Winners 2009 : First Prize

Summer School 2012

The 8th Tower Poetry Summer School for young poets aged 18-23 will be held in Christ Church, Oxford from 28-31 August 2012. The tutors will be Alan Gillis (University of Edinburgh, Scotland) and Kevin Young (Emory University, Atlanta, USA).

Find out more >

Poetry Matters

Poetry Matters is an exciting on-line poetry magazine which provides a fresh, dynamic perspective on poetry issues through a mix of news, reviews and comment.

Timothy Carson

Sullivan Upper School, Holywood, Northern Ireland

Is Life Likely?
After Eugenio Montale

And some time make the time to drive out west
into Donegal, to the ‘Finn cottage.
In September, when last lights range blazing
North, over the Atlantic’s restless surf.
Driving droves of smooth polished pebbles over
with chanting wild, Norse thundering chorus
for our own epic. “Now is the winter
of our content…”, marauder of my heart.
Lying in sweats of fleshy grass, wheat-heads
goldening for plough in scarlet sunsets,
a raptured ripeness, like new pregnancy.
Northern cacophony beating about
to old peat-bog fires burning in the grate,
you pressed upon my chest drifting ‘til late.

Belfast, not quite midnight and last-call groans.
Rasped slobbers of consonants clogging up
the clenched clamour of accents, rough auld brogues
cumbering their pitch with resignation.
The art of forgetting’s a skilful one.
Billy Craig starts his twenty-five yard road,
heaving vomit, a monetary pool spent
keeled in the retching amber of streetlights.
Blindly feeling for a fallen couple
of tarred, bent cigarettes, he rolls his own,
treading the mutinous concrete flags home.
A chip off the old block, somewhere between
breadwinning hero and intimate rut.
Sheaves of them, men blowing themselves to chaff.

About Tower Poetry

Tower Poetry exists to encourage and challenge everyone who reads or writes poetry. Funded by a generous bequest to Christ Church, Oxford, by the late Christopher Tower, the aims of Tower Poetry are clear: to stimulate an enjoyment and critical appreciation of poetry, particularly among young people in education, and to challenge people to write their own poetry. Creative writing should be a central element in literary education, and learning about writing poetry can help students to think about ways of reading poetry.

Publications

The Twelve: