Congratulations to the winner of our June poetry competition, Amanda Ellison, and our second-place entrant, Jodie Dennis. Poets were asked to produce their entries in response to the image on this post, by ILNS Photo Walk contributor Jess Riley. Jess’s work inspired a lovely range of responses, and is mentioned directly in Amanda’s poem below!
WINNER: Amanda Ellison
I loved the careful terza rima form of this poem – Amanda makes it look easy, but it’s a lot of work! And I appreciated how the poem brings together some familiar North Shields images with other elements we don’t hear about so often, but which are very much part of the town’s landscape – the historical link to Plasticine, and the statue of Mary Ann Macham. ‘Backstage of the great North Sea’ gives the feeling we’re looking in on something special and private, and the elements have organised themselves like Shakespearean fairies. Well done, Amanda!
Composed upon North Shields Fish Quay
Perhaps they’d all arranged to meet
– earth, fire, water, air –
where Mary Ann’s statue had a front-row seat?
She’d applaud the proud performance, where
gulls wheeled above the drowny depths,
beneath the yawning a.m. flare.
While town of fish and Plasticine slept,
the four dazzled backstage of the great North Sea,
then fled, and left no trace, except
a local lass – ‘That show cost nowt to see?’ –
caught all four performers in a six-by-four,
and framed their wonders for eternity.
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Amanda Ellison is a freelance copyeditor and occasional scribbler with strong family roots in North Shields. In a previous life, she worked an English teacher. She is a regular contributor to North East Bylines.
SECOND PLACE: Jodie Dennis
Jodie’s poem has its own lively formal language, drawing on the verse at Ray Lonsdale’s ‘Fiddler’s Green’ statue. It’s a loose ballad whose twists and turns echo ‘the skirl of the wind’ Jodie so vividly shows us, and the ‘fibre of being’ runs all the way through, paying testament to the harsh realities of life at sea and the power of endurance. I love ‘the brawn of the waves’ and daring half-rhymes like ‘being/squalling.’ Well done, Jodie!
Onward Dancing
We’ve heaved and we’ve rolled to Fiddler’s Green
Where we dance as the sun comes up;
Where the wind and the waves,
And the tide and the time,
Stand still for the lives of us.
We know that you wait, and we know that you fear;
And we know that you keen and wail.
For there’s salt on the air
From your distant tears,
And a sting where the heart won’t heal.
Know that we battled with signal and flare,
And fought with the fibre of being –
Through the skirl of the wind
And the brawn of the waves –
To sail in, with a cloud of gulls squalling.
Can you hear the reel of the fiddle and pipes
In the nets and the tackle and landing?
There’s a proffered hand that longs for yours,
But it ebbs. The tide flows.
Onward dancing.
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Jodie Dennis is a former primary school teacher who is now part of the ministry team at North Shields Baptist Church. She enjoys a wide range of creative arts, especially photography, music, crafting, and, very occasionally, poetry!
Keep an eye on the ILNS social media accounts for our next photo-poetry competition, to be published in the September issue.
