The Winner of the Poetry Competition 2019

1st Prize

Jim Campbell

Ophelia's Journey

Identified as Tropical Depression 17

she seemed like yet another in the line

of possibly disruptive teenagers

who needed watching. She sat and brooded

in the single windless eye of her own storm.

 

She wept her heart out over the Azores,

swerved east north east to fan Galicia

with force twelve winds, feeding the fires

that scalped the hills.

 

By now her category, and her intent,

were clear: a termagant, she whipped white waves

against the Fastnet Rock, the Blaskets, Braich-y- Pwl;

she battered esplanades, tore roofs off schools

and dimmed the midday sun.

 

In cooler air

by Skerryvore, Cape Wrath, her force declined;

she bypassed Elsinore. Anonymous,

no longer bolstered by attendant clouds,

she drifted, docile, delicate,

above the waters of an upland lake;

 

then fell, and falling, sang no song,

scattered no water crowsfoot, no forget-me-nots,

just several silvered alder leaves

that touched her opened eyes

before she sank.

 

Jim studied English at Magdalen College, Oxford during which time he published his first book of poems: First Time Lightly. Then teaching took over his life and energy. After retirement he did an MA in Creative Writing at Oxford Brookes University. This stimulated his writing again since when he has written over 100 poems. In March this year Jim had a stroke so that now he is unable to speak and is paralysed on his right side.