York Writers held a poetry contest this year, based around the theme of place. As regular readers know, I’m no poet, but thanks to my creative writing studies I do have a small portfolio of poems and one of those just happened to be about place.

With zero expectation of success, I submitted my poem ‘The Steps’ to the competition, and was very pleased to find out last night that the judge, writer and academic JT Welsch had given it an honourable mention ‘for its bold use of form (a very literally ‘concrete’ poem!)’

Poetry still doesn’t feel like a natural form of expression to me, but I do sometimes have thoughts of feelings that I know aren’t meant for a story, so perhaps I will write some more in the future.

This moderate success hasn’t convinced me to abandon my plans to study fiction with a side of screen writing for my MA in October 🙂

The Steps is available for download here; it’s presented in a pdf file to preserve the formatting. Let me know what you think?

The Steps

I’m studying poetry this term in the Creative Writing course I’m doing with York University; my last one, as I’m switching to an MA in Creative Writing with the Open University in October!) One of this weeks exercises was to write a poem using the voice of someone you really liked, or disliked.

At first I thought I’d write as J K Rowling. I had an idea to tell her life story using spells from the Harry Potter books to hang it together, but I had a rotten week and wasn’t in the frame of mind to do it. Maybe I’ll come back to that idea, one day.

I thought I’d channel some anger instead, so I started looking for quotes from the one and only Donald Trump to see if that stirred something up. An idea quickly formed, and I wrote this poem, mostly using quotes from the man himself. Obviously they’re out of context, and I’ve pulled quotes from a range of subjects together. Obviously I have put my own spin on it, because I don’t like what candidate Trump stands for. All the same, the end result is remarkably chilling.

I know words.
I have the best words.
I’m using them to build a wall
Nobody builds walls better than me.

My Twitter is so powerful
it makes my enemies
tell the Truth.
I’m using it to build a wall
Nobody builds walls better than me.

It doesn’t really matter
what the media writes
as long as you’ve got a
young
and beautiful
piece of ass.
I’m using them to build a wall
Nobody builds walls better than me.

My fingers are
long and beautiful
like
other parts of my body.
I’m using them to build a wall
Nobody builds walls better than me.

I don’t want
congrats
I want toughness and
vigilance.
I’ll use them to build a wall
Nobody builds walls better than me.

When they send
their people
they don’t send the best
They’re sending their
rapists
I’m calling for a shutdown
I’m building a wall
Nobody builds walls better than me
and I will make you pay for that.
You mark my words.