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| Winners of the Gibraltar Poetry Competition 2014 with the judge, Mr Durante, and the Minister for Culture, Mr Linares |
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| Me, receiving my prize from the Minister and looking embarrassed - I hate photos! |
The competition judge, Charlie Durante, spoke in his introduction to the award ceremony about the breadth of themes touched on in this year's entries, including war poems. I guess this year, marred as it has been by some conflict or other around the globe and the threats that ideological extremism pose to any lasting peace anywhere, joined by the memories of the First World War so strong this the year of this war's centenary, the theme of war cannot be far from our minds.
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| My boy, David Anderson, surprised and delighted at winning his category. |
It is always interesting to browse entries and see what others see around them, what inspires them to make an observation, write it down and record it for posterity. Poetry opens a single window to the poet's thoughts which in a poem are expressed in a deeply personal way, a unique way which cannot be echoed by anyone else. So in reading some of the winning entries which we are lucky to read in the Gibraltar Chronicle, sponsors of the event, we are able to dip into insights to the world about us. David kindly allowed me to reproduce his poem below and I was surprised that he (usually to be found nose to screen in the depths of some computer game or other, communicating in binary code or peculiar adolescent grunts and trading in bit coins - whatever these are) demonstrated such a sensitive view of how it feels to sit at a desk in the exam room, waiting to turn that question paper round, knowing your entire future is at stake, and perfectly aware that any conscious knowledge of the subject you might have had escaped your over-worked brain over breakfast that morning. His poem is about the tension of crossing that chasm of fear and tackling those exams. Maybe although I never seem to catch him with a book in his hand, the boy is literate after all.
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| Mother and son, proud moment |
My poem was sparked by a photograph my very talented photographer daughter took of her son last year on a beach. The sense of wonder that a two-year-old displays in his face as he looks around the infinite spaces of sea-shore and horizon beyond borders on the indescribable. When I look at my grandsons and recall how my own children looked at the world around them with insatiable curiosity, absorbing details, thinking about what they see, working out their world and what might lie beyond the horizon, I see the child-like wonder that adults have usually lost. That we should also view the world about us with the same sense of non-judgemental curiosity would be a wonderful thing itself.
And there was a third family entry. My 12 year old daughter, Carmen added her thoughts to the event and came up with a poem expressing her feelings and fears about the shadow cast by the ebola epidemic, which even in the twenty-first century awakens the horrors of plague and disease experienced for generations. I am a very proud Mum at the moment, needless to say.
Congratulations to all the winners and runners up - many poems were terrific. I also congratulate all who entered, because it is not without a little courage that you put your intimate thoughts out for the world to see.
Over the Bridge by David Anderson
It’s a darkness,
A cloud, dense
and purple,
That threatens to
engulf my world,
To choke me,
To clasp me to
its icy chest
Till my ribs snap
And I breathe no
more because
It hurts when I
breathe,
And I’m standing
In the yellow
stains of school-room lights,
Waiting-
Gagging breath
clogging my throat-
Just waiting for
that one bark;
Start.
And then there’s
light,
Blinding bright
till my eyes smart,
Shining from the
sheet
That lies on my
desk,
Neat and clean
and blank,
Like my sorry
schoolboy mind.
And there’s a
chasm there,
A yawning gap
With red, raw
rocks,
Like hunting
teeth,
That want to tear
at
The thin threads
of knowledge
My teachers tried
to weave;
Except, there is
a calm voice
In the flood of
alarm
That leads me to
step
Across a swaying
rope bridge,
From cliff edge
to mountain top,
Across the gorge
of ignorance.
And I step,
trembling,
Nib of pen
shaking,
Fog thinning and
clouds lifting,
And I edge,
Word by word,
Over the bridge.
Between
land and sea by Jackie Anderson
Between the land and the sea I stand,
By lace-frilled shore,
On strip of sand,
A beach that to my tiny frame
Stretches like the stretch
Of time that passes slow,
Time that only just has been and
Time that without fail is yet to come.
With fingers still to find their strength,
I trace the shapes of paths
That reach the lapping waters
And seek to reach beyond,
Beyond the edges of the blue,
Beyond the reaches of my childlike mind,
Further than those places where
The crooning, soothing sea touches sky.
I pace the shore,
Toes deep in tiny grains
To anchor me to the earth
And hold me close to all that I hold dear,
To ground me to a haven.
And yet I gaze and seek
To reach beyond the blue,
And take the magic of the sun
In the palm of my hand,
Hold the rainbow in my eyes
And breathe the mysteries that lie
Catch me if you can by Carmen Anderson
I travel
I race
I leap
Through sky and sea and fields.
I’m coming for you,
Closer and closer every day.
But I don’t understand;
You have technology,
You have computers, cameras, phones,
But you can’t stop me,
You can’t kill me,
You can’t cure my work.
I thunder through towns
I rampage through cities.
I terrify.
I destroy.
I devastate.
And you can’t stop me.
You are to busy,
You are too rich to care,
Too complacent in your comfort.
You don’t think that I’m going to catch you.
But I will,
Unless
You stop and think and change your ways,
You dedicate time
To stopping me,
To killing me,
To curing me.
The thing is,
You have to do it
Before it’s too late
You’re smarter than me.
But I’m fast,
Catch me if you can.
Because I will catch you.
