SECOND ANNUAL
NORAH PLATT POETRY PRIZE
2007

JUDGE: Wendy French


Wendy French photograh credit: William Marshall

Wendy French was the  poetry tutor for Hexagon (2003-2006) and is now the poetry tutor for Hour Bank, Bromley. She is former head of the Bethlem and Maudsley Hospital School where she led an arts based curriculum as she believes in the healing power of the arts. She left this post in order to develop poetry and writing in healthcare settings and is currently the chairperson of Lapidus.

Wendy is the author of two pamphlets: Sky Over Bedlam and We Have A Little Sister And She Hath No Breasts (from tall-lighthouse). She has also edited two Rockingham anthologies of hospital children's poems -- Dog Bark (for the Bethlem and Maudsley Hospital School) and What's Your Problem? (for the Guys Hospital Evelina School). Her first full collection, Splintering the Dark was published  to great acclaim by Rockingham Press in 2005.

................................................................................................................

ERRANDS
by Wendy French

and on the ground the purple flower
(Sappho Fragment 105A)


At Goudhurst I stop and buy Green Tea
before entering the churchyard.
Here graves are not guarded by statues.
I leave no money to ward off evil spirits.
I unpick stitches of your last morning;
you leave the boat for that errand, tea half-drunk.
As I walk to your plot an old school-bus stops
at the end of the lane, collects children
for home. Symbols on Taipei's dilapidated buses
had been impossible to decipher
and we ran, laughed, not knowing
how to recognise signs that we needed.

I could walk to your grave blindfolded.
The ground needs to settle in a way you never did.
You found our bus by holding up the paper
to an elderly man who led us forward.
The driver took his fare out of our purse
and we were on our way to buy bean curd.
We rode through shadowed landscapes -
hills rising out of earthquaked lands.
The tofu in the market made our stomachs heave.
Here, stillness, head stones.
Steps on concrete the only winter sound
and I walk alone, carry one small tree.



© Wendy French
from her first published book
Splintering the Dark
Rockingham Press, 2005


WEBSITES FEATURING WENDY FRENCH'S WORK:
Poetry P F:
http://www.poetrypf.co.uk/wendyfrenchpage.html

the tall-lighthouse
www.tall-lighthouse.co.uk/

Rockingham Press
www.rockingham-press.co.uk/



Wendy French will be judging the "70 and Over" category of the 2007 Norah Platt Prize with fellow poet (and West Euston Time Bank Writer-in-Residence) Kim Morrissey.
Theme: 'Dreams'    Deadline: 16.11.2007



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West Euston Purple Poets
Writer-in-Residence
Kim Morrissey.
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