THANK YOU TO EVERYONE who sent their poem with the five words chosen from Las Moscas ('Flies') by the Spanish poet Antonio Machado. We received 144 poems and have made a selection from these to publish here on Given Words. The winning poems have been selected by the poets Mikaela Nyman, Jordan Jace and Charles Olsen. (You can read about them here.)
Charles Olsen comments on behalf of the judges: We have travelled from India to Papatūānuku’s backbone, from the Arctic ice melt to Bream Bay, by bicycle, school bus, whale, on wooden horses, on the Wahine ferry or in the backseat of a car, through day dreams, childhood memories and Stephen King novels, with a letter written to a house, with pesky flies and all sorts of greedy. One of the best parts of the journey was comparing notes afterwards and it’s been a privilege for me to read the insights and interpretations of poets Mikaela Nyman and Jordan Jace. I recommend you first go on your own journey through our selection of the poems and then come back here afterwards to compare notes… although we try not to give too much away!
Of Weather report Jordan comments ‘I see the extra punctuation in this poem acting like literal waste, remnants in landfills and litter. This way the degradation of the Anthropocene enters formally into the poem.’ Of Freedom’s mum stole our Stephen King books he says ‘I love the detail of the silent boyfriend, the chicken, and the speaker being “between two worlds”. I imagine childhood and whatever comes after, and I especially love the line “alone with our childhoods”, a tender line like an exposed wrist.’
Rearview had us all captivated, it’s opening two stanzas seeming to suggest something very dark, perhaps sexual violence or child molestation, but the turn of events leading to, as Mikaela wrote, ‘the guilt of the Dad who never “comforts his face” or the remaining child (“he turns your sheets blindly”) is rendered with such clarity and tenderness. And it’s a most imaginative use of that fly.” Mikaela also wrote of the ‘very eerie atmosphere’ created in The Gift, ‘we are not quite sure how serious the situation is with regards to the woman’s mental well-being. The last line “which she now gifts back to us” is brilliant. It seems to suggest she is reclaiming her life, empowerment, forgiveness. Or the total opposite: delusion, a caving in. This is about a gift that is not a gift, a gift that goes both ways, Terrifying and sad.’
I was particularly drawn to the rattling sound of words jostling together in the poem The Dancing Bicycle and the way the five words are introduced with alliteration: ‘spit and grease and a greedy dream’, ‘the cat’s eye of childhood’, and ‘like the sun-drunk buzz of a fat fly’. Or the haunting atmosphere of The Last Equation as 'The day sinks beneath all waterlines' and the peculiar clues running through it: 'Birds stay still', 'Backbone unhinges', 'the Underwood' or 'a finger of sun pressed across a King James'.
Our journey finally led us to I am a Blue Whale Heart with its inner journey. Mikaela commented ‘Every single metaphor and word counts. Life as a balancing act: the heaviness and the lightness. The greed vs the abstaining. The external vs the internal forces. So tightly woven. Breathtaking and very poignant.’ Jordan said ‘This poem makes me think of imagination, I would love to imagine like this! The preoccupation with weight makes me read the poem slowly, as does the wonder in its voice.’ For myself, I stumbled at first over some of the details on my first reading but the poem plays beautifully with the metaphors of angels and the Blue Whale heart, revealing powerful images that contrast with the (mis)perception of the idealised body, from the heaviness of the Blue whale’s heart to the tiny fly trapped in amber, and the marble that awaits the sculptor’s hand. And 'I wish I could […] sleeve my childhood into the wall' is such a moving image of compassion.
In the under-16s category our youngest poet is just six years old! It was amazing to receive so many poems and also that quite a few schools participated, some adapting the given words to explore different forms of poetry, like the visual diamante poems created by pupils of New River Primary in Invercargill, combining word play, visual design and computer skills. We provided a class plan for teachers to help get pupils thinking about and playing with the words and look forward to more schools participating each year. Finding a balance when comparing poems by children of different ages isn’t easy. As Mikaela said for one of her choices, ‘Okay, tiebreak between a 15 year-old and a 7 year-old both exploring similes. It feels unfair whichever way I decide.’ In any case, we’ve tried to reflect the wonderful variety of poems across the age spectrum in our selection.
Of the wonderfully titled until we are hollow, Mikaela commented on how creative it is with ‘a hint of darkness at the end. I love the hollowing out of the bird – and presumably, the writer if the title is to be taken literally – the “letters of flies”, and the detail of grass left in “hollow trees marked with child’s lipgloss”’. She was also struck by the opening of The River, ‘“Where the leaves are neon green/A red panda roams the land of childhood”. I can visualise the L-shaped colour field of tulip blooms, such a great image. And I love the “One eel silently slithers through/The water/He dreams of rising”, which could be read literally as the rising of the eel, or as the invisible narrator dreaming of some great deed, to make it a bit more complex and intriguing.’
Jordan commented on how imaginative the poem Cherries is, with its ‘equation of fruit to an individual-collective historical memory, and the risks it takes with lines riffing rather than following a sequence (“is the childhood of cherries/the letter C meaning receptiveness”). There were so many dazzling lines and thoughts: “Migrating with the colonists in the 1600s/is the childhood of cherries” and “such small fruit, holding the millennia of history”’. Of The children with no parents he loved ‘how this poem troubles the idea of a childhood – “kids of childhood” as opposed to other kinds of kids – how it thinks through a troubled utopia, and how it sees a new world without the strictures of our present understandings or imaginings of certain species, “tigers/They were as gentle as ants”’.
I was attracted to the variety of images created from the five words in Snippets, including the simile of 'snippets of youth,/Like flies on the wall at night' and moments like the 'dream suspends…' Images weave through the poem, the 'scribbles' of the first stanza reappearing in 'screaming crayons' that transform into 'monstrous worms' and the rhythm, play of sounds and alliteration is very creative. The whale reappears in the untitled poem beginning 'A crisp morning…' with its deep empathy with nature. With a more narrative structure and prose style it still has some lovely sound-play with humans/heave and flush/flutter/flies/flesh.
This time our journey brought us back home. In Attic ‘the writer has explored some imaginative similes (travel stickers like flaking nails; dreams swirl up like moths)’ comments Mikaela, and ‘I love the idea of a song tiptoeing up the keys and that you could possibly hear a fly scratching its wings’. Jordan commented that Attic is 'elegantly written and densely packed with interesting and surprising images that move the poem along gracefully'. This poem had some original uses of the five words: 'greedy dust', 'funny little dreams' and the more specific 'bluebottle fly'. 'Dreams of things swirl up […] and fill the air with […] wing powder' is very evocative and becomes oneiric with 'the scent of forgotten things…'. The active language (only two lines lack verbs) creates a curious contrast with the usual stillness of an attic, and for me the final line beautifully captures the sensation of waking from a strange daydream and the peculiar parallel between our unconscious thoughts and the outside world.
We are delighted to announce the winning poets. The winner of Best Poem is Stuart Airey for his poem I am a Blue Whale Heart, and the winner of the Under-16 category is Sarah-Kate Simons for her poem Attic. They will receive books courtesy of Landing Press and The Cuba Press respectively as well as being translated into Spanish and published on Palabras Prestadas. More details of the book prizes can be found here. Congratulations from Given Words, Landing Press and The Cuba Press.
Below are the winning poems. We also invite you to read our selection of the rest of the poems from adults here and from under-16s here. All the entries had to contain the words: letter, childhood, fly (the animal), greedy and dream.
I am a Blue Whale Heart
In this current re-make of me I am becoming the heart of a blue whale
I dreamt myself an angel but this wasn’t enough
He was wondrous but stuck
like a fly in amber
You can hear a whale heartbeat from 2 miles away
which is the distance I want to be from unleavened nurse smiles
and the choice of ensure or tube
No tampering with the drip lines
Friends I am un-distending
I wonder as my zipper finds free air
whether Eve had to eat the whole apple
I liked my angel
counting calories and grams together
his feather vane minutiae
A whale heart aorta is as big as a dinner plate
Why does food have such gravity?
My angel’s face was an open letter
to each whispered treatment
our greedy midnight exercises
A whale heart – blue – is as heavy as a Lion (adult, male)
which is exactly what you need
for beautiful dying
I wish I could take my angel’s place
sleeve my childhood into the wall
When a whale dives deep its heartbeat slows
slows in the black to 2 beats per minute
just 2 beats left to still to marble
Hamilton
Attic
all the days of childhood collected in sepia
photographs in the crevices of
the boards watching the greedy dust
descend to settle on their faces
age has curled up their edges into love hearts
like the shape she used to replace the dots on
her i’s; tiny lopsided hearts that flood the pages
of the stack of letters resting in the bottom of
the rickety suitcase, its faded travel stickers
peeling off and flaking away like the nails on fingers
pressed to an anxious mouth and these funny little
dreams of things swirl up like moths from the piles
of outgrown clothing and fill the air with their wing powder
turning the musty scent of forgotten things into a phantom
of lily of the valley; the lid of the harpsichord crammed against
the broken dollhouse is propped open on a sewing box
and in the murk of memories there’s a song tiptoeing up the keys
— or is it just the bluebottle fly scratching its wings
against the windowpane and whining to be set free
Canterbury
About the Poets
Sarah-Kate eats, breathes and sleeps writing in all its forms—poetry, flash fiction, short stories and novels. She can often be caught talking to thin air as she tries to figure out time travel for her latest novel or peeking into nooks and crannies in search of her next poem.
Continue reading our selection of poems from adults here and from under-16s here.
