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)
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.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.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.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.