Living Levels Poetry competition Winners!

In November we teamed up with award-winning poet Ben Ray to bring you the Living Levels Poetry Competition.

The theme was the Gwent Levels and the prize included Ben Ray performing it live during his online ‘Sound Levels Live!’ event ‘Poetic Wales’ on December 16th.

Here’s Ben’s musings…

“Lodged deep in the confines of quarantine far away from the Gwent Levels as I am, it has been a real joy to read and judge the entries of LLLP's Poetry Competition and to travel back to this special area through the page. From Chepstow to Newport, I felt I've taken a literary walk across this wonderful space via the poetry submitted!

As hard as it was to choose just one, the winner Stephen Cogbill's captivating 'Moon-Crazed Work' stood out: it's slow, meandering tour along the water's edge, taking in 'salt-claimed' trees and the 'patience-hardened gaze of stock-still fishermen', demanded confidently to be heard.

However, this poem is closely followed by two runners-up: Val Ormrod's 'Windmill Reen' evocatively captured past adventures and stories embedded in the communities of the Levels, whilst Mike Rees' 'Connections I' painted a vivid, clear snapshot of daily life in the area and the interaction between locals and nature surrounding them. In these difficult times, poetry can help us to connect with a landscape which we cannot always be with physically - a quality all of these poems hold in abundance.” 

Here is Stephen Cogbill’s winning entry (we will be publishing them on the website in the new year!)

‘Moon-Crazed Work’ by Stephen Cogbill

(A November Coast Walk of 25 miles requiring a dawn start and after-dark finish)

  1. Grey mists
    roll back
    As I peer
    Offshore
    At the silt-fast ship
    Ribcage of oak
    Hull planks
    Now voids of
    dim daylight
    Grounded there
    awaiting
    the lifting tide
    that never came.

  2. The large
    Time toppled
    Tree
    Salt-claimed
    Lodged against the
    concrete certitude
    of the
    Sea wall
    Catches the first
    brightness
    of the day
    Beneath it
    I tread
    the duvet
    of seaweed
    and flotsam
    the Tree’s bed
    before a high
    Spring tide
    calls it
    Falteringly
    to its next
    Voyage.

  3. Past the
    rootless
    sea-sick
    Tree
    past
    the jealous
    still-rooted
    Ship
    At
    Passage Wharf
    I stop
    to watch
    and hear
    the fickle tide
    First lapping
    Then surging
    around
    the Pill.

  4. Mor Hafren
    sets about
    its
    Moon-crazed
    work
    Scouring
    the flats
    Carrying
    in its flow
    beneath the
    patience-hardened
    Gaze of
    stock-still
    fishermen
    an invisible burden
    The Fish
    once
    daylight fails
    my only
    Fellow-travellers.