimate and honest poetry, this is the first poem Corin has shared and entered into a competition.
I am absolutely over the moon, especially because I don't usually consider my poems worth finishing, let alone sharing. This has been a great confidence boost and I definitely intend to write more!
John's report
I love simple clear writing, and I love humanity. This poem is full of both, as well as innocence, vulnerability and hope.; the things that are actually the real strengths of being human. This poem made me dance with joy.
3rd Prize
I Know The Moon In All Her Phases
i Biopsy
Tonight, there's a dressing taped to my breast.
I draw curtains and she's there, scalpel-thin
behind glass, the shadowed part invisible
to the naked eye. Tomorrow, someone
in a white coat will stain and mount my cells,
adjust the focus on the microscope, sip tea
from the machine, discuss last night's soaps,
search for an expanded nucleus, a distorted edge.
ii Stage IIB
The doctors are teaching me a new language –
invasive and nodes and metastases,
words I never needed to know before this
and I'm rolling them around my mouth,
their aftertaste of sickness and fear and now
she's bloated up, her steroid-face taking over
the window as I open the fridge, the next dose
here between the Marmite and the Dairylee.
iii The Field
The earth is warm beneath my back;
behind closed lids, the rage and permanence
of the sun. If I opened them there would be
a plump-cheeked child threading daisy chains,
a man with a prayer in his eyes and the moon
hanging on the edge of this daytime sky;
I sense her slow spin, know her
to be part blown, like a dandelion clock.
Victoria Gatehouse lives in West Yorkshire. Her poems have appeared in magazines and anthologies including Mslexia, Magma, The Rialto, Poetry News, The Interpreter's House, Prole, Furies and Her Wings of Glass. Competition placements include Ilkley, Mslexia, Poetry News Members' Competition, Prole Laureate and The Interpreter's House. Victoria is a member of the Hebden Bridge Bookcase Poets.
Poetry Space is a great platform for both new and established poets so I was thrilled to hear that two poems of mine had been placed in this competition. As an admirer of John Siddique's work, it was incredibly self-affirming that he selected these poems. Looking forward to seeing the anthology!
John's report
I love the narrative of this poem, which takes us through an experience which other lesser poets would have bludgeoned the reader with. The short line music brings an insistence to the images. From a nucleus through the language of cancer, through death and back to the everyday; this poem is an incredible journey, which I am thankful for.
John's feedback on the commended poems will be published in the prize winners ' anthology. All that is left to say is a BIG THANK YOU from Poetry Space to everyone who entered the competition. All profits help Poetry Space to widen participation in poetry and bring more poets to recognition.
John Siddique
Described 'as one of the best poets of our generation' by novelist Bina Shah, John Siddique grew up in a household without books, however his discovery of his local library as a child began a lifelong love affair with words and literature. He started writing poetry in 1991 after reading the work of ee cummings, Walt Whitman and DH Lawrence.
John's poems, essays and articles have appeared in Granta, The Guardian, Poetry Review, The Rialto and broadcast on BBC Radio 4. His poetry collections for adults include the critically acclaimed Recital (2009) and Full Blood (2011) and a book for children, Don't Wear It On Your Head was shortlisted for the CLPE poetry award in 2007. Awards include a Hawthornden Fellowship, Honorary Creative Writing Fellow (Leicester University) and Fellowship of the Royal Society of Arts.
He has been a resident poet in a variety of venues including Manchester Art Gallery, HMYOI Wetherby and Los Angeles for the British Council. He is currently Royal Literary Fund Fellow at York St John University.
This was John's address to poets when the competition was opened:
Dear poets
I'm really looking forward to receiving your poems for the 2015 Poetry Space Competition. I welcome your entries with an open heart and mind. It might be interesting if you would for a minute put yourself in your correspondent's shoes, imagine you had been asked to judge this competition, what kind of poems would you want to see? One of the greatest mistakes I make with my writing at times, is where I lose sight of the reader. I'm not saying we should try and write to please that person, but perhaps we should write to please our own inner reader, not our writer. I have never thought of myself as a poet or writer, those are given titles, I am only a reader who occasionally finds himself thinking or feeling, 'I'd love to read a book or a poem on…' Yet on looking, it is as if there is a gap on the shelf, and no one has written the book I want to read. I take that always as a message from the universe or the muses telling me that it is my job then to write what needs to be written. So please send those poems, the ones that only you could write – essential and without cliché.
I'll be honest with you, after being a reader and being on the planet as long as I have been I am not interested nor am likely to choose poetry that's been designed to win a competition, there are many tricks poets have up their sleeves to make an impression, but I'm just John and I tend to be moved by literature which ascribes to human values and experience, that deals with our dignity and openness. Send me some real poetry that changes the world and life of the reader because it speaks of something essential about life, poetry that only you can bring to the page through your words, music and art, something that is a spark of life that will find a home in the heart of the reader.
I remember chatting with my friend, the late and sorely missed Glyn Hughes, about poems that become your friends. He would often discuss the dangers of coming from an ego place in our writing, and how his can manifest in so many ways, so that we don't create something essential. Glyn would also talk about how the poems he loved were always with him; he could rely on them. If you have something you feel is like that up your sleeve, I'd love to see it. If you want to know more about my own writing ethos there is an artistic statement at www.johnsiddique.co.uk that pretty much tells you all you need to know, but I want to see your poems, your moments of life, written so that the spark still lives between the words and syllables.
With gratitude
John Siddique
Poetry Space Competition 2014 – FULL RESULTS
Poetry Space Competition closed this year (its fifth) with 223 entries and these included submissions from across the UK and Ireland, South Africa, Canada, Australia, USA, France and Greece.
The winning poems were selected by Alison Brackenbury (photo right) who has provided a detailed report on her choices. (scroll down for this). We really appreciate Alison doing this. She did a fabulous job and in the sweltering summer heat as you'll see from her report…
I would like to say a sincere thank you to everyone who entered and warm congratulations to the winners, the highly commended poets and the runners up. Twenty poems in all from nineteen poets will feature in the new anthology. For want of a better title I have decided to call this For want of a better word, the title of Glen Wilson's winning poem.
Thanks are due too, to Johanna Boal who did a sterling job promoting the competition for Poetry Space and the growing number of friends of poetry space who handed out flyers and told their friends.
The top three winners are:
1st: Glen Wilson – For Want of a better word
2nd: Robin Muers – He's settled in quite well
3rd: Angie Butler 'Son, you're 42'
Seven highly commended poems:
Margaret Eddershaw: Scattering
Martin Fuller: Bullet Points
Claire Williamson: She thought her father was a butcher
Patrick Lodge: C'an Freixa
Susan Latimer: Tea Time Truce
Kay Cotton: The Mason
Gail Dendy: The edge of the world
Ten more for publication:
Di Coffey: Hands
Elaine Taylor: Uncle Ruby
Derek Stanley: Out Patience
Jo Waterworth: Widdershins
Roger Caldwell: Going to Coventry
David Lukens: A Circular Life
Anthony Watts: The Bright Room
Denni Turp: Can You Hear Me? Are You Still There?
Ama Bolton: Unfairy Tale
Ama Bolton: Brown Sugar
Glen Wilson, the winner of Poetry Space Competition had this to say:
I was thrilled when I got the phone call to say that I had won the Poetry Space Competition. It is always great to hear that your work has been enjoyed by another and judged worthy of winning a prize (my first!) as well has made it incredibly encouraging. I am also looking forward to seeing the anthology come out in the future as well. Thanks Poetry Space!
For want of a better word
I wrote only one note today;
it said remember to pick up some milk.
The Smiths always forget the milk.
They hold then use me roughly,
though I suppose I can't complain
I do have regular employment.
I don't work for a calligrapher, dancing
elegantly on certificates or a screenwriter
creating Oscar winning scripts.
Those pens have their own velvet homes
while I have been known to be abandoned
in untold places like a common pencil,
wedged behind his wax leaking ear,
my end chewed by her cherry
red lips as she looks at the crossword.
I remember the year spent lost
down the back of the sofa, ink tears
staining loose change and dust.
Eventually they found me again
as Mrs Smith scribbled a phone number down
and smiling handed it to the milkman.
Later I watch Mr Smith pick up another pen
(a biro!) scribble out a letter and leave
it on the bedside table.
All I can see from the dresser are the words
trust and goodbye. She cries as she reads
these words and all the words between.
I hope that someday she might use me
to pour out her thoughts, because every pen
wants to leave an epigram before it dries.
Glen Wilson
Glen Wilson lives in Portadown, Co Armagh with his wife Rhonda and children Sian and Cain. He works as a Civil Servant in Belfast in Statistics and Research.
Glen was part of the Millennium Court Arts Centre Writing group in Portadown for 5 years. His work has been published in Black Mountain Review, Iota, A New Ulster and The Interpreters House. In 2007 He was short listed for the Strokestown Poetry Festival's Satire Prize. His influences include Leonard Cohen, Seamus Heaney, George Szirtes, Pablo Neruda, and his Christian faith.
He is currently working on his first collection of poetry.
When told of his prize Robin Muers had this to say:
Really pleased, especially so because this particular poem had been through very many previous versions and major alterations.
He's settled-in quite well,
they'd like to think. Today requires
a sun hat, wise ones say. I'm placed
beside a healthy drink, then left
to find my own excitement, like:
a crocodile stalks the patio table,
grabs a wine glass in its teeth.
(My finger's arthritically bent
to make the light for croc's bright eye.)
Let's have some other guests! A bunch
of terracotta frogs in Afro wigs
– seductive scent deployed! (Official
description: pots of petunia.)
Why these games? Because it's far
too 'sensible' in here: the hand brake
must be 'on' both sides of chairs
– all that. I've had enough. But look:
above our Silver-Safe Community
a gang of swifts tears round the sky.
They're calling me to pass the ball
through fading light. I leave with them.
Robin Muers
Robin Muers studied history at university and subsequently qualified as a solicitor. He worked in various jobs in local government and the public sector before retiring some years ago. Although always interested in contemporary poetry, he did not make many attempts to write his own until the current century was well under way. If he wants a poetry book to take on a train journey, a John Burnside collection is most likely to be picked off the shelf. Robin enters a number of poetry competitions – partly because that gives an incentive to 'finish and polish'.
Angie Butler had this to say:
Finding Poetryspace has made a huge difference to my life.
The daily time to write for the Photo and Poetry Competition allowed me to voice every emotion and to fend off depression and access acceptance and healing.
I would write and rewrite my emotions. I would have hope that my voice might be heard by an uninvolved stranger. I was inspired to run a competition for other writers to feel the comfort and joy I myself had received.
Son, you're 42
The chocolate licked off.
The conquest done.
Now on to another.
A different one.
To woo, to ravage.
To make my own.
Then leave.
Go home.
Go home alone.
Angie Butler
Angie Butler is a teacher who has always written. Published in several books and magazines, she has researched Land Girls in WW2 and created books and cards to support her work. A founder member of The Penzance Literary Festival, she holds workshops for all ages and abilities. Her story 'Bodelva' was performed by the Bournmouth Symphony Orchestra and 600 children, celebrating the 10th anniversary of The Eden Project in Cornwall. She was honoured as Citizen of the Year 2012 and Cornish Woman of the Year 2014 in Penzance, for her help in community projects.
Copyright of all poems printed here remains with their authors – please don't reproduce without permission.
Competition Report for the Poetry Space Competition, 2014
Poems must be convincing. I do not believe that they always need to be honest. But I think that an account of judging them should be. It is possible to develop rather grand theories about judging poetry. (I have one or two myself!) But here is an honest account of how my chosen twenty poems shook themselves free from the invitingly fat pile of entries for the Poetry Space Competition, in the summer of 2014.
Throughout a couple of blazing weeks in July, sustained by blinds, choc ices, and two supportive cats, I read all of the poems, several times. I pored over my 'Yes', 'No', and 'Maybe?' files repeatedly. But the poems which first captivated, and moved me the most, continued to do so. My affection for them did not waver with the blinds, or melt with the ice cream.
What did I most admire, about this competition's three (very varied) prizewinners? All of these poems had depth. Glen Wilson's winning poem, 'For want of a better word', has a story which enthralled me. I will not reveal its twists! After clever flirtations with humour and cliché, this poem swiftly turns into an account of love, with an ending of real pathos.
Many poems in competitions tackle the subject of age. But the winner of the second prize, Robin Muers's 'He's settled in quite well,' is one of the best and most surprising I have ever read on this theme. Its speaker, 'placed […] then left' in a wheelchair, is mentally as quick as the swifts in the summer skies above him.
It takes courage to enter a very short poem for a competition. I am delighted that Angie Butler did so. 'Son, you're 42!', the third prizewinner, has only nine lines. But it places the weight of a whole lifetime's mistakes behind its closing rhyme.
Was it difficult to thin out the remaining pile into seven Highly Commended, and ten poems for the competition anthology? Honestly, yes. Many poems were re-read, then put back with a sigh.
I felt that all the Commended poems had exceptional force, in very different ways. Margaret Eddershaw's 'Scattering' arrested me by its final line. Martin Fuller's 'Bullet Points' was both absorbing and surprising. Physical vividness and emotional mystery marked Claire Williamson's 'She thought her father was a butcher'. 'C'an Freixa', by Patrick Lodge, achieved descriptions of irresistible beauty. I found 'Tea Time Truce', by Susan Latimer, uncompromisingly moving. Kay Cotton's 'The mason' carefully deepened into primitive power. 'The edge of the world', by Gail Dendy, set the whole force of its length behind a bravely expansive ending.
From my selection of poems for the anthology, I admire the haunting scents of Di Coffey's poem 'Hands', and the often disturbing detail of Elaine Taylor's 'Uncle Ruby'. I think many readers will recognise the quiet rhythmic truth of Derek Stanley's 'Out Patience', and the child-like sensuality of Jo Waterworth's 'Widdershins'. I am haunted by the unfolding sadness of Roger Caldwell's 'Going to Coventry', shocked and impressed by the tough heroine of David Lukens' 'A circular life'. Virtual life is vivid in Anthony Watts' The Bright Room'; an intricate music in Denni Turp's sestina, 'Can You Hear Me? Are You Still There?' Finally, I greatly relished the crisp couplets of 'Unfairy Tale', and the deft humour of 'Brown Sugar'. The judging was, of course, completely anonymous. When I learnt that both poems were by Ama Bolton, I still felt that these two skilful poems deserved their placing on their own, very different merits.
Why did some poems not escape from my 'Maybe?' folder. There were poems, excellent in parts, which showed flaws which I often see in my own writing. Some poems started strongly, then tailed off. Others had arresting diction, yet a lack of rhythmic lift, like a beautiful skin with no muscles to make it move. But there were many poems which did work well, and which I would very much have liked to smuggle into my 'Yes!' folder.
I have had the privilege of judging many competitions, both national and local. I think that Poetry Space is one of the most generous I have encountered. Many contests have only a few winning poems, which do not appear in print. Poetry Space has ten winners, including the Highly Commended, and publishes twenty of its entries. Statistically, you have an exceptionally good chance of being rewarded for entering this competition!
The standard of entries was high this year, and a significant number of the unplaced poems might well have been favoured by a different judge. (Poetry judging is not an exact science.) So, to all who entered, my thanks for letting me read your varied and thought-provoking poems. And please do enter again. Honestly,
2015 could be the year you win the Poetry Space Competition!
Alison Brackenbury
The top three will receive prizes of £250, £100 and £50 respectively and complimentary copies of the anthology.
Twenty poems in all will be published in the prizewinner's anthology.