2018 Young Poets (6-10 Winners)
Adjuticator: Yvonne Reddick
Yvonne Reddick won a Northern Writers’ Award for her poetry in 2016. Her poetry pamphlet Translating Mountains (Seren Books, 2017) won the Mslexia Poetry Pamphlet Prize. Her poems have appeared in magazines including Stand and Shearsman. She is Research Fellow in Modern English and World Literatures at UCLAN, where she researches literature’s engagement with environmental issues. Her book Ted Hughes: Environmentalist and Ecopoet has recently been published by Palgrave Macmillan. Yvonne’s comments on the entries to the 2018 Elmet Poetry Prize were: ‘I was extremely impressed with all the poems I read for the Elmet Poetry competition. There were some fresh and highly original takes on the themes: ‘Epiphany’ inspired poetry about geckos, hunting, homelessness, urban vixens, Egyptian foxes and Turkish dogs. Ted Hughes would be delighted that his legacy continues to inspire so many people’.
Winner - Adam Rafael Holmes
I will plant 9 trees
Right, now I am 9, I will plant 9 trees.
If each year I plant my age
Then by the time I am 17,
I will achieve one of man’s life’s aims.
No, not to drive my heirloom Z3,
But to plant 100 trees!
This is more than the promise I made
When the Oak Tree set me free.
Travelling to my garden in Sussex
Massive forests and mountains of trees
Rush past the train windows
And as I now know,
It is the willows who are moving
When our train slows.
They travel to visit friends
In other forests and by the sea.
The first sight of them means fresh air
Relief from our coughs
A space for grasshoppers and bees.
I walk through the gate
Smell the brambles and bark
Fresh air and shade
The relief of a place cool and dark.
I love the way the leaves sway
When the wind pushes through.
The little birds hatch and play,
Fighting off cats
Attacking their habitats.
The rustling, chirping of the birds
The thud now and again in the wheelbarrow below
Of apples crashing down
As the trees say hello.
The oak stands solid
A trunk topped by a green elfin hat.
Birds line up on his branch
And with a wiggle and tickle,
Make his long arms wave.
The tree answers with a whirlpool
Tossing the birds deep inside
Landing on a soft bed of moss
The birds try to hide.
The woodpecker makes a hole
For them to fly out and begin again.
Now, where have my magpies gone?
The tree asks if he has won.
In the Spring shoots appear,
Leaves are forming
So the trees are green
With many twigs and sticks in between.
Later in the Summer,
The trees are full of delight,
Each like a big green balloon
Reaching its ultimate height.
Now, Summer’s end, the balloons can swell no more
Autumn will turn the leaves yellow, orange and red.
The balloon very nearly bursts
But then in Winter,
The trees will stretch and rest their heads.
The air slowly seeps out
With the leaves dropping from the tree.
Spring will bring new life and its green canopy.
I don’t want people to chop down more trees.
There is no need to use wood for homes or heating
Or palm oil for eating.
You can use concrete or painted cement.
Yes, plastic is bad for all life on Earth
But deforestation to use paper instead
Will take away our oxygen, shade and much food
An end to the forest animals’ rebirth.
Comments by Yvonne Reddick:
‘Ted Hughes founded a tree-planting scheme for children, so he’d have been proud that this poet’s ambition isn’t to drive an heirloom Z3, but to plant a hundred trees! The ‘green elfin hat’ and ‘whirlpool’ voice of the oak draw us into an enchanted forest in this wonderful poem.’
Runner Up - Aurora Blue
A CHILD OF MOTHER, FATHER, OF EARTH
If I am a river flowing,
not knowing where I am going,
I am zig-zag-z shaped;
my reflection is an upturned snowdrop.
The shape of the land shapes my river
and never stops me shaping the land.
Since I am a child,
a girl of mother, father, of earth.
As I walk alone through an aged oak wood,
my hardening bones become twice alive, more than body;
as the sleeping trees tower above and around me,
I am no longer merely free, but freer still, freed from my senses.
Since I am a child,
a girl of mother, father, of earth.
I can sit about an oak tree root,
thrown from my comfort,
moss-thrown;
but it is not mine,
It is Earth’s, and I am not ruler here.
I wait and wait for a familiar sound that I dread,
and then it comes-
metal of axe on wood of wood-
and when it comes,
all good seems dead-
all blood is bled.
As the rain falls
rain trickles down my shoulder
and I know I’m getting older.
It’s wet,
And I get it.
Since I am a child,
A girl of mother, father, of earth.