Two poems from each volume of the Friendly Street Poets annual anthology are selected for special commendation. The following notes from the judge for Anthology 45, Thom Sullivan, explain, and the poems themselves are featured for your reading pleasure.
From THE REPORT OF THE JUDGE – Thom Sullivan
As to the Satura Prize, awarded to the author of the best poem in each Friendly Street anthology, the poems that gave me most pause for thought were Maria Vouis’ Woman is the Cow of the World, Belinda Broughton’s Changing Colours, and Phil Saunders’ Burnt. But the poem that was the standout for me, and the winner of the Prize, was Maria Vouis’ Sepia apama: a poem full of colour and chaos, music and metaphor, glorifying the cuttlefish.
And, as to the winner of the NOVA Prize, awarded for the best poem written by a first-time published poet in the current Friendly Street anthology, the standout poem for me was Elise Silson’s The Cornucopia. Yeatsian and urgent, it harks back to red skies and black nights, and the incendiary summer of 2019 that’s been so swiftly eclipsed in the collective memory. A reminder that, in many ways, the world pre-Covid was also menacing, was also disfigured.
Congratulations to Maria and Elise.
Congratulations to all the poets whose poems have found a home in the anthology. Congratulations to gareth roi jones and Sarah Radford, who have selected and shaped such a satisfying arrangement of poems.
Satura Prize winner 2021
Sepia Apama by Maria Vouis
Tender, sly and clever,
you gather in the
shallow breeding ground of the Gulf
harvesting wan winter sun,
warp and weft knitting, unravelling;
a kilim of woven water-light.
Mimicking mollusc,
you glide over sand, rock and weed,
photocopy all that lies beneath
as your changeling nerves ignite.
Flamenco ballerina,
your hovercraft skirt ripples,
electric valance a choreography
of colour, chaos, cross-dress
and posturing.
Giant cuttle,
like a May-pole in Spring
your rainbow tendrils tango,
tap and test, test and tap the salt
for a ripening mate.
Cephalopod coquette,
you flirt in the sea’s school yard
in threesomes, foursomes,
the ‘U’ of your pupil, seduction
as you headlock and kiss
above an old bottle
spinning in the tide.
Harlequin strategist
you assemble,
wordless parliament at question time,
sliding forward, backward, sideways;
four players then just one;
politics of pairing.
Kaleidoscope cheat,
you plot group grope games,
a red butch male jostles a transvestite tart
for her; the right to seed and die,
spasm and spawn,
primal law.
Aurora borealis,
I float above the
opal lozenges of your blushing bodies;
me, belly down, a fat, wet-suit seal.
I slip my mitt through your bracelet of hugs,
finger your pulsing skin,
waltz in the silver disco ball of your eyes,
and sway, sway, sway
in your sepia swoon.
NOVA Prize winner 2021
The Cornucopia by Elise Silson
The fear of twenty-nineteen Could fill a cornucopia And the stink of smoke and sacrilege For Nigel’s new dystopia Is spilling out from Kirribilli’s Windows: New-Year’s Eve Has nothing; no potential For hope in this display of fire Mingled among The illegible stars. But here we are, nonetheless This red dawn of New Year: The future menaces forward Relentlessly unfolding Like a headless snake at our feet And we see Face to face, for the first time, That this thing; this superstition Rushing towards us in the black of night Has come And we cannot control it Our disfigured nation Burning us Until we are the ones afraid Lost Abandoned Huddled on the boats Beneath a wrathful red sky.