Dawn Gorman believes poetry should be everywhere - puts it on beermats, uses it to
work with people with memory loss, facilitates writing workshops, organises poetry
events and runs international poetry competitions. She is widely published, and has
performed in New York, Paris, London - and lots of smaller places in between.

“Poetry isn't a profession, it's a way of life. It's an empty basket;
you put your life into it and make something out of that.” Mary Oliver

Bradford on Avon Fringe Festival Poetry Competition 2011

First

Peter Wyton,

Silverback Snack

Second

Stephen Payne,

O.S.

Third

Graham Burchell,

Drifting

Shortlisted Entry

Bev Hewlett,

Belongings

Claire Coleman,

Recipe

BA15 Postcode Area Special Award

Bob Steel,

The Mirror

O.S.

by Stephen Payne

Here's to the similar pleasures
of unfolding and scale, the flap of a sail
as I smooth it over a tabletop.

Here's to its democracy,
its even-handed concern
for trading estate and forest, roundabout and hill.

Look at those calm pastels
and fine-nibbed symbols,
lines that join, lines that separate.

Trace the arc
of this bridleway through the darker green.
No need for photographs

as I follow that Sunday walk
beneath the overhang of trees
eavesdropping our conversation.

And here's to my index finger's
abrupt leap
for less trammelled coordinates,

leaving the dank
heavy air to contour fly with the swallows.

Judge's Comments - Dawn Gorman

The joy of this poem - about something so seemingly mundane as an Ordnance Survey map (on the face of it, at least) - is its lightness of touch. Just a suggestion of an oppressive relationship, so subtle it is just a whisper, but the reader understands perfectly that need to escape... our world reduced in scale, to a map and the leap of an index finger. A fine achievement.