The George Crabbe Memorial Poetry Competition

Prize Winners 2007 [ 2006 Winners ] [ 2005 Winners ]

Commended Poems

2007 Crabbe Memorial Competition - First Prize

Kitchen Annunciation

It must be the first thing he thought of,
this care for the first birds, their terrible songs
even when mornings were like this -
void and colourless, the air frosted,
breath almost arrested in darkness.
Above us, a seam of moon endures
like a brightness leaked from under old doors,
a miracle of many years with one face.
I have committed stars to memory,
made family for this remote place
birthed a vague, hapless light
far in the far past. I think of nothing
or of all the epiphanies and visitations
that could happen now, phantom bats
or barn owls screeching out of grim night
in this separate, dreamless hour alone
standing at the sink, taps running
cold, hard graces over my free hands
and shining wrists, through a prism
of pale fingers and bloody promises

Laura Helyer