1st Prize FOR THE PEN NIB INTERNATIONAL WRITING COMPETITION-ESSAY 2021
Liv Rowland - Judge
Liz Bevan
A Matter of Concern
You’ll never save the world like that
Excerpt
It permeates everything now. You turn on the tap and you worry that you are wasting water. You turn on the heating and worry about your usage of gas and the emissions it causes. You wander outside and smell the stink of pollution in the air. You go to the supermarket and spend ages in front of a shelf of tinned tuna, wondering whether it’s still worthwhile trying to find dolphin-friendly tuna, or was that yesterday’s panic and measures have been put in place so that we’ve stopped drowning dolphins in tuna fishing nets now. And if that’s the case, why are some tins still labelled “dolphin friendly”? You dither about what packaging is recyclable whilst berating yourself for buying things that are over-packaged in the first place. You hear about people sitting in traffic jams for hours with cars pumping out noxious emissions, or you sit in these very traffic jams yourself to get to and from work. And when you’ve confronted all these issues, day after day, you wonder how and why we have all been complicit in some way in the construction of such a society. And why we are so slow to deal with it. And why so many so-called brilliant people are working in business, still spouting about growth, still basing their careers on making a profit and little else.
Any perusal of the Guardian newspaper and the below the line comments gives you just a little insight into what other people might be thinking. Some of the comments are downright hilarious, some of the metaphors witty and acerbic. Baling out a sinking ship with a thimble, you read over your breakfast toast the other day. There are many more, but nobody seems to be listening. For some it’s an echo-chamber. You mix with like-minded people which reinforces your own ideas, because mixing with people who think that it’s not worth us high-minded Europeans doing anything until China and the USA clean up their respective acts is too frightening. What can you say? Do you drop litter in the street because other people do? Does it make you feel like a witless sap trying to do your bit when nobody else ever seems to take the bus instead of their car? When people (maybe you, too, sometimes – you can admit it because we’re all in the same boat, baling out with a thimble) splash out on clothes, make nell ourselves that we are worth it – how does all that make you feel? Of course, before you bought or ordered the items in question, you checked the price, you checked to see where it was made, what the conditions were like in the factory which manufactured the item, how many miles it had to travel before it reached you, how it was packaged, did the delivery company treat its drivers in a humane fashion…. Oh, maybe you didn’t have time to do all that? And how does that make you feel?
Mary Gilonne
1st Prize Poetry
Katherine Gallagher - Judge
‘How to leave’
It will start
with a sea-dog’s clinker-built cabin trunk, it’s seen
a few things. Flush below two brass handles,
an old stencil of a red-sailed wherry coasting,
simply coasting on varnished water,
shiny as a broad sword. I’ll pack my atlas
of possible places, that trust of resting keys,
and in the space between the rope of salted
canvas shoes scrabbled with last year’s sand,
I’ll cache away my childhood’s fragile sea-glass finds,
Blue as mislaid eyes.
It will continue
with two greying boxes, your abandoned one and mine,
full of echoes and a restless rattling of things
we could have done maybe if we’d had less time.
They’ll fit the corners fitfully. I’ll leave behind
my Matryoshka doll and her nested housewifery,
but pack those Lost Ark stories, that Don’t believe
Everything you Hear compendium with its acid green
Cover, and a barometer I can count on. A grappling iron
to clasp me into shore during heavy squalls of falsity,
and a kaleidoscope for finding vanished horizons.
It will finish
with a filigree mirror just for the glitz of it, that trivial joy
of looking in and back. A silk stole dripping with lost
bees and butterflies for old planet’s sake, before I forget.
A mariner’s secret compartment will hide a riot of all the words
I never dared say on Zoom, bright semaphores signalling
this long sleeplessness of missing touch, and before the lid
is locked, a string of life-buoys, named floats to show the way,
I’ll seal those old-wive tales in a whale-skin pouch to ballast
My keeling tender, and add the whole weight of broken promises.
A cabin trunk is made to last, it’ll weather now and what’s to come.
1st Prize for THE PEN NIB INTERNATIONAL WRITING COMPETITION-AMUSE BOUCHE 2021
Liv Rowland - Judge 30th January 2022 Winner: John Green (photo above left)
Peeling Onions (Excerpt)
There was no fanfare of trumpets, just an electric charge activating a bell inside a telephone. That’s how I came to know
that the most important event of my life was beginning to happen.I excused myself from the office and jumped into our ancient Zephyr Six. I drove in a daze of disbelief through that cold December morning towards the house where the two of us lived. Quickly, I gathered up the bits and pieces we’d put together in the spare room, threw them into a hold-all, zipped it… just as we’d practiced and rehearsed… but, this time, on my own. I ran down the stairs and back to the car. I got behind the wheel, put the key into the ignition and turned it… Nothing!
“Damn! Flat battery!”
I ran to the bus stop, bag in hand. Through what was now becoming a real ‘pea-souper’ of a fog, the outline of a double
decker bus emerged. It picked me up and blindly crawled away.
“Thank God!”
But this was not a well omnibus. Pulmonary problems, I surmised. At Walthamstow Dog Track, like a knobbled favourite,
the Routemaster coughed, groaned, wheezed and gave up the race. Forty odd years on, my memory is not clear on what
happened next but I believe another bus or maybe a taxi was involved. In any event, the next thing I know is finding myself
outside the maternity wing at Whipps Cross Hospital, Leytonstone.
Gasping requests for directions at every corner, I race up to the Delivery Suite, sweating and breathless. I find my wife there,
unexpectedly in labour.
“What kind of an Outpatient check-up was that?” I ask.
All results are now out and on this page.
We will be publishing other prizewinners' work on this website. Congratulations to everyone. We will be issuing the judges' reports under Comments. If you have difficulty adding your comments please email us pennibwritingcomp@gmail.com with feedback or add comments on our Facebook page.
All winners will be issued with certificates. Cash and other prizes will be distributed as soon as possible and we will be posting a list of who received what.. Please note our Zoom celebrations are on hold at present for technical reasons.
May I take this opportunity to thank our sponsors and the members of our team. Please do visit our sponsors and mention Pen Nib when you do so. Finally I hope you have enjoyed the competitions. Without you none of this would have been possible. Thank you.
From my point of view it's been hard work but worth it. :) May you go from strength to strength with your writing.
Brenda (Présidente)
Below are some of the signed books available as prizes from acclaimed writers.
2nd & 3rdPlace' FOR THE PEN NIB INTERNATIONAL WRITING COMPETITION-
POETRY 2021 Katherine Gallagher - Judge 30th January 2022
2nd Prize
Nina Couser - Shells
3rd Prize
Roger Elkin - My last year in school
2nd Place and special mentions for THE PEN NIB INTERNATIONAL WRITING COMPETITION-
ESSAY 2021 Liv Rowland - Judge 30th January 2022
Michael Noonan - Who guards the guardians?
Special Mention
Paul Janson - Willie and Dolly
Christopher Craig - Admasu lives
2nd Place for THE PEN NIB INTERNATIONAL WRITING COMPETITION-
AMUSE BOUCHE 2021 Liv Rowland - Judge 30th January 2022
2nd Prize
Stephanie Moore - The wolf and the beautiful woman
3rd Prize
Angela Gilligan – After the Ball
Special mention
Grahame Bryant – The time someone stole my bike
First place to follow
'HIGHLY COMMENDED' FOR THE PEN NIB INTERNATIONAL WRITING COMPETITION-
POETRY 2021 Katherine Gallagher - Judge 30th January 2022
Derek Sellen Siblings
Gordon Aindow Eriskay
Pam Job My ‘Manderley’
Ella Leith Saskia in The Night Watch
'COMMENDED' FOR THE PEN NIB INTERNATIONAL WRITING COMPETITION-
POETRY 2021 Katherine Gallagher - Judge 30th January 2022
Winners and results of Essays, Amuse Bouche to follow
Gordon Aindow The Weight of Water
Mary Gilonne Aquarium
Anthony Kirk Cape Cod morning 1950, Hopper
Pam Job At Peggy Guggenheim’s: a meditation on love and desire
Liz Bevan Leaving
Helen Glover When I am old
LONG-LIST FOR THE PEN NIB INTERNATIONAL WRITING COMPETITION-
POETRY 2021 Katherine Gallagher - Judge 30th January 2022
In no particular order The long list consists of poems which have caught the judge's eye. It does not consist of all the entries.
Patrick Hargan
Things I miss
Helen Glover
Age
Pamela Job
At Peggy Guggenheim's
Disrupted times
En vacances
R.J.Keeler
Crow baby
Just like peaches and Cream
The hard way
Liz Bevan
Leaving
Nina Couser
How to be a girl
Shells
Gordon Aindow
The weight of Water
Eriskay
Derek Sellen
Siblings
The passage of a day
Mary Gilonne
Aquarium
How to leave
Roger Elkin
Falling Leaves
The Rough and Smooth of Flat Roofers
My last year in school
Anthony Kirk
My ladies desk
Cape Cod
Ella Leith
Graffiti
Saskia in the Night Watch
Dave Roberts
Kinnell
Stephanie Moore
The dust of you
Shatter me
Sarah Hambly
Commotion in the Ocean
Ada Gregory
One Sunday
Martin Rieser
Two roses
Anna Saunders
Dream Of Fire
Sirens
Angela Gilligan
Summer
It is raining
John Green
Ronnie
Noel King
His walking stick