2018
Winner: The Pole Laureate Poetry Prize ‘The Marshes’
Winner: Brittle Star Poetry Competition ‘He come up for the Day’
Commended: The Hippocrates Prize ‘The first woman on the Moon’
2016
Commended. Second Light Poetry Competition ‘Geraniums’
2015
Runner up: The Troubadour International Poetry Competition ‘Cuthbert’
2013
Runner up: The Troubadour International Poetry Competition ‘Balconies’.
Commended: Single Poem Competition. Cinnamon Press. ‘The Battle of Sedgemoor’
2011
Shortlisted: Bridport Poetry Prize ‘Ammonite’
2008
Selected for anthology: The Ver Prize. ‘The Puppeteer’
The Marshes
In the barn, my sofa stands in its puff of white breath,
heavy, patient, packed in tight with the herd,
waiting. I wait for it.
Downstairs, the afternoon moves heavily and slowly around the house,
a washing line turns slowly on its stalk,
the carpet in the hallway runs a sluggish ditch.
Back then, before they built on it, back then
the path stumped short into nettles, just fields,
arm of the sky bent round, empty.
Empty as pockets, empty as churches,
empty as milk pails rusting on gate posts.
I look out the windows milky with flat screens,
empty as ditches,
cold in the kitchen, biting like nettles,
sheeny as hoar frost.
Deep inside the bathroom I undress myself for you,
John Dust.
Down to the sedge and water, down to the beak of me,
sharp in the reed bed, down to the hidden.
I strip the light from my skin until I am overcast,
until I am cloud cover.
John Dust.
My man under the motorway,
flat out in the dark fields, seeding the hedges,
scratching your chest hair, wispy as larches,
pinking like evening, stitchwort and abattoir, bloody as Sedgemoor,
lipped up with cider, scraggy as winter.
You fetch each room, one by one, back to the marshes.
Plant forks and teaspoons, chairs for the heron’s nest,
propped up and broken,
the sky rusting over, smashed up with egg yolks,
water as mirror, water as leather, water as smoke, as trick,
a light under the door.
I stand in the empty
waiting for nothing.
Birds in the buckthorn, a house full of berries.
Geraniums
Almost tripped up the stone shoulder of you
poked out the back field, shape of an old bath, child sized,
broke, but still I dug you up, emptied you out
took two of us to carry you back to the house, a dead weight,
filthy, did my best with the outside tap, sun thick at my back
it’s a dream this
how the water ran through my fingers as I worked,
until you were bare, I could see every crack but you held
the new heavy earth, I pushed the geraniums in
soon they took to bud outside the kitchen door,
good a place as any, pass it every day I thought
what I wanted to say was go back to the beginning
but by then the whole place was wired off
at night I saw the lights twitching back and forth
as they worked, the shadows crossing and falling
a woman showed me the mosaic floor under the stubble
the different rooms, this is where the oven was
this is a coffin for an infant
time stopped then blew open like a gate
she asked me where I found you, so I walked
the field, but I couldn’t remember the exact spot
grass is grass, grown over, stones are stones
flint and soil, roots, seeds, kicked back in
they wrapped your coffin in plastic, a real find
they said as I swept up the mess,
bright red petals everywhere, picked some up
there now, it’s all right, I’ve got you.
Cuthbert
Up to his neck in the icy deep
Cuthbert prays.
What does he pray for all night in the sickening, groaning gloop?
His head is a small white stone
above the vastness of the Northumberland sea,
it wraps him and snaps him, his body is frozen cuts of meat,
his internal organs frosted and salted.
He cannot feel his heart.
It has a tiny tick ticking like a fob watch in a vast flapping black pocket,
its thin silver wire is almost rusted through.
His mind is an empty shell.
Is God in there?
Does God creep in like a hermit crab and take up residence?
Does Cuthbert pray for us?
Are his eyes open or shut as the first drops of dawn
spill into his lap like milk,
as the sky pales and shivers and mottles like his skin inside
that sagging soaking bag?
As the sun totters to the window slit and gazes down feebly
at Cuthbert all alone in the grizzled greying sea.
Only then does Cuthbert begin to move,
the slow agonizing clumber to the rickety shore.
He is bits and pieces.
He is glass and timber.
He is glisten and bulk.
He is other.
On his knees on the plain sand
Cuthbert prays.
A small group of otters gather and warm his feet with their faint fishy breath.
Louise Warren, poet 