Meet Our 2022 Winners and Commended Poets

As the end of another tough year draws nigh, we'd like to treat you all to a very special Christmas gift: the opportunity to read the wonderful poems of our 2021/2022 winners and highly commended poets.

We'd like to apologise profusely that we haven't published up until now. Things have come up for us at Magdalena Young Poets HQ, and it's all been a bit tricky. It will be well worth the wait, though – these poems are truly, glitteringly phenomenal. We'd like to say an extra-big thank you to our winning and commended poets for their patience, kindness and understanding that it's been such a long wait. We'd like to say another extra-big thank you our brilliant judge, Gboyega Odubanjo, for his warmth, hard work and willingness to make a very tough decision – and indeed to every young poet who entered, for trusting us with their words.

The Prize Ceremony WILL be happening at a later date, and we'd absolutely love to see you there, so please stay tuned!

Merry Christmas, and we really hope 2023 is wonderful for you all.

So much love,

Olivia and Anna-May

First Prize

Body Work and Mother Earth

The limbless oak’s vellum hairs stand aghast at concrete soil as jackhammers harmonise in agreement, and the urban clearing crumbles again beneath grunting steel-toe caps and rubber feet.

We befriend a city that crawls under peeling fingernails and no amount of strengthener can reprimand the wound; despite best efforts and encouragement from T.V deities the bandage does not reach all the way around, or else it is pulled ever-tighter and we are choking on sanitised fumes.

But the statistics show – every death in this bitter shock horror, every gaping combustible hole and stapled caesarean of a gloriously dismembered countryside – all are dying, certainly, bleeding out of time.

by Kitty Hawkins, aged 23, from Norfolk

Judge's Comment: '[The poet] creates a harrowing song of desolation. Amidst the "bitter shock horror" of the continued destruction of our planet, the "jackhammers harmonise" and the "dismembered countryside" is glorious. The shock and horror of the landscape gives a filmic quality to the poem; part of you wishes that you were being asked to suspend your disbelief, but instead you are being asked to reckon with yourself and the world around you. The "we" of the poem expertly illustrates our status as both enabler and victim. The certainty of death, the "bleeding out of time" leave little room for hope and maybe, if we look around, that might be appropriate.'

Second Prize

The Garden at William Street

The plants have outlawed us from your house

by barricading the garden door. We become

fairytale princes, pushing aside briars,

hacking at what was once well tended.

Mum strains against secateurs: the slow

slice of metal through wood, the release

when a branch falls. I drag thorny limbs

into the forest and cast them among nettles.

Later, at the care home, you don’t notice

our scratched legs, dirty shoes, the tang

of grass clippings. Your mind too is overgrown,

your words behind thorns, my name

a house you cannot reach. I hold your hand,

wishing I could tame that wilderness.

by Beth Davies, aged 23, from Sheffield

Judge's Comment: The form of this poem, the in and out of its lines, is a perfect companion for the journey that the speaker takes within it. With sure-footed confidence [the poet] is able to skip from one world into the next. The idea of "fairytale princes", taking us from a fantastical scene of adventure to the tender desperation of trying to connect with a family member, is brilliant. The garden turning into the "overgrown" mind of a loved one is an image that feels so alive even as it signals something ending.

Third Prize

by Imogen Cooper, aged 25, from Birmingham

Judge's Comment: 'It is always difficult trying to construct a poem which can be read in multiple ways and so it was a pleasure reading [the poet] achieve so much with this form. The scene set in the poem may seem simple, but in each of its readings new layers of vulnerability and trust are built between the characters. The resemblance of the two columns of the poem to two people standing alone (together) works well, as does the economy of language which manages to create such wonderful, surprising images such as the "cooling-grease-paper / moon".'

Our very special Dragonfly Prize for Potential was won by Indie Laras Bacas, aged 25, from Bath, for her poem 'Batavian Soil'. We can't publish her poem here, but here's what our judge thought: 'The way that [the poet] complicates histories in this poem is fascinating. At times, they are able to collapse time into something contained within a single relationship. Wrestling with language, geography and culture, the speaker becomes an archive of all that has come before them. The poem reaches out beyond the individual and into the questions of belonging and identity that we all, at some time, must confront.' Thank you, and well done, Indie!

The following poems were highly commended by Gboyega Odubanjo.

Lancashire Moors

The blackened smoke of burning wood

reminds me of Lancashire moors,

where the trees and dogs echoed in barks,

and fifties’ carpets lined the floors.

Fisherman sat there with little complaint,

their lines gradually drawing out time —

waiting and waiting, their hands would turn grey

their ashen face wrinkled with grime.

Boarded up windows invaded the place

migrating from home to house —

ducklings and dandelions; links in a chain,

with winter, mice found themselves mouse.

The people sat quietly: grounded and broad,

led a life that was stable and slow.

And each hill mapped in minds,

like clouds in the sky

fell like rain drops

waiting to let go

by Famke Veenstra-Ashmore, aged 20, from Cambridge

Song of the Open Road

You wrote me eight letters, and I wrote you twelve. I loved you most when I could rip the stitches from your face with the nib of a fountain pen, your skin and muscles loose, your eyes loose and weeping, your mouth open and shuddering, your neck failing to support your head so I wrap both arms around it and hold you to my chest. I wrote that I would map you on to all my lonely roaming hours and you wrote the words of Walt Whitman. You loved me most when you were holding me in the cold and the dark. I gave you myself. I would come travel with you. I wanted us to stick together as long as we live, to stitch your right hand in mine and your left arm tight against my waist, your face to my neck, my back to your chest, and rip the stitches only to re-sew them when the skin begins to grow over, never let the wounds heal so we know how many times we have torn apart and come back together. You wrote that you lived all your life without me and never wanted to again, and then you stopped replying to my letters, and you stitched up your own face.

by Will Moran, aged 21, from Birmingham