Space Inside Poetry Contest Winners

Martin Swords announced the winners of our 2010 poetry contest to a packed Space Inside Live Night, last night. Commenting on the high standard of the entries and imaginative use of the phrase 'space inside', Martin began by recounting various lines from poems which he felt were particularly worthly of mention.

Drum roll . . .

The winner of the Space Inside Poetry Contest 2010 is
Jane Clarke from Rathdrum, Co. Wicklow with her poem Anniversary

Anniversary

He's alive in our house;
his books talk to ours on the shelves.

His photograph above the piano,
violin tucked under his chin.

You play the pieces he arranged,
quote his sayings and stories,

read his fountain-penned notebook
of favourite poems, Yeats, Frost

and Verlaine, for what they tell
about the space inside him.

I see you running to keep up
as he wallks Three Rock Mountain,

insisting you listen to what he has learned
about Satre and Tielhard de Chardin.

Today I dig compost into the tired clay,
plant heathers and snowdrops on his grave.

You watch and muse how it might have been
had he lived past your teens.


Our second winner is Edward Ryan of Wicklow Town, Co. Wicklow with The Space Inside

The Space Inside

For each of us a 'space inside'
Where our loving feelings bide
Some mystery too, the strangest thing
It grows the more with emptying.

Congratulations to our worthy winners who were presented with their prize hampers on the night by Carol Boland - chairperson of Space Inside, who went on to thank everyone who entered into the spirit of the Space Inside's first poetry contest.