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Competitions
Ilkley Literature Festival’s popular writing competitions are open to everyone and
entries for 2009 are invited from April onwards, with a closing date of September 1st 2009.
2009 Adults Short Story and Poetry Competition
Prizes
Poetry Competition £200
Short Story Competition £200
Entry for the 2009 Competitions will open on 1st April 2009. Please note: entries cannot be accepted before this date.
Short stories (3,000 words) and poems (up to 30 lines) - on any subject.
These must not previously have been published.
Entry fee: £4 per story or poem
All winners and runners up will have the opportunity to read at the Festival in October.
Entries (plus entry form) should be sent to the address below marked 'Competition'
You will be able download an application form and the rules here from April 2009
or alternatively
send an SAE to:
ILF, Manor House,
2 Castle Hill,
Ilkley LS29 9DT.
2009 Children’s Poetry Competition
Entry for the 2009 Competitions will open on 1st April 2009. Please note: entries cannot be accepted before this date.
Schools and individual children are welcome to enter these competitions
A ) Reception, Year 1, Year 2
B ) Years 3 and 4
C) Years 5 and 6
PRIZES FOR EACH AGE GROUP
A special certificate
Book tokens, kindly provided by the Grove Bookshop Ilkley
2 runners-up in each category will receive a certificate and a book
Winners in each age category will be invited to special poetry events during this year’s Festival in October to receive their prizes and read their winning poem at the children’s poetry event on Saturday
10th October.
From April 2009 you can download an application form and the rules for the Childrens Poetry Competition here
or alternatively
send an SAE to:
Children's Poetry Competition,
Ilkley Literature Festival
The Manor House
2 Castle Hill
Ilkley, LS29 9DT
Young People's Short Story and Poetry Competition
Years 7 – 13 inclusive
Entry for the 2009 Competitions will open on 1st April 2009. Please note: entries cannot be accepted before this date.
Schools and individual young people are welcome to enter these competitions
PRIZES
A special certificate
Book tokens, kindly provided by the Grove Bookshop Ilkley
2 runners-up in each category will receive a certificate
Winners will be invited to read their work at the Cool Voices Words Club Night on Friday October 16th.
From April 2009 you can download an application form and the rules for the Young People's Short Storyand Poetry Competition here
or alternatively
send an SAE to:
Young Poets’ Competition,
Ilkley Literature Festival
The Manor House
2 Castle Hill
Ilkley, LS29 9DT
Closing Date: Monday 28th September
2008 Adult Prize Winners
Short Story Competition Judge: Mavis Cheek
Prize: £200
Poetry Competition Judge: Michael Symmons Roberts
Prize: one week’s course at the Arvon Foundation, in conjunction with the
Arvon Foundation
Poetry Competition
1st Prize Kathy Miles from Ceredigion 'House of Gingerbread'.
2nd Prize Carole Bromley from York 'A Jewish Giant at Home with his Parents.'
3rd Prize Gareth Durasow for 'The Last Flat Capper.' (from Castleford)
Commended:
Kathy Miles 'Portrait of a Man at Work.'
Kate Rhodes from Cambridge 'Portrait of My Husband as a Closed Book.'
Short Story Competition
2nd Prize Penny Feeny from Liverpool 'The Fossil Collector'
3rd Prize Caroline Bond from Leeds 'Provocation'
Commended
Claudia Boers from London 'Frog Song'
Julie Mayhew from Herts 'The Invisible Woman'
Dave Pescod from London 'Cast'
Winning Poems
1st Prize
House of Gingerbread
Putting the milk-bottles out,
my parents pull across the heavy chain.
This is a house of bolted doors,
of lying watchful in the early hours,
where spiders slide too cleverly through cracks
and wind has prised the joists apart.
I knock on their door as a stranger would,
am drawn in through the chill of morning air.
My father’s eyes are damsoned now with fear,
his palm a shaky moon of flesh.
Clenching a fist with thinner fingers,
rage keeps him going, as it always did.
Behind the doors, a forty year hiatus
keeps glass and silver clean.
In the kitchen, warm and prodigal,
gingerbread men are cooling on the table.
I wonder at the labour in their bodies,
the tangy shapes of hardening heads and limbs.
Each parting is a disconnection.
My mother’s face turns back a leaf,
‘I’ll write’, the words already in the past.
Her touch is like a branch in autumn-
I draw back from the sinews of her hug.
Turning. I see the door has tightened.
Kathy Miles
2nd Prize
A Jewish Giant at home with his Parents
Ever wanted to eat your parents
like icing dolls off a wedding cake?
I could sweep them up like dust,
shake them onto the flower bed.
They keep the curtains closed all day
to keep the sun off the chairs.
They don’t like my nose, my hair,
my enormous feet.
They keep a roomful of soft toys
as if I might regress
and they look up at me sometimes
as if I’m some kind of ogre
I want to stretch out my arms
and shake the columns of the house
stride off in my seven league boots
and find a ten foot woman.
Carole Bromley
3rd Prize The Last Flat Capper
Mine is the last flat cap, worn unto death
by fathers harking back beneath the pits;
faces black as seams of which they dreamt
relentlessly beside their wives; slate grey
from whole lives spent stoking ebon fruits
of men in repose behind bastion walls
of pint pots embossed with their names
and ceramic ashtrays now for holding nuts.
They dropped like flies when sent to smoke outside.
A Sunday morning coronation saw this last flat cap,
this Yorkshire crown of cloth entrusted to me,
thrust atop my head by a bloke dead
in all but his John Smiths arm mechanism
and winding wheel of reminiscence.
I'll remember him
when they unscrew the rings from his fingers,
nick the cig packet from his back pocket
and lever golden teeth from his grimace.
Gareth Durasow
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