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Competitions
Ilkley Literature Festival’s popular writing competitions are open to everyone and
entries for 2008 are invited from April onwards, with a closing date of September 1st 2008.
Prizes
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
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 to download an application form and the rules here
or alternatively
send an SAE to:
ILF, Manor House,
2 Castle Hill,
Ilkley LS29 9DT.
Children’s Poetry Competition and Young People's Short Story and Poetry Competition
Schools and individual children and young people are welcome to enter these competitions
Children’s Poetry Competition
A ) Reception, Year 1, Year 2
B ) Years 3 and 4
C) Years 5 and 6 i
Young People’s Poetry and Short Story Competition
Years 7 – 13 inclusive
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.
Children will read at the children’s poetry event on Sat 18th October and young people will be invited to the Cool Voices words club night. .
You can download an application form and the rules for the Childrens Poetry Competition here or the Young Peoples Short Story and 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 29th September 2008
Results of the 2007 Poetry and Short Story Competitions
Short Story Competition
1st Prize
Jennifer Knight (Norfolk) 'The Plan'
2nd Prize
Ruth Kidd (West Yorkshire) ' Exit does not Exist'
3rd Prize
Carol Barker (Bucks) 'The Trees, The Wasp, The Night'
Poetry Competition
1st Prize
Swithun Cooper (West Yorkshire) 'Role Play'
2nd Prize
Isobel Dixon (Cambridge) 'Usury'
3rd Prize
Carolyn Waudby 'The Sweet Seller'
Highly Commended
Helen Cadbury (North Yorks) 'Without You at Rhosneigr'
Highly Commended
Jennifer Copley (Cumbria) 'Today, Using Hair Rollers'
The Winning Poems
Role Play
Here, fester in the darkness, hold my hand,
We'll be two corpses, lavendered and stiff
In suits. No? No, you wouldn't understand -
I want to show you nighttime's better if
We lie in bed, both still as still can be,
Not doing anything. Just humour me:
I'm piles of books. I'm coffee cups. I'm plates,
The washing-up we didn't do tonight.
You're old CDs by artists someone hates,
We're stacked, untouched, inanimate and slight.
This doesn't do it for you? It's not meant to.
I'm National Trust investments no-one went to.
You're spiders in the corners of high ceilings.
I'm engine parts in some mechanic's house.
We're science fiction victims with no feelings.
You're bricks. You're slate. You're straw. I'm Famous Grouse,
So leave me to mature. Is that annoying?
You what? You want to stop? Aren't you enjoying
Admitting that, when life creeps into games,
When costumes chafe, imagination shatters?
We may as well both use our proper names.
John. Sarah. Hank. Jemima. Like it matters.
Throw out the fantasies. Admit we're done.
I find a night without you much more fun.
Swithun Cooper 1st Prize
Usury
You pith me, borrowing a layer of this milky skin -
your magic cloak, invisible, to wrap
your hero-lover ego in –
and snap this spine in two, like that,
so I am supple, pliant, bending backwards
to your fingers’ click. Your acrobat.
Your little monkey coaxing coins into the upturned hat.
A cute apprentice turning tricks, I caper
to the tune and grin, teeth needled like a cat’s.
Your tame familiar, little pet, so silky-sleek,
I’m always game and play so well –
the heist, the hoax, the bare-faced cheek –
always your slick accomplice, Bonnie to your Clyde.
Your lucky charm. Oh yes, I am
your bread-and-butter, milk-and-honey bride.
Taught by ‘Yours Truly’, Master Shyster, Mr Money Man,
this good-time girl is never at a loss,
but can be streetwise, run a scam,
work sharp at cards and somehow always wins the toss.
So caveat emptor, this baby don’t come cheap –
is not content with surfaces, the gilt, the gloss,
but wants the dark and dirty, meaningful and deep,
and has a yen for more than just a pound
of flesh and blood. The interest’s steep,
I know, but if you really want to play
and pare me, melt me down, strip off
and dress me up, you’ll have to pay.
Did no-one tell you there’s a catch to every wish?
The genie’s out the bottle, boy –
I am no gold-egg goose, no sovereign-bellied fish –
I am the lone shark, love,
and now it’s pay-back time.
Isobel Dixon 2nd Prize
The Sweet Seller
Cuba
Mirror, you are my old companion. A wordless marido.*
You ponder my face ten thousand mornings –
the fattening of cheeks, the loosening of chin,
the strands of silver running through.
You have flaws – pigmentation.
I have not the pesos to trade you in.
Nor that sunken chair, the refrigerator balancing
on dignity.
Our connections are fragile.
The young want the new, but it is the old that endure.
Routines keep us – the smoothing of hair into a bun,
the drawing of brows, black sickles,
the rouge on my cheeks;
the remains of Rose Candy teased
with a brush, thin as a whisker, painted slowly,
keeping within the edges.
When it is gone, I shall have the smile of an old woman.
The sun is up. I have my face for the world, pink, neat,
my chair, my tray, my glassy treats.
Carolyn Waudby 3rd Prize
* marido is a husband.
Today, Using Hair-Rollers
I remember Patricia:
a doll with burnt brown hair
that wouldn’t curl
and one eye that stayed closed
unless you shook her.
I did a lot of that with Patricia,
the first proper doll I ever owned
but never loved, preferring a pistol
with caps and that delicious smell
you got when you fired them.
It belonged to my dead brother.
I wasted strips and strips of his caps
for that smell.
Patricia did nothing but smile
with red wet lips
even when I threw her in a corner
with no knickers on. At night
I could hear her treacly laugh
as she clicked her eyelid over her eye,
practised her wink in the dark.
Jennifer Copley Highly Commended
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