Mslexia

Mslexia, the magazine for women who write | www.mslexia.co.uk

New Writing

1ST PRIZE

Let my tongue and keyboard both proclaim the power of Jean.

For in the meeting house, Jean gets to her feet often and ministers
with a voice that is a clanging gong.
She drives away false peace, awakens us.
Teach us not to fear becoming caught in the long diversions of Jean’s thoughts, lost in the ring road of her speech.

When appointed hour is done, may we engage Jean in conversation
and not run away from her in the lobby for some invented reason.

Let us acknowledge the aging of Jean
who doesn’t enjoy being eighty
but wishes to go on as she did at thirty.
Allow us all to accommodate Jean’s fury,
listening with tenderness to her shouts and rants
Jean’s demands for help. Her refusal of help that’s offered.
Those cries of No. No I can do it. I can manage.

May we make time to watch over Jean
for she mislays her spectacles, her watch, her keys, her purse.

Help us to worship the Spirit that shaped the hands of Jean,
hands that once tied knots, hammered tent pegs, peeled thousands of potatoes.
Jean’s hands now in their fleecy gloves, their knobbly, twisted, arthritic fingers,
hands that can no longer do buttons, whose buttons are done wrong.
frantic hands that keep on searching bags and rattling papers.

Jean has been diminished, yet we shall magnify Jean’s name.
Lead us to esteem properly the engine that is Jean’s body
the darkness of her teeth.
the hairs of her head, white and coarse as dune grass
her stertorous breath
her bent back
her slumped chest.
Also let us praise Jean’s black-handled stick that likes to slip from her grasp and hit the floor with a great clatter.

May we remember always the muchness of Jean’s mind
Her mind that carries those seas from which we crawled in the beginning
that holds those caverns which shall open to receive us at our end.

May glory and honour belong to Jean, and every day that remains to her be blessed.

SIBYL RUTH, 48, has had work previously published with Iron Press, Five Leaves, and translations in The Guardian. She has an affinity for second-hand bookshops, American swing dancing, and walks in the countryside. Her best ideas arise while in the bath, an inconvenience she has mastered with a towel and quick dash for writing utensils. Recently she has been translating German poetry written by her great aunt while in a concentration camp.

On winning…

I got the phonecall from Mslexia on a grey rainy morning when I was inbetween pieces of freelance work, and tidying the kitchen.

I'd just finished emptying an extremely smelly waste bin. Hearing I'd won the competition made life seem a lot more fragrant!

There's also a sense of unreality. Writing is such a solitary business  and - although it's satisfying - making poems can seem like a thankless and frustrating activity too. So it's quite strange when one finds a poem has succeeded in reaching out to someone.

I've been writing for around twenty years on and off.  There have been fruitful periods and fallow ones.  About eighteen months back I finished secure employment in an arts organisation, in order to have more time to write. It's lovely to have some confirmation that this decision was the right one.

I think it's important that there are spaces where women can speak - and listen to one another - without interruption.  So it's a particular pleasure to have my work recognised in this way by Mslexia.  Having recently watched the Eurovision Song Contest with my 10 year old daughter, I'm very aware that competitions can have their bizarre aspects.  Perhaps Carol Ann Duffy should decide the next winner of that competition too?

Mean Time came out when I was starting to get seriously into poetry. It was - and is - an astonishing collection. I am sure that I'll continue to come up with lots of half-baked poems.  But I'll hope that I have the good fortune to write a few more successful ones too…