The Write Path 2022

By NAWG Publishing

The Write Path 2022 contains all the winning entries from the 2022 National Association of Writers and Groups members-only competitions, along with all the judges' comments, and the Open Poetry and Short Story competitions, along with the winners of our micro-fiction competitions. Contributors include: Sarah Dale, Orian Norfolk, Graeme Hunter, Shelagh Wain, Sean Taylor, Chris Milner, Margaret Morey, Kerri Simpson, Maureen Taylor, Chloe Heather Hart, Carol Hurley, Mark Pattison, Sarah McCay Tams, Tansy Hepton, Sharon Pinner, Sharon Boyle, Diane Allardyce, Teresa Corbett, Sharon S Miles, Bob Trewin, Karla Linn Merrifield and Henry Curry.

• Language: English
• Publisher: NAWG Publishing
• Release date: Jan 7, 2023
• ISBN: 9781916132030

Book preview

OPEN POETRY

THE DAISY WATKINS TROPHY

Judge: Daisy Watkin

Winner: Sarah Dale

Judge's Notes

Judging poetry is, of course, hardly a science and another judge may well have arrived at a very different final shortlist! As usual, it was very hard to eliminate so many interesting, well crafted and affecting poems.

What did this judge look for? Well, all the poems on the following shortlist convey an arresting perspective on something, and harness language and form in support of their subject.

Short List

The winner, Crow girl, is a superb poem. Startling, powerful and mysterious in its evocation of the speaker’s psychic identification with the wild and the free, the language arrests the reader from the start. The ending is brilliant in the way it images (as does Ted Hughes’s Crow) an unsettlingly elemental spirit:

‘beneath my summer mouth when you kiss me you’ll taste rain, sleet, granite.’

Glittering Guesses is another truly original poem, voiced by a dyslexic 11 year old, struggling to spell the word Oxygen. The poem is both humorous and serious and contains some very effectively linked imagery which opens the poem out from classroom, to grassy plain, to space. The relationship between the boy and the teacher is presented in a successfully affectionate tone, and the ending is a feel good answer to the problem presented in the opening verse:

Chemistry is plain sailing though - Oxygen being O.

The Heart of a Tenor tells of a death, from the perspective of the dead man’s (obviously long suffering) widow. It is a very cleverly shaped poem, which manages to construct a vivid portrait of the deceased: a fast living, hard drinking, womanising, larger than life musician. The imagery constructing this portrait is brilliantly linked and there are some wonderful phrases like ‘sunk by a martyrdom of martinis.’

This poem is deliciously ironic: we learn about this man from the ways in which he didn’t die. The reality of his death, as related in the final verse, gives us a masterclass in bathos. The detail in the last line terrifyingly brings home the indignity of death: ‘a froth of toothpaste on a grey lip.’

The Hen Harrier is a fine poem about an encounter between the poet/persona and a Hen Harrier. The poem is beautifully paced in its presentation of an unhappy relationship, an evening walk and the sighting of the bird. The layout cleverly gives graphological support to the theme by suggesting the progress of a walk. Phrases such as ‘where the ochre burn/broke its back on slabs of granite’ and ‘until a groove /smoothed down the springy heather’ attest to both this poet’s musicality and use of effective imagery. The ending of the poem has an ominous feel: the words ‘the fading rays’ carry a subtle resonance which successfully takes us back to the fate of the troubled relationship earlier in the poem.

Highly commended

The entry Elephants in the Room is a disturbing (and well rhymed) poem and one that can be read on two levels. The title itself suggests a subject that cannot be voiced in the open. It is left to the reader to decide whether the elephants, seen by the the child persona while in bed, are just imagined or something more sinister - an interpretation invited by the unsettling lines which give the poem lift off after a deceptively conventional start:

‘Through the window I see

a fingering witch in my garden patch.

Below, my father lifts the back door latch,

Goes out into the yard. My elephants flee.’

CROW GIRL

BY SARAH DALE

Of the whole clutch laid by my mother

I only hatched in form sung by other music;

my heart crow-feathered,

my arms itching for flight.

Brothers, sisters, we flock together,

mirror minded, tool makers, deceivers,

gift givers, but tethered by heavy bones

I climb hills alone, craving wings.

Sky masters they ride torrents of air –

wing-flick, soar, glide; each calls to each,

I slide along their cries, see clear horizons

through focussed, prey sharp eyes.

Calling out in love my voice is harsh,

tuned to distance; storm wind, white water –

beneath my summer mouth when you kiss me

you’ll taste rain, sleet, granite.

FORMAL POEM: RONDEAU

THE CMP TROPHY

Judge: Sue Clark

Winner: Orian Norfolk

Judge’s Notes

I write sonnets and know something of their long history, so that I think I have a feel for them or that I would know an outstanding one when I read it.

It was a difficult job teasing out the winner in this year’s Formal Poem Competition. The problem wasn’t that they were all very good but that the good ones all had technical or poetic faults.

Two stood out and I had a great deal of difficulty in deciding between the two as to which was the winner. I’d like to have had them as joint winners but we can only have one.

I eventually chose Winter Traveller rather than Cherry Tree because it contained much more that was outside the poem. Cherry Tree was a good sonnet but lacked depth in comparison and didn’t have the same resonance. Both were good poems.

Narcissus and Deserted Garden came close behind and were also good poems.

I was taken with Changes which is a part dialect poem. I thought that the dialect was a bit strong for general English readers as I couldn’t understand some of the words, even as a northerner, and had to guess at them. The idea was good and well handled. Robert Burns used dialect but only up to a certain extent so that the language was still acceptable to English readers generally.

WINTER TRAVELLER

BY ORIAN NORFOLK

A stranger walked across my land last night,

they trod a narrow pathway through the field –

it wasn’t there as daylight drained from sight

and shadowed rig and furrow lay concealed,

but this day woke inside a frosty sphere,

so last year’s leaves were edged with crystal hoar,

and by the ditch where rustling hedge-birds stir

intent on feeding, someone passed before.

A steady pace, I think this wanderer knew

their journey’s length and whither they were bound -

just thoughts for company in passing through -

each foot precisely etched into the ground

as they strode down the lea, across the burn,

towards the lifting light, they’ll not return.

SHORT STORY (WITH A GIVEN PHRASE)

THE PROFESSOR DAVID LODGE TROPHY

Judge: Tim Wilson

Winner: Graeme Hunter

Judge’s Notes

As ever, the ‘given phrase’ prompt posed a challenge that NAWG members responded to splendidly. There was an enormous range of entries with many stories that were well-constructed, entertaining and economically told, with just a few that seemed somewhat underpowered for a competition entry.

I found many funny, many touching, and some – as with the winner – chilling! What made this story stand out was its taut prose, vivid imagery and superb sense of atmosphere. Well done to everyone who