First Prize

Of touch
Richard Lister

Northern Kenya

Old Thomas treads
carefully, senses the land
with his toes. His eyes
are set with white.

He’s swathed in the crimson cloak
of the Samburu tribe. Once a warrior,
now he holds my hand. I feel
the warmth of a culture
unafraid of touch. We pray

and our worlds are briefly one, the words
of brothers whispered to our King. We talk
of last year’s drought that turned
his goats from flesh and milk
to bone and dust.

Such droughts were once in an elder’s life,
then every twenty years, then ten and five.

Have we caused this? Is God punishing us
for fighting with the Rendille?
We cut down the mwangati cedars
for charcoal, to cook. They can
no longer trap the clouds.

Old Thomas will never see the buzzing neon of Beijing
or muffle himself against the aircon-ice of Miami’s massive airport.
He will never travel in a plane, sleek with light.
What kind of brother am I if I am part of this?

Old Thomas waves me into his hut: a dome
of arched sticks and stretched food bags
with English words in UN blue.

My eyes stream from the smoke in the dark.
We drink sharp tea till I need to leave.
He spits a blessing on my hand.

Second prize

‘direction of travel’
Kate Kennington Steer

foxed and dog-eared, the map got torn
quite some time ago, wind ripped from cold hands,
blown outside in, centre fraying from fold
after refold, text blurring deep down
under mud smears and tea stains, outdated
details litter its surface, green turned grey,
count the loss of public houses, count them,
count too those country churches now des-res
fixtures,

count them

for what has gone is much more than a mark,
something infinitely more precious than
the ubiquitous PH, or a cross

for what we need to notice and to grieve
are the places where we sang together,
where we sat silent together, where we roared
on our teams, snatched a lunchtime mindful
moment in passing, sneaked in for an after-work
pint, there where we enacted our rituals
and all done as more than one

a collective breathing in and out,
a commingling of air,
our times set apart, time out of time now,
and we still don’t understand what we’ve lost,

the simple exchange where neighbours’ hands
met to share peace, where ‘we believe’ was true,
where a nod to a regular meant home
as much as welcome, marked time
as well as place.

do we really expect
our coffee shops to provide a replacement

for such devotion, such mutual service?
where else do we now meet, week in
and week out, and greet those like and unlike
us? how far will we travel to find out?

I have a map we might use,
let me share it…

Third Prize

New Atlantis
Liam Smith

It starts with the chokings

With snappers snared in six-pack rings
As broken tanks bleed rainbow spills
That turn the seas to darkness. The sharp taste
Of hydrocarbons, clogging gills and lungs
As another miracle creature gasps
In the grasp of a polythene noose. This is truth:

A whale calf, poisoned by the milk of its mother’s
Pollution-tainted breast, lifeless body still clutched to that
Wretched parent’s chest. Forests of corals, bleached
Of colour, turning reefs to crypts. Think:

If once the merfolk built their kingdoms
Beneath these once-clear waters
Nothing of that tragic Atlantis remains.
Each silenced siren buried in a plastic casket
Beneath corrupted waves. And in its place:

A citadel of waste. An island that lurks
Beneath the Pacific surf, a thousand miles
In girth, a curdled horror of nurdles and polymers,
Cast-off casualties of planned obsolescence
That oozes chemical venom into the very water
That supports it. Our sad Atlantis:

Scrap capital of the world ocean. Are we
Not water? Blood and salt, veins and
Waterways, current and pulse. One world,
One body. More than any one could muster
The strength to alter. And yet – one community,
One cause. A call to form a blue world order and to build

A New Atlantis.

Written in response to artist Julia Ann Field’s painting Choke.

Picture: Samburu County, Kenya, 2014 by Edward Harris on Flickr. License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/