Reverend rewards Parson with Bent Books $50 Poetry Prize

Rev Hellfire of the Kurilpa Poets has adjudged Scott Parsons the winner of the March Bent Books Poetry Prize.

According to the Rev: “Call me old-fashioned, but I like a well constructed poem. It doesn’t have to rhyme of course, but it should show signs of craftsmanship. And I like a poem that tells me a story or works though an idea, rather than gives just a pretty description.

“But I really like a sneaky poem that starts you thinking it’s about one thing, but then it takes you somewhere else, like this month’s winner, SEEKERS SONNET by Scott Parsons. {Ed: It’s also a fine example of that disappearing artform the iamic pentameter]

“Runners up were Paul Sherman’s fine poem Boy cries on the front page (like a grainy B&W photo from TimeLife Magazine in the sixties) and Tony Kneipp’s whimsical This poem is full of butterflies (Where would satire be without the rhyming couplet?)”

Honourable mentions:

Anthony J Longford- more poems but shorter please

I’m a winter person but Lisa Chin’s “Homesick” made me wish I was a mango

Marjorie Lewis-Jones’ “Pain is a Robber”and its chilling personification of pain impressed me

Thanks also for Andrew Coes’ mystic delvings into the Archetype and Debra Stars’ ethereal contributions like windchimes of words.

If you didn’t win or get mentioned this month don’t be disheartened; There were many poems I liked but I can only pick one winner a month and I don’t get enough space to mention everyone. So keep sending your poems in folks. Next month could be your month!

Big thanks to Bent Books and the Westender for supporting the Muse!

Bread, Roses and Poetry!

The Reverend Hellfire

 

SEEKERS SONNET

By Scott Parsons

Somewhere awash in oceans and beyond
Gathers the garbage drifting from our drains
Shifting snug in some smuggled nonchalance
Forming nation in its benign remains

Their vessel is of little consequence
Merely means of moving the problem on
Yet the ending is always tidal, thence
Cleansing the mind of morals, long since gone

Now waste extends to that of the person
Plunging policies see the seekers float
Slogans only make the debris worsen
No use, the refuse when stopping the boat

For when each carriage meets its fatal crash
They are people taken out with the trash