Category: Writing Prize

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Results of the 2016 Mother’s Milk Books Writing Prize

I am very happy indeed to be able to share the results of our 2016 Writing Prize. A huge thank you to all those who entered and made this competition a real pleasure to oversee. And many thanks too, to the judges Becky Cherriman and Rebecca Ann Smith for their hard work in reading, sorting and making final decisions.

Please note: keen-eyed readers will have noticed that in the competition guidelines there was no mention of publication of an anthology of the winning pieces. This is for various reasons, the main reason being overwhelm! My waiting list for books-to-publish is long and the time I have available to work, short. However, the winning poem and prose piece are published below, and the runners-up will be published in the next blog post. I do hope that all the poems and prose pieces entered in the competition find good publishing homes because I can honestly say that the standard of writing was exceptionally high. And as ever, I have discovered lots more excellent writers who I would very much like to hear more from.

Poetry Category (Adult)

Winner: ‘Anniversary Number Six’ by Sophie Kirtley.

Runners-Up: ‘Evening Falls’ by Michelle Bonczek Evory and ‘Prenatal Ski’ by Lauren Pope.

Commendeds: ‘Knowledge’ by Michelle Bonczek Evory, ‘Songs for Virgil’ by Cato Pedder, ‘After’ by Gail Aldwin, ‘Easy Knits for Mothers’ by Alison Jones, ‘Rewinding Childhood’ by Maria Stephenson, ‘Domestic Bliss’ by Kristina Adams.

Poetry Category (Children)

Winner: ‘How To Make A Crocodile’ by Lee Birkett.

Commendeds: ‘Me and Grandad’ by Flossie Clarke, ‘Flying’ by Rebecca Cotti, ‘Ode to Motherhood’ by Meghana Alurku.

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Judge, Becky Cherriman’s Report

Much of my working life centres around encouraging people to experiment and to write in different ways and in forms and to try not to judge that writing while it is in genesis.To judge a poetry competition feels in some ways contrary to that inclusiveness and that was why I tried to come to the task without a particular agenda. Reading however, it soon became clear to me that I was looking for poems that showed a high degree of craft and engaged my emotions and/or intellect. I was looking for poems that spoke to me.

Of course, it is impossible to be objective. A technically poor poem can mean the world to someone whereas a highly crafted masterpiece might leave that same person cold. Several of the poems submitted to this competition were very good. Yet, after all the reading and analysis and dismissing some poems for containing clichés or not thinking hard enough about form, I decided on poems whose voices I found most compelling. Below are the chosen poems and my reasons for selecting them.

Winning Poem: ‘Anniversary Number Six’ – The poet chooses the sestina with its six line stanzas as a form for this gentle lyrical poem and aptly so as its theme is a six-year-old marriage. Radiating from the central symbol of the wedding ring, the poem contains some gorgeous images. The six end words of the lines acquire new layers of meanings as the poem progresses and poetic devices such as alliteration and assonance add to the music of the poem. Yet they are never used clumsily. I have chosen this poem as winner because it is emotive and accomplished in its craft, because I saw something new in its apparent simplicity every time I looked at it. I’ve chosen it because I felt I was hand-in-hand with its narrator during a very precious moment.

Runner-Up: ‘Evening Falls’ – What does family life look like from the outside? What does it look like from the inside and how can we reorientate to see the full picture? These questions are asked in this uncomfortable poem about the cruelty and caring that can manifest in parenthood. The language here is visceral; we discover how “love’s instinctual attachment” “will form scar tissue over crack and fissure,/ stretch skin to keep intact.” I like poems I can learn from, poems that help me see part of life differently. I felt for all the poem’s characters as I flew into its hard reflection. Unsettling as its theme was, the poet’s touch was acutely human and I was grateful that s/he refused to offer any easy answers.

Runner-Up: In ‘Prenatal Ski’ the connection between mother and the acrobat foetus grows stronger as the poem and the bump develop until skiing together they become ‘we’ – partners in a rebellion against the arc of the midwife’s raised eyebrow. I loved how the form’s short lines slalomed down the page, reflecting the poem’s content. What a treat to share in this subversive moment.

Winning Children’s Poem: ‘How To Make A Crocodile’ – a recipe poem for a crocodile made up of similes, many of them as frightening as the crocodile itself. The line “strong whipping tail as bulky as a puffer-fish blown up” stood out for me and I loved how it had a good beginning and clear end.

Anniversary Number Six

for Andrew

Now our baby is one month old
my hands are almost themselves again.
It is cold though, the unworn ring,
when I soap and squeeze my finger
in, still slightly swollen. Outside the wood
is stirring: aconites, catkins, primroses glow

golden in the low light. The sun’s glow
is shy in April. I forget the sun is older
than even the Earth, as that soft light tickles the wood
awake. I turn from the window (the baby has woken again)
leaving the misted shape of my fingers
on the cold glass. I kiss the ring

you gave me. It is warm now, your ring,
my ring, our six-year-warm-ring that glows
a homely girdle on my puffed finger.
The back of my hand looks new to me, suddenly old –
I notice, now that I wear my ring again,
how lines have formed like whorls in wood.

In the evening you bring in logs from the wood.
I count the circles, reading the rings
that tell of a rainy Spring, a drought, then rain again.
Years turn like that. We set them alight, aglow
they burn and flames fade to embers, then old
grey ashes that flake to soft dust on our fingers.

Although asleep, the baby grips your finger,
strangely strong, like the sapling we planted in the wood
for her. One day she will be as old
as us. Today you wear her hand like a ring
and sing a lullaby you forgot you knew. You glow
molten with love; slow and sleepless again

the night becomes day becomes night again.
We have lost ourselves in this, entwined, our fingers
have forgotten whose are yours, whose are mine. That glow
could be the sun setting or rising or perhaps merely wood
slow-burning in the grate. At least the ring
keeps me straight, there’s no arguing with that old

gold. I kiss our ring again and walk with you in the wakening wood,
hand in hand, our fingers stealthily thickening with rings;
our rings glow too, warm in the cold; six years new, six years old.

SOPHIE KIRTLEY

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How To Make a Crocodile

He needs:

A long, scaly, muddy green body like a mud-dripping tree caked in dirt

More teeth than a horse has hairs, which are as sharp as a murderer’s dagger and as white as the Caribbean sands

A strong, whipping tail as bulky as a puffer-fish blown up

Claws like a steak knife and white as a zebra’s stripes

A snout as deadly as a strike of lightning

A temper as hot as fire and raging as a soldier’s gun

He is a speedy, deadly, stealthy nightmare.

LEE BIRKETT (aged 8)

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Prose Category

Winner: ‘Shush’ by Grace Fletcher-Hackwood.

Runners-Up: ‘A Thousand Shades’ by Rachel Rivett and ‘Snails’ by Alison Jones.

Commendeds: ‘Grit’ by Louise Goulding, ‘Inheritance’ by Ebba Brooks, ‘A Moment With You’ by Cathy Oliver.

Judge, Rebecca Ann Smith’s Report

Winning Prose Piece: For me, ‘Shush’ was the most confident and accomplished. The writer has a very natural style and is showing not telling throughout. The dialogue is deft and naturalistic. This sort of style looks simple but is actually very difficult to do well. ‘Shush’ is well structured with a clear beginning, middle and end. I love that it’s pro Libraries (which are more important now than ever!) and I loved the theme of hidden treasure which recurred throughout the narrative in different ways and with different meanings. Most of all, I loved the way the writer portrayed the struggles of parenting young children (and the economic realities too) with such a light touch and a strong sense of fun. The muddy kids playing pirates in the garden is truly joyful. I think it’s a story that a lot of parents will relate to.

Runner-Up: ‘A Thousand Shades’. Again, I think the writing in this piece is very strong, with the narrator showing rather than telling us her complicated feelings about her daughter’s burgeoning independence. I loved the narrator’s image of her daughter as brave and dynamic, and the clever way she showed her anxieties about her child’s safety – the tiny backpack, no sign of a coat. There’s a lot of wisdom in here about parenting too, and the reference to the classic book We’re Going on a Bear Hunt was beautiful and profound.

Runner-Up: ‘Snails’. I love the simple “everydayness” of this story, the joy of finding real magic in a moment of ordinary family life. The writing is strongly grounded in the present and in sensory experience – much like the experience of life with small children. Throughout this piece we feel close to the ground, the smell of herbs and cut grass. There are moments of shining prose in here too – I loved ‘the blue heart of a rain shower’.

Shush

When Kat came downstairs – fresh from the shower, curly hair still damp, dressed in her summer holiday uniform of t-shirt and leggings, because there wasn’t enough Peppa Pig in all the world to give her the time or energy for ironing at this time of year – she was bombarded with Maths.

‘Muuum! Can we go and see Finding Dory?’

£8 bus fare plus £18 tickets plus £2 of sweets from the pound shop beforehand to prevent a meltdown when I can’t afford the popcorn = £28.

‘We’ll watch it when it comes out on DVD, OK?’

‘Muuum, can we go to McDonalds today?’

£8 bus fare plus 2 x Happy Meals at £2.59 each plus maybe some fries for me = £14.37, or £6.37 plus two screaming fits if we walk there.

‘Maybe next week.’

‘Can we go to Disneyland, Mum?’

Disneyland plus minimum wage plus two kids = you must be joking.

‘Not any time soon, sweetheart.’

By this point in the holidays Kat was good at planning activities they could afford. Her budget for this morning was exactly one pound, and so the plan was:

Walk to library = free, and not too far. Thank God it’s not raining.

Use computer for an hour while the kids play or read = also free

A book each = free

An iced bun each from the bakery on the way home = 90p, plus maybe 5p to bribe each kid not to eat their buns until after lunch.

‘Those Pinterest mums have nothing on me,’ she said aloud, to herself, as she carried the breakfast plates to the sink and the kids ran to find their shoes.

An hour and fifteen minutes later they were all at the library, still within their budget and completely tantrum-free (although Kat had come close when she couldn’t remember her email password). Kat remained grateful that their local library wasn’t the kind of place where anyone would tell her children to shush; but as Finn and Petal’s game of hide-and-seek among the shelves became increasingly spirited, she decided it was time they moved on.

‘OK, kids. Choose a book each, and then we’ll have to go home.’

‘NO! I don’t want to go –’

‘After the bakery! We’ll go and get a cake first and then we’ll go home. And then we’ll… decide what to do for the rest of the afternoon.’ Kat rubbed her eyes as she stood at the librarian’s desk, holding a thriller she knew she’d never get around to reading, plus a large, jauntily-coloured hardback entitled ‘Twenty Great Summer Holiday Activities’.

‘You look like you need this,’ said the librarian, waving the activity book.

Kat grinned, wearily. ‘Actually I need a strong coffee, a massive piece of cake and an hour to myself. But this’ll do.’

‘Long day?’

‘Mmhmm.’ Kat looked up at the clock and sighed. ‘And it’s not even half-eleven.’ She took the book back from the librarian – just as Petal cannoned into her, arms outstretched, sending Kat and her books flying.

‘Sorry, Mum,’ said Petal, as Kat regained her balance. ‘I was just trying to hug you really really fast.’

‘That’s OK,’ said Kat. ‘Hugs can be hard to control… What’s this?’

As she picked up the larger book, it fell open and she discovered something inside: something purple and off-white, pressed between the pages like a grubby flower. It was a twenty-pound note.

Kat straightened up and held out the note to the librarian, who was busy scanning Finn and Petal’s books.

‘This was in the book…’

The librarian pursed her lips, shook her head quickly, and then, very quietly, she said ‘Shush…’

*

Finn and Petal had both borrowed books about pirates, and spent the walk home riotously crying ‘ARRRGH!’ and exhorting one another to walk the plank. Kat hardly noticed. She felt a little as though she was floating. Twenty quid! Twenty unexpected, unbudgeted-for pounds! It was the kind of money that could change your whole week, if you were careful.

Back at home, she sat the kids in the garden with their books and cartons of juice, chatted briefly over the fence to Abby-from-next-door about her GCSE results, then went in and stood at the kitchen counter, making sandwiches and calculating. They had enough food to last until payday. She checked – they had enough toilet paper and washing-up liquid, too.

‘Sod it,’ she said aloud, to herself. ‘Let’s blow the money.’

*

‘OK, kids, I’ve got a great idea,’ she said, re-emerging into the garden with a plate of sandwiches in each hand. ‘How about we go swimming, and then McDon… kids?’

The books lay abandoned on the concrete slabs near the front door; the twins were at the far end of the garden, each digging a hole with their bare hands.

‘Kids? Dinnertime? Then swimming? Yes?’

They turned their identical faces towards her, wearing identical expressions of frank disdain smudged with loamy soil and sun-cream.

‘Mum. I am being the Dread Pirate Petal.’

‘And I’m First Mate Finn.’

‘And there’s treasure buried under here and we’re going to find it. We don’t have time for McDonalds.’

‘And everyone knows pirates can’t swim.’

‘Really?’ said Kat. ‘That seems strange.’

‘Everyone knows that, Mum.’

‘Oh.’ Kat went back into the house, stood still and thought for a moment, then turned around, came back outside and called over the fence.

‘Abby! How d’you fancy earning £10 this afternoon?’

*

An hour and fifteen minutes later, Kat was in the town centre, in a café she’d often heard of but never previously managed to visit.

She was wearing her favourite summer dress. She had the thriller she’d borrowed from the library; she had a latte and a massive piece of chocolate cake, which she’d ordered without adding up what they would cost; and she had over an hour to herself.

Back home that evening, a nicely tanned Abbey opened Kat’s front door and assured her that the kids had given her no trouble at all.

‘Muuum!’ they roared as Kat stepped out into the garden.

‘Oh, good grief.’ Finn and Petal were so completely caked in dirt as to be indistinguishable from one another, or indeed from wild animals.

‘We’ve been digging for treasure all day!’

‘Looks like it! Come on in…’

‘But the treasure! We need to show you!’

‘OK, OK. First treasure, then a bath.’ She sat cross-legged on the grass and the twins emptied into her lap the things they had found.

A pale blue glass bead; a two-pence piece; a ball of gold foil; a particularly shiny pebble. All of which had, Kat realised, been conscientiously polished on the kids’ clothes to get the dirt off.

‘We found them for you,’ Petal explained, proudly.

‘We knew if we digged for treasure we’d find something nice for you.’

‘You say “dug”, not “digged”. It’s brilliant treasure. I love it.’ Kat dug in her handbag. ‘I’ve still got a few pounds left. Fish and chips for tea?’

Petal frowned. ‘Do pirates eat fish and chips?’

‘Course they do. Everybody knows that.’

‘What did you do this afternoon, Mum?’

‘Me? Well… I found some treasure too. But I like yours better.’

GRACE FLETCHER-HACKWOOD

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Interview with Dawn Allen, winner of the Mother’s Milk Books Writing Prize (prose category)

As there are now only 12 days to go until the deadline for submissions for the Mother’s Milk Books Writing Prize  I thought it was high time that I shared this interview with Dawn Allen, the prose winner of last year’s prize. Many thanks to Dawn for taking the time to answer my questions and I hope it inspires YOU to put pen to paper and enter our Writing Prize!

Photo courtesy Dawn Allen

1. Can you tell us a bit about yourself?

I’m a single mother to my three children: daughters aged 3 and 6, and a stepson who is 15. We’ve lived in Cambridgeshire for some time now but I grew up in Dorset and have also spent time living in Canada as I have family there. I used to work in Local Government before my stepson lived with me and then I completed a Psychology degree part-time as a mature student whilst he was in primary school. Since having my daughters I’ve been a full-time mum and we enjoy a lot of creative pursuits together as well as exploring the outdoors. In my spare quiet moments I love reading and knitting. I’ve also been practising pilates for over 10 years and recently started Qi Gong. I’m keen to learn to paint and try new ways of creative expression as I find it really therapeutic and I also like to learn new things alongside my kids, so they see me trying things too and starting at the beginning the same as they do.

2. How, when and why did you first start writing?

I’ve been writing since I was quite young, firstly sending letters regularly to my aunt and grandmother in Canada and then short stories when I started school. I can remember writing to my grandmother when I was about 5 saying that I was going to write a novel, and I recently found the title page I’d drawn for it. I haven’t got round to writing it yet but one day I will, probably (hopefully!) a bit more easily than when I was 5. In secondary school I had some short stories published in the school magazine, and my parents still have copies of a lot of my teenage work. I’ve always loved to write, both as an expression to others and as an expression of imagination.

3. How often do you write?

I’m quite sporadic with my writing, I tend to either think about an idea for a long time before actually getting it on paper all in one go, or I might wake up in the middle of the night with something I have to write down there and then. I don’t have a regular practice to my writing, but then I’ve never been good with routines so I think it’s just my way of doing things and it definitely works well for me around the children. I try to keep a notebook with me to write poetry as that’s normally inspired by being outdoors so then I don’t have to try and remember it for later. Once I do start writing I usually keep at it until I’ve finished the complete first draft. Sometimes that’s a few hours and others it’s over a couple of days, but once I start it’s like I need to get the words out so I don’t want to be distracted with anything else. It means a lot of the evenings I start writing have turned into mornings by the time I’ve finished writing but I’ve come to accept that as my style and it suits me.

4. What made you decide to enter the Mother’s Milk Books Writing Prize?

I decided to enter because I love the essence of Mother’s Milk Books and I enjoyed having the opportunity and challenge to write within such a meaningful theme. It gave me the chance to write from the heart which is a very empowering experience.

5. How did it feel when you’d heard that you’d won?

I was really surprised and it actually took a little while to sink in. I hadn’t expected to win but I was really proud of the piece I wrote because I realised afterwards that I’d needed to write it not just for the writing prize but also for myself. To then have someone else read it and choose it as the winning piece was a really special moment.

6. Can you tell us a little about your winning piece of writing?

It’s basically an expression of the inner voice I’ve had to find as a mother. I’ve spent a lot of evenings in the dark, alone, feeling like I’m getting everything wrong. I would sit on the floor and despair that these children only had this failing, useless mother to look after them in the world. But then when I realised I was totally alone, and they did only have me, I also realised I was actually doing a pretty good job. I just needed to give myself a break. I tried to think of what I would say to someone else exactly in my position and I wrote this piece as if I was sitting next to myself in those darkest moments, saying the things that I needed to hear. And not only because I needed to hear them but also because they were true.

 I think all parents, whether raising kids with a partner or alone, have times when the fear and doubt are just overwhelming. We all need a positive voice to acknowledge and encourage us, and the biggest lesson I’ve learned is that it can come from within. I felt this particularly fitting to the theme of love within a family context because so often as parents we are so busy giving our love to our family that we forget to give ourselves the love that we do truly deserve.

Photo courtesy Dawn Allen

7. Any future writing plans?

Well I’m hoping to get around to the novel I’ve been planning for the past 29 years, although I think that’ll have to wait until my children are a little older. I’m continuing to write prose around my experience as a parent and also trying my hand at different genres of fiction.

8. Any tips for writers?

I think it’s important to just start writing, even if you’re not exactly sure where you’re going to end up. The important thing is to get going and not be put off by over-thinking it. I find that often a story will take you where it needs to go once the words start flowing.

            It’s also good to read a lot, and to try different authors and genres. I think it helps you grow in your own writing to see that of others and to learn what you do and don’t like from it.

            Most of all I would say to write the words that you need to write and be comfortable with your own natural style. Your voice is unique and you should have confidence in that (although that’s easier said than done, I know!).

Dawn’s winning prose piece ‘Nurturing My Darkness’ was first published in the Summer 2016 issue of JUNO. It also features in The Mother’s Milk Books Writing Prize Anthology 2015: LOVE. And if you feel inspired to take part in this year’s Writing Prize, please read the full guidelines here.

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Results of the 2015 Mother’s Milk Books Writing Prize

I am very, very happy to be able to announce the results of the 2015 Mother’s Milk Books Writing Prize, which had as its theme ‘Love’ (in a family context). As there was an increase in the number of submissions compared with the first two years of the competition, with the quality of submissions as high as ever, the judges found it challenging (albeit in a good way) to make their choices. Keen-eyed readers will notice that this year, as well as the winning and commended pieces, as chosen by the poetry judge, Sarah James and the prose judge, Zion Lights, there is a ‘Publisher’s Choice’ as well. These were chosen by myself from the judges’ shortlist. Basically, these were pieces that I couldn’t bear to not publish in the anthology so I’ve treated myself to these “bonus” pieces.

A big thank you to all who those who bought a “something” and entered their writing. Thank you for trusting us with your precious words.

Please note: first publication of the two winning pieces will be in the summer issue of the fantastic magazine JUNO (out June 2016). We will also be publishing an anthology of all the winning, commended and ‘publisher’s choice’ pieces this autumn. Please look out for it!

Artwork by Teika Marija Smits

Poetry Category (adult)

The judge’s report is at the end of the results.

THE WINNER:

Janet — Sheila Wild

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THE COMMENDEDS:

Josef — Maeve Henry

Us — Alison Jones

Poem for Imogen — Ann Abineri

Music — Joanne Adams

The Laughing Day, The Hours of Breathing — Cathy Bryant

Their House is a Slipper — Carmina Masoliver

Volume — Jan Dean

Springsong — Catherine Smith

Valentine’s Day — Karen Little

I Measure My Mother’s Love — Angi Holden

Water Baby— Karen Harvey

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PUBLISHER’S CHOICE:

Now — Ute Carson

Baby — Cathy Bryant

First Night Away— Beth McDonough

My Turn — Finola Scott

Belly — Claire Stephenson

Owen Learning— Helen Curtis

Poetry Category (Children)

THE WINNER:

An Austin Morning — Alex Habeeb

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THE COMMENDEDS:

Why I Write Poetry — Ruby Lamey Sarkar

Forever Love — I Rawlinson

Sisters — Charvi Jain

Get Along — TJ MacReynolds

Lanora’s Love Poem — Lanora Clarke

Prose Category

The Judge’s report is at the end of the results.

THE WINNER:

Nurturing my Darkness — Dawn Allen

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THE COMMENDEDS:

Anything Could Happen — Deborah Staunton

I Am Ready — Dawn Osabwa

The Miracle of Love — Tracey Holland

My Gadabout Gran — Ann Abineri

The Lens of Love— Liz Proctor

The Swing — Rachel Patel

Mother’s Day — Rachel Newman

The Spinning — Lynn Blair

Love is — Nicky Torode

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PUBLISHER’S CHOICE:

What Will Survive of Us is Love — Alison Jones

Love Ain’t Enough — Sarah Willis

Ashes— Fern Thomas

Love and Home Education — Caroline Cole

Sarah James Poetry Report

The Adult Category

Reading the entries to this competition was a delight. Family love covered grandparents, new parents and wider family. There was thought, imagination and feeling — love — in every poem. Sometimes I was close to crying, other times I could feel myself smiling.

Choosing between these poems was the hard part. I read and re-read the entries several times on different days in different places, in my head and aloud. Writing up my report, I fell more and more in love and admiration for the anthology poems – their structure, line breaks, imagery and more. Many of the poems that weren’t commended also had some beautiful lines and haunting images contained within them.

WINNER:

It was a close call, but in the end ‘Janet’ was the piece that stayed with me most each time. It is a beautifully spare poem, in which every word (and punctuation mark) earns its keep. I tested my own judgement. I asked myself could it hold its place against the rich lines of some of the other poems. Every time I doubted it, it answered back with an insistent yes. In just 10 lines, this poem manages the feat of both being about a very specific moment – a new Mum going to comfort her child at night – and the whole of two women’s lives as “all the women we’ll become | gather silently around us.” The focus is tight, precise and controlled. One haunting image is the moon “scuffed | and thin and over-bright.” I can imagine in a workshop, someone might query an object being both “scuffed” and “overbright”. Yet, not only can I see a bright moon that is scuffed in places by mist, I can also see new motherhood shining through – a mother’s face over-bright with joy, scuffed around the edges by tiredness. A lovely poem that wins through with its wonderfully measured quiet confidence.

COMMENDEDS:

‘I Measure My Mother’s Love’ is a vivid evocative poem that captures the mother’s love through her sewing. Beautifully structured, this moves through the threads, buttons and fabrics the mother used, each also evoking the person that the clothes belong to. But love is not just in the choice of materials, it is also in the actual making “In rustless needles and blood-sharp pins, | in running stitches tacking shapeless fabric | to lithesome bodies and coltish limbs.” It is also in the way that love adapts, captured wonderfully in the closing lines: “in turned down hems, let down as we grew.”

‘Us’ is a poem about ten years of marriage and “what lies hidden in our ordinary love.” It moves wonderfully from the outward reality of “our damp house, near the city, | where my uncertain self, talks us | from everywhere to somewhere” to what lies behind this: “Did you know, our suburb was a waterland.” With this line, the poem really takes off at both a literal and metaphorical level. As I read, I imagine a typical estate home that literally has been built on reclaimed floodland. Metaphorically, this analogy picks up on so much of what is extraordinary about “ordinary love.”

‘Music’ is another wonderfully spare poem that captures new motherhood: “Sometimes in the night | I forget you.” This is not a real forgetting though, more a merged existence, felt all the more in the tiredness at night when “our boundaries are as blurred | as yesterday’s dreams.” This poem took me straight back to when my own children were babies.

‘Poem for Imogen’ is another poem that not only allows a spare lines to carry its emotional weight but deepens that emotional impact by doing so. It also uses sewing/knitting both literally and symbolically, culminating in a wonderful final line for a very moving poem about losing a baby: “A dropped stitch in time”.

‘Josef’ is another very moving poem, where simple, spare and controlled lines and images enhance the emotional thrust. They also add extra strength to those few places were richer imagery is used, such as: “your neck is a daisy stem | your uncurled hand a starfish | beached.” There is so much that I admired in this poem, including the line breaks, evocative use of all the senses and a striking concluding couplet.

‘Volume’ is one of the few poems that managed the lovely feat of balancing both the joy and sadness of being a parent. Each line flows naturally from the previous, with the layout giving the words both space to breathe and space to grow into – rather as the unnamed child/children do in the poem until “the living room is full of legs.” It also neatly captures both aspects of volume: space and sound.

‘Valentine’s Day’ is very different to many of the poems that I read for the competition, and the one that really pulled off being different, right from the bold opening line and stanza: “Valentine’s Day was liver coloured…wet with deceit and drama.” At this point, I was maybe expecting a poem about the sham of February 14 and romance compared to real love. But there is far more than that to the poem, as the contrast is revealed to be to an 11-year-old daughter’s love, reacting to the loss of her father. This is a gripping and moving poem, full of drama – a drama that justifies itself because it is an 11 year old’s viewpoint.

‘Their house is a slipper’ is a poem that is every bit as warm as its opening lines suggest: “Their house is a slipper, I step inside | and it brings the comfort of a cup of tea.” Not only is a slipper comfortable, but it made me think of the nursery rhyme of the old woman who lived in a shoe. And what we have in this house is a Nan who fills it with stories, smiles and laughter. I very much felt as a reader that I was not only in this house beside the narrator, with the poem’s wonderfully real and specific details, but very much welcomed there as part of the family. I left the poem, as I suspect the narrator does the house, with a warm glow.

‘Springsong’ is a poem that I wanted to share because of its combination of accessible, simple images with a non-conventional use of language (merging words) and layout. I left this poem with a smile on my face and song inside me, as it confidently delivers the promise of its title.

‘Water Baby’ is again a poem that very much lives up to its title. It’s not unusual to find water and sea imagery connected to pregnancy and birth, and this fact makes it an all the more striking feat when such a framework is used successfully. The ‘baby swimmer’ metaphor is sustained without being over-egged from first to last line of this poem, and particularly strongly in the third stanza where “You came eagerly, | running the bow wave.”

‘The Laughing Day, the Hours of Breathing’ is a poem of opening out to the world, and as such manages to create a very full picture. The core of this poem is the narrator’s dying father. But it opens with the sound of children laughing somewhere else inside or near to the hospital and “the only time | of life when screams signify fun.” In doing so, the poem not only captures a very personal grief but also the place of that grief within the wider world. This contrast is sustained throughout the poem, where we later see nature in full beauty outside, making the loss unfolding within that hospital bed even more moving. There is some beautiful imagery in the poem too, from “His lungs were an orchestra tuning up, | his flickering tongue conducting | the bass rasps and grunts of effort” to “My father’s beard should be blossoms | or feathers, not snow. It moves to the clumsy, | clunky clockwork of lung-time.”

The Children’s Category

Judging this competition really made me think hard about the various elements that make for a good poem and how to prioritise them. There is, of course, no one recipe for success. Choosing between the commended poems was a difficult, and ultimately subjective, task, particularly when all the entries seemed full of very real love, thought and crafting. There were also some excellent attempts at rhyme and using repetitive structures.

In the end, I chose ‘An Austin Morning’ as my winner. This poem is perhaps closer to prose than many of the other commended entries. But it holds its own rhythm and creates a very clear picture of what is announced in the title. The poem uses the sense of sound, as well as sight, to make the scene come alive. It also makes good use of strong verbs, metaphors and similes. The end lines bring a very confident close to the poem.

PUBLISHER’S CHOICE:

‘Now’ gives a precise and not-overly sentimental ‘showing’ of a grandmother’s love for her grandson. I think it paints the scene with skill and care, and I am touched by the love in it.

‘First Night Away’ is a spare poem, but which conjures the sense of what it is like to have an older child go away for a night very well. I love the phrase: “All night creaks of him;” which sums up what it’s like to be a parent, anxious and disquieted by the sounds of the night while thinking of their child.

‘Belly’ is simply very different to the rest, and refreshingly so. It makes me smile and I love the last two lines (which I won’t give away here). I like the way it is about the unconditional love that a child has for us, and how this is non-judgemental and how they can help us to see (what we consider) our flaws as something altogether different, and positive.

‘Owen Learning’ is on the theme of breastfeeding, and I think the fact that it is from the grandmother’s perspective interesting. It contains some lovely images of the baby after he has fed: “the sated smile, bloated belly | of a little king;”.

‘My Turn’ is a successful poem which conjures up the scene of an elderly father struggling in the night very well. I love some of the imagery and the last line is understated yet powerful.

With the poem, ‘Baby’ I simply adore some of the imagery — the “white cloths” (terry towel nappies) as “clouds of butterflies” particularly resonated with me.

I am delighted to be able to publish all the above poems within the anthology and only wish we had room for more!

Zion Lights Prose Report

Sometimes the weeks fly by but the days are long. This is how I was feeling when I sat down with the prose entries for this writing prize, ready to immerse myself in the written worlds of the mothers who had contributed their stories, and wash away some of the day’s tribulations by doing so. What I found surpassed my expectations, as I went on one mother’s journey to another’s, their tales as varied and textured as our individual parenting journeys naturally are. Sometimes we need fresh eyes to be reminded of the beautiful moments of motherhood, and also to remember that the difficult moments will pass. I felt energised by these writing entries, and set the unread stories aside, to be approached another day with fresh eyes, and with a heart that would feel less raw to the lens of the beautiful but turbulent journey that is parenting. Then I travelled the textured road again, and was blown away by its wonders.

WINNER:

Nurturing My Darkness

It’s rare to read a piece of writing that touches on what one feels as a parent in this world, that connects you with the rest of humanity and makes you feel less alone. For me, Nurturing My Darkness did exactly this. ‘Take your time and breathe, mama’, it begins. ‘It’s okay’. Instantly I took a breath. I read a lot of nonfiction for my work and the open and direct, raw emotional style of this writing spoke to me in a deep way. It made me feel less alone, as I became lost and then immersed in the words this writer was offering me, those of consolation and of understanding, I wept a mother’s tears at the end. To the author I send a heartfelt thank you for this work of prose, for writing the words that every mother sometimes needs to hear on those dark days.

COMMENDEDS:

My Gadabout Gran

I never had grandparents, never knew them at all. This work paints a touching and nostalgic picture of the writer’s grandmother, much as I would have expected my own to be. Gran likes to travel. Gran is like a butterfly. Gran becomes a memory, captured by the writer in a wonderful vignette.

The Lens of Love

This is another raw and open emotional piece that, for me, captures the love of a mother in a very unique way. This mother feels what I feel and have felt on my parenting journey, and also captures the utterly sacrificial nature of a mother’s love. The delicate writing style is especially captivating in this piece.

The Swing

When does one become a mother? Reading this work, I felt that it happens long before the baby arrives. This mother craves her unborn baby, imagines in detail the child she longs to have but have not yet been able to conceive. I understand her longing and her need, as do so many women around the world. This writer brings those childless mothers together with her story.

Anything Could Happen

With a parent’s love also comes the difficulties – the side we don’t like to talk about, as this writer admits about her child: ‘I desperately want to like her more’. This work is bold and brave, just as this mother is fiercely determined to make the best of an incredibly difficult situation. I bow my head to her.

The Spinning

The love before children. The love of two adults caught in the magical world of each other. Then children, family, and loss. This story made me spin with its many stories, meshed and unravelling together, as families do. Wonderful storytelling.

I Am Ready is a light and positive musing on a mother’s readiness for her baby and child, for the journey we take together when we become mothers and mothered. This honest and open work provides a refreshing read.

The Miracle of Love will take you on a rollercoaster journey of grief, loss and love. I haven’t experienced this type of loss myself but of course we will all go through it some time – parental loss is very real and also very much something that we don’t talk about. I appreciated the frank tone of this work, and the sharing of the story.

Mother’s Day tells a similar tale of mourning and yearning, but in a different way. There is loss and sadness, but also acceptance. I felt that a powerful process was tackled by this powerful work of prose.

Love Is… paints a wonderful picture of everyday parenting moments that we don’t always get the chance to savour. I enjoyed reliving some surprisingly similar moments through this work, and the warm idea of my child ‘curled up against [my future] middle aged spread’.

PUBLISHER’S CHOICE:

What Will Survive of Us is Love is a beautifully poetic paean to the life of a long-term couple with young children and I was glad to see the author celebrating the every day joys of what many think of as a stagnant time in a couple’s life.

Although our family don’t home educate, the piece Love and Home Education spoke to me as, ultimately, the piece is about making decisions that are hard because close family members disagree with our choices. It’s about standing strong, making those decisions anyway, and having the grace to accept that others may think differently, and that that’s okay.

Love Ain’t Enough expresses the notion that the word ‘love’ is very much over-used today. And yet, our love for our children can be very strong. What the author is looking for is a “love PR guru” – which I very much like the idea of!

Ashes is a gentle and beautiful recounting of the loss of a grandmother and the scattering of her ashes. It is well-written and powerful in an understated way, and reminds me of the importance of family at the end of one’s life, at the ultimate transformative experience, death.

Again, I’m so happy to be able to include all the above prose pieces in the anthology and am looking forward to publishing these pieces.

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Interview with Jessica Bradley, winner of the Mother’s Milk Books Writing Prize (prose category)

As we celebrate the publication of our latest book The Mother’s Milk Books Writing Prize Anthology 2014: THE STORY OF US I’m delighted to be able to share this interview on the blog. A huge thank you to Jessica for taking the time to share her thoughts on motherhood, writing, and what it means to win this prize. 

Jessica with children (photo courtesy Jessica Bradley)

1. Can you tell us a bit about yourself?

I live in the north of England with my husband and our two girls who are aged 2 and 5. I am currently in the second year of a PhD in which I am studying how people communicate multilingually within the arts, specifically in street theatre production and performance.

Being a mum to two little ones and a PhD student means that life is certainly never boring. I have lots of inspiration to be creative, but not so much in terms of time! I hope that although juggling the two different parts of my life can make for an extremely busy time, my children will understand more about the joy of learning and the possibilities that are open to them. I enjoy reading, poetry, crafts and visual arts. I count myself incredibly lucky to be able to work doing something I enjoy and to live near my family who are supportive. As a family we try and spend as much time as possible outdoors and we are fortunate in that we live only a short drive from lots of beautiful countryside.

2. How, when and why did you first start writing?

I think I have always enjoyed writing in some form, certainly when I was a young child I would write little stories for my friends and family. I find writing a very satisfying way to communicate and to play with ideas and stories.

 3. How often do you write?

Technically I write every day, as my PhD requires me to do so! I believe that the more you write, the more you can write and I try to mix up the kind of writing I do. I write for a couple of work-related blogs, I write my research journal, I do my academic work of course but then, when I have the time and the inspiration takes me, I do some for myself.

4. What made you decide to enter the Mother’s Milk Books Writing Prize?

Having left my long-term job in September 2014 to become a postgraduate student and after just about coming out of the fog that is sleepless nights and small babies I found myself reflecting a lot on the change in my situation and this process of reflection led me to start to consider some of the themes I was presented with through thinking about my own experiences. Motherhood is wonderful and yet also all-consuming in ways I hadn’t expected before I had children myself. I find it to be a source of never-ending inspiration: it pushes me to write about it and to explore my emotions and experiences creatively through writing. I needed somewhere to ‘place’ this kind of work and to see it as a creative output of its own. I saw the opportunity to submit a piece of writing for this competition on the Mslexia website and thought it would be worth a try.

5. How did it feel when you’d heard that you’d won?

I was surprised to say the least! It was the first piece I had ever submitted for a prize of this kind and to be honest I was not expecting to win at all. I then felt quite nervous of it being in the public domain and asked a few friends and family members to read it and to pass on their comments. They were very positive about it and reassured me that it could be published: their support and kind words were very gratefully received! After that, I felt quite proud of it. The nicest thing was being able to tell my eldest daughter that I was going to have my writing published in a book as she is very keen to write and to become an author when she grows up: her eyes lit up and she was so excited. I think she told her teacher the next day at school. She’s been writing her own little books ever since: perhaps we can set up our own little family writing group!

6.  Can you tell us a little about your winning piece of writing?

The piece itself is quite a personal story about my eldest daughter who was taken very ill at four weeks old and rushed to hospital (terrifyingly). Although I talked about it a lot both at the time and since it happened, I had never written about it. I found the process simultaneously cathartic and overwhelming. I did find it hard to read again as it brought back the memories of that time and the fear I felt both as a brand new mother to a tiny baby when everybody wants to ‘have a go at holding the baby!’ and then the shock of her illness and being rushed to hospital. The experience did characterize the first few months of motherhood for me: this sense of being so afraid that she would be ill again. It’s interesting now to reflect on that time as I can see how different things are now.

I do think it’s important to portray this side of motherhood which so often doesn’t get talked about: the fear and the intensely fierce protection that we feel towards our babies as new mothers (and forever more!).

7. Any future writing plans?

Well, I’ll be writing a thesis over the next couple of years! I plan to write more of my own creative work too – probably less in terms of memoir and personal writing like this piece was and more short stories and fiction. I have this idea for a book…but it will probably have to wait until I graduate.

8. Any tips for writers?

I do think writing gets better the more you practise. I also read a lot and I think this has helped me with my own writing. I find showing my work to people to be a very difficult process, and so my response is to make myself do it as much as possible! I try to get outside myself comfort zone, even if it is frightfully uncomfortable. Also that you can find inspiration in everything, even the unexpected: I recently wrote about the never-ending ‘soft play centre’ party circuit that parents of 5 year olds are so familiar with.

***

Jessica’s winning prose piece ‘The First Winter’ was first published in the Summer 2015 issue of JUNO. It also features in The Mother’s Milk Books Writing Prize Anthology 2014: THE STORY OF US. And if you feel inspired to take part in this year’s Writing Prize, please read the full guidelines here.

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Interview with Wendy Orr, winner of the Mother’s Milk Books Writing Prize (poetry category)

As we approach the publication of the summer issue of the inspiring natural parenting magazine, JUNO in which the pieces of the Mother’s Milk Books Writing Prize winners will appear, I’m delighted to be able to share this interview on the blog. A big thank you to Wendy for taking the time to share her thoughts on motherhood, writing, and what it means to win this prize.

Wendy Orr and daughter (photo courtesy Wendy Orr)

1. Can you tell us a bit about yourself?

I live with my husband and our 8 year old daughter Mathilda, in the beautiful East Neuk coast of Fife. I have a background as an English teacher and consultant in secondary education. Over the years, I have studied: Literature and Language, Deaf Studies, Secondary Teaching, Educational Leadership. The latter, was a Masters that I was doing whilst pregnant and completed when Mathilda was very little. Motherhood made me much more practical about “getting things done” in the spaces. Since moving back to Scotland recently, I spend most of my time taxiing Mathilda about between school, friends’ houses and activity clubs and settling us into a new home.

2. How, when and why did you first start writing?

I have always been drawn to poetry. When I was a child and half-asleep one evening, I saw my dad leave a beautiful, illustrated edition of R. L. Stevenson’s A Child’s Garden of Verses at the end of my bed (my sister got fairytales). I felt it was a magical moment and I used to copy out the poems and draw from them. My mum would sing nursery rhymes or The Beatles’ lyrics and we used to say little bedtime prayers as a child too. All of this was a kind of early poetry, for speaking aloud. I just loved the beauty of words behaving in extraordinary ways and my mother’s voice beautified words. Later, I used poetry as a type of self-consolation or working through life, a type of journal although much less systemised. I wrote with a personal purpose but without technical discipline but it became increasingly part of me and I found I wanted it to be clearer, better.

3. How often do you write?

I now write every day but this is a very recent development. I love to do it and I may only find 10 minutes here and there but I find it more and more necessary to my wellbeing and sense of fulfilment. Eavan Boland has commented on the efficiency of writing for 10 minutes – it’s amazing what you can achieve. I also try to write for an hour before everyone is awake – it’s the first thing I do if I can get away with it but I’m not a clockwork type so it’s all quite random and chancy. I like late night writing too but have to rein this in otherwise I’m useless to the world the next day!

4. What made you decide to enter the Mother’s Milk Books Writing Prize?

I love blogs, small presses, anything that centres on women’s writing and the experiences many women have of fitting in work and creativity with caring roles and other commitments. I found Mothers Milk Books through the Mslexia website and ordered Angela Topping’s collection, Letting Go, which explored daughterhood and grief, which chimed with a personal experience. MMB seem to highlight the experiences of bonding through breastfeeding and by coincidence, I had been working on a poem which considers this and also draws on the experience of just holding my daughter in everyday life. I saw that the competition deadline was tantalisingly close enough for me not to over-think it – so I closed my eyes and pressed send!

5. How did it feel when you’d heard that you’d won?

I was writing very early in the morning and it was still dark. I just checked my email and saw the word “winner” and “Mother’s Milk” and had this very unusual moment of dreamlike calm. I wasn’t fully awake so I had to check the message several times to make sure I hadn’t invented it. I was delighted.

It has actually become an important milestone for me because it has brought such unexpected encouragement and validation from other writers and a heightened awareness that writing which centres on motherhood and other female experiences, is very much valued. Some recent friends who are very fine, publishing poets let me know that they were already watching out for the competition results and highlighted to me the significance of such a win, for working poets. It has been a remarkably positive experience and feels all the more meaningful because the poem was about my daughter.

6. Can you tell us a little about your winning piece of writing?

The poem started off as a much shorter lullaby-like lyric for Mathilda, which she loved, about the physical experience of holding her and feeling held by her. It developed into memories of breastfeeding (which had its complications for me following neck surgery). It made me feel that we needed each other to make it work – that she was also physically supporting me with her own strength and that I was being gifted a kind of reawakening and realignment through her; a reciprocal nourishment. It made me more acutely aware of Mathilda’s emerging personhood (even as a new baby) and her power seemed to free me, in those close moments. But I couldn’t have articulated any of that until I wrote the poem.

7. Any future writing plans?

I am enjoying writing whatever comes naturally from everyday experiences and observations. I do instinctively seem to write using the imagery of the coastline and there is a kind of darkness to the way I encounter the natural world, which I want to further explore. I also write about family and want to delve a little deeper into the histories of long-gone family members who have become almost mythical in the left-behind detail and lack of detail. Collaborating with another poet or artist would really interest me too in the future. I love the idea.

8. Any tips for writers?

Read. Read as much contemporary poetry as you can get your hands on. It’s very readily accessible online and keeps the eye and ear fresh. I believe you begin to absorb and filter and appreciate what’s meaningful to you by reading a wide range. Libraries such as the Scottish Poetry Library are amazing (you can order online from there). You can also get an immeasurable amount of sustenance from poetry events and readings such as at the STAnza Poetry Festival in St Andrews, to which people travel from all over the world. I found poets there to be open, collaborative and welcoming people – it’s great fun too. Find the nearest one and immerse yourself!

Wendy’s winning poem ‘We Are Sleeping’ will first be published in the summer issue of JUNO (out June 2015) and then in the Mother’s Milk Books Writing Prize Anthology 2014: The Story of Us which is to be published this September. 


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Results of the 2014 Mother’s Milk Books Writing Prize

I am delighted to be able to announce the results of the 2014 Mother’s Milk Books Writing Prize. As there was an increase in the number of submissions compared with the inaugural year of the competition we were very happy indeed to be able to commend more pieces. The writing was of a very high quality and both judges commented on how they felt privileged to read the entries. To quote the poetry adjudicator, Cathy Bryant: “As always, Mother’s Milk has that extra something special.”

A big thank you to all who those who bought a ‘something’ and entered their writing. Thank you for trusting us with your precious words.

Please note: first publication of the winning pieces will be in the summer issue of the fantastic magazine JUNO (out June 2015). We will also be publishing an anthology of the winning and commended pieces this autumn. Please look out for it!

Poetry Category (adult)

The judge’s report is at the end of the results.

THE WINNER:

We Are Sleeping — Wendy Orr

THE COMMENDEDS:

The Story of Us — Eleni Cay

Mirrored — Angela Smith

Beholden — Stephanie Siviter

Time Stands Still — Ute Carson

with Alice, aged 4 — Nikki Robson

She is Autumn — Starr Meneely

Night Nursing — Lynsey Hansford

Lullabies — Finola Scott

The Story of Us — Stephanie Arsoska

to see you now — Emma Wootton

Birthday Parties — Karen Little

Blank Page — Sue Hardy-Dawson

Chuckle Chutney — Sarah James

Gem — Sally Jack

Inbetweeny — Fran Bailie

Mother Moon — Joanne Adams

Slow Movement — Sue Barnard

South Crofty Mine, 1948 — Abigail Wyatt

Urchin — Becky Cherriman

Us — Luschka Van Onselen

Vanishing Twin — Catherine Haines

Ward 3D — Laura Taylor

No Room to Be Ill — Julie Russell

Poetry Category (Children)

THE WINNER:

Me and My Brother — Isaac Lloyd

THE COMMENDEDS:

Lovely Family — Matilda Luna Furlan-Simmonds

The Family of Me — Surya Cooper-Ivison

Emily Butterfly — Shanti Cooper-Ivison

Lovely Family — Jordan Clarke

Prose Category

The Judge’s report is at the end of the results.

THE WINNER:

The First Winter — Jessica Bradley

THE COMMENDEDS:

Spinning Straw — Helen Cooper

A Journey to Love — Dawn Osabwa

Birth Stories — Becky Tipper

My First Born — Lucy Benton

Bernadette — Angi Holden

The Story of Us — Lynsey Hansford

A Nepalese Adventure — Caroline Cole

The Story of Us — Dawn Clarke

I Whisper His Name — Rose Topping

The Love of Five Dolls — Henrietta Job

Home From The Sea — Louise Goulding

Life Cycle: The Circle of Us — Liz Proctor

Our Dancing Hearts — Ann Abineri

Co-operative Shopping — Beth McDonough

The Story of Us — Lynn Blair

Cathy Bryant Poetry Report

The Adult Category

When I judge a writing competition, I usually read the entries three times each. The poems entered for this competition, however, were of such a high standard that I read them for pleasure as well as for judging purposes, and I devoured them a total of six times each, in the end.

Every time I read our winner, ‘We are sleeping (for my daughter)’, I was bowled over by it. It really is a perfect match of form and content, as the two-line stanzas are ideal for a poem about two such close people, and the use of enjambment, the lines and stanzas flowing into each other, emphasises the connection. The words and images range from the physical experiences we can identify with: ‘…her fingers reach/to the nape of my neck, in a flex of possession’ (I remember my sister’s twins doing that to me, one on each side!) to the surprising yet appropriate metaphors: ‘…a sleeping buttress solid and fed and rooting…Her palm the counterfort at my face’. There are so many quotable lines: ‘…and always her mouth an o, knowing her body, my body’s // echo’. I hope that this poem becomes well-known – it deserves to.

‘Urchin’ is a beautifully-constructed poem, and terribly sad. The protagonist has suffered domestic abuse and is taking her baby to commit suicide. Yet this isn’t a bleak poem, somehow — the wonderful sea images are exquisite: ‘glimpsed worlds in the/full hollow of her stiff skirts’, and the joining of the drowning pair — ‘…together in the/bluegreen of the gull cry’ is a triumph — though the reader longs to save them. Not a wasted word here.

‘Vanishing Twin’ is another sad poem, but again the form and content are so perfect that it’s uplifting to read. The mirror structure is ideal for the theme, that of a twin who vanishes in early pregnancy, between one ultrasound scan and the next. The imagery made me say out loud the rather inelegant word, “Wowser!” — ‘we two, alabaster cosmonauts/ sleeping naked in crimson cloaks,/two pistols in a presentation box’. The poem as a whole has an excellent idea, very well-worked and with some fine images.

‘Gem’ is an example of less being more. In just twelve short lines, we experience the ‘fug of labour’ amid the ‘mass of hands’, and are given the original image of the baby daughter as ‘…my miner/who tap, tap, taps/at my resources’. Tight, vivid and with a cracking ending, I enjoyed this enormously.

‘Time Stands Still’ is a charming poem from the point of view of a grandmother, with a baby grandson in the first stanza and his elder brother in the second. The images of the ‘…small animal,/heart to heart, rapid beat to my sluggish rhythms’ and lying in grass ‘…gently combed by an autumn breeze,/frogs croaking in the shimmering algae on the pond,’ are evocative and delightful. Another poem with a strong ending, too.

‘Birthday Parties’ paints a vivid picture of a girl and her brother having a difficult childhood. The mother is never mentioned, and her absence is painful to the reader. The descriptions are marvellous, whether of the cake with plastic figures of the Beatles ‘…because granddad works/ at Oddie’s Bakery and they must have/thousands of them leftover from the sixties.’ or the girl accidentally injuring her brother while playing Twister: ‘…it turns out he has/a twisted testicle. I believe this is why dad left home’. The reader feels immense sympathy for the girl and her brother, though there’s not a word of self-pity in the poem — if it’s autobiographical, however, then I’d very much like to give the poet a hug.

In ‘South Crofty Mine, 1948’, the narrator looks at a photo of his/her mother outside a mine, years before the narrator was born. The not-yet-mother, ‘restless to be wed’, is contrasted with the child-to-come’s world of great drifts of bluebells and hyacinths, and a world ‘…as warm and safe as milk’ in which s/he ‘…shuffled on my bottom like a crab’. We move to the present day, with everyone ageing and the mine closed, but the photo has survived. This poem achieves an awful lot and keeps to the theme really well.

‘Mirrored’ has great use of form (a villanelle) and metre, as it explores a woman looking into the mirror and seeing her mother’s face there. I particularly liked the different shades of meaning that attach to the repeated lines — for example, ‘Reflection takes me to a different place’ is used both of the reflection in the mirror and of mental reflection and contemplation. A thoughtful, clever poem.

What a rare joy it is to see understatement used as it is in ‘Ward 3D’. This is also an example of ‘showing not telling’, too, and all the more powerful for that. We are never told that the child had a difficult relationship with his/her parent, that the parent is dying or that the child (now grown up) is struggling to say, ‘I love you’, but it’s all there. The ‘tiny words… …tissue-thin and chalk for bones’ may be whispered — and the pain and fragility of difficult family relationships is beautifully conveyed.

‘to see you now’ is very nearly a prose poem, and again it matches form and subject — the flowing language matches the fractured wandering of the mother’s mind and the changing relationship between her and her daughter. The vivid descriptions ‘don’t fuss, you’d say, not that you would’, ‘now, you point/the tv remote towards the radio’ paint a vivid portrait of two people and the cruelty of dementia.

‘with Alice, aged 4’ is another example of less being more. This unpretentious short poem plays with language as if with bath-bubbles: ‘dip-scented, warm-bath froth’ and ‘soft skin-on-skin’. Warm and loving — even if there is a hint of changes to come in the last line. Another fine poem.

‘Lullabies’ partly belies its comforting title to bring us the thoughts of a grandmother cuddling her grandchild, and remembering being a mother in a Glasgow tenement. She remembers the radio phone-ins: ‘They’re missing their Da./He’s away – wee bit of trouble/with the police’ and this is contrasted with the loving intimacy of parenthood: ‘Sparks of love flame our den’. This is another poem that keeps well to the theme, telling a story of love through difficulty, and doing so with power and tenderness.

What a title — ‘Chuckle Chutney’! It’s ideal for this romp down memory lane, replete with the fruit scrumped ‘…from Nan’s full-lunged trees’. Reading about the apples, plums and greengages actually made me hungry! What is left is made into chutney: ‘…enough summer spice and colour/to warm us through the winters’. Indeed!

I was glad that I’d experienced looking after babies at night, to appreciate the poem ‘Night Nursing’, in which ‘…miraculous mother powers/match plug and socket’. The darkness of this is explored with love and imagination: ‘Darkness is where we consent/to the drawbridge lying flat’. The leaking and staining qualities of milk are again used as metaphors, too, and there isn’t a cliché in sight.

‘She is Autumn’ is a beautiful and rather mystical poem that makes no apology for its strong emotions and images. A mother describes her ‘Goddess child’ – ‘The one with hair the colour of leaves on the dawn of winter’. This is a poem like a painting, rich and evocative: ‘She is Autumn – fire and hush.’ Wonderful!

‘The Story of Us’ has a terrific opening: ‘The path between your wrinkles was never too narrow/for fairy tales’. The fairy tale motif is used throughout the poem in which a ‘princess’ loves, and then loses, her grandfather. This works very well when contrasted with prosaic details: the castle is ‘destroyed by the dragon’ when the old man dies, and the bereaved granddaughter ‘…cried openly into your freshly-ironed shirt’.

‘Mother Moon’ starts with an image of mother as moon to her planet child: ‘When you were born,/I started spinning,/And all these years later/I haven’t stopped’. The poem then explores the pulls and orbits and changes in the planet and moon relationship, and does so with originality and love. It’s charmingly done and lovely to read and reread.

‘Beholden’ is a glorious mess of the gritty realism of parenting: ‘All day he’s had a yoghurt propelling snotty nose’, and ‘the fatigued and frazzled baby-Father fights’. Yet love comes through too, and rhyme is used as we look at the child with images just as powerful: ‘his chimp-like rump/his bitty belly, portly and plump’. A strong poem about not taking parenthood for granted — and I love the shades of Sylvia Plath in, ‘…like gobbling down a podgy gold watch’!

Another poem called ‘The Story of Us’ has dragons and fairy tales again, but avoids cliché with strong and original images: ‘…these fire cracker/kids, the wildest of animals here’, and being shipwrecked ‘…in strange territory with tea/and biscuits, sweeties and juice’. This exuberant adventure in parenting deserves a happy ending!

‘Inbetweeny’ is in the form of a conversation between a menopausal mother and an adolescent son: ‘Strange thing, gingery and tall/who never comes down when I call’ is answered later on by, ‘Years passed by and hormones flowed,/your tiny tadpole became a toad’. The rhyme is fun, the repeated refrain ‘whence came you/what changed you?’ effective and just for even more fun, it ends with a clever and charming anagram.

‘Blank Page’ shows us the baby arriving ‘sweet but empty’ and being gradually filled by experience. The mother’s love for her ‘…red crumpled bundle/with doll’s toes’ is palpable: ‘For a while I shone/with such want/I hugged it’. It’s beautiful and very tender, and ends with the gentle acceptance of change.

‘Slow Movement’ has the original idea of describing a relationship using musical terms. This took me back to my piano and flute lessons — and the poor, patient teachers wincing at my cacophony! I loved this take on love — and the last line is full of warmth and joy.

‘Us’ is the moving tale of a mother’s bond with her child, including the awful moment of near miscarriage. The poem shows love and the mother’s bond flowing through time and beyond time, and the eternal nature of it. The contrast between fear at the rim of the toilet bowl and the mystical, ‘We have never not been’ is very effective.

‘No Room to be Ill’ is a wonderfully honest poem, showing the misery of feeling ill when trying to care for children. I loved the realism of it: ‘“Mummy?” says a little panic-stricken voice./Big sigh from me…’ But the realisation about a future that will have too much time in it for illness helps the mother to find perspective.

It was a privilege and an honour to read all the poems submitted.

Children’s Category

Anyone who spends time with children knows that as soon as they start to speak, they start to be creative with language. So perhaps it shouldn’t come as such a surprise that our winner is just three years old! ‘Me and my brother’ is full of honesty and invention. ‘My brother is a nasty beast/His claws are much too soft’ is the surprising opening, and the rest of the poem explores the contradictions of sibling relationships until the exuberance of the final line, in which we are told that the brother is: ‘…everything more and everything long and everything brothery’ — well, that tells us, doesn’t it?!

There were two poems called ‘My Lovely Family’. One, by a 14-year-old, is very well-structured and very tender, and the concise ending ‘Thank you and bye’ is a lesson in brevity that many adult poets would do well to learn. The sound of the words, particularly the use of vowels, is lovely too — cry, equally, me, die, too.

The other commended poem called ‘My Lovely Family’ is both tender and sad, asking the reader to ‘…please remember us all’. Love and loss are shown in evocative lines such as, ‘…we wish you could come back to us and never die’. This is a poet of sensitivity, who shows emotions very well.

I’m guessing that ‘Emily Butterfly’ and ‘The Family of Me’ were written by sisters, as one mentions her sister Surya and one says ‘I Surya’. These are vivid and delightful descriptions of a loving and vibrant family life. Emily is particularly good at noticing emotions and people’s characteristics: ‘Surya/is kind to me./And I also like Daddy he is funny.’ Surya tells us what each member of the family loves and then adds, ‘We love each other’. These are lovely family portraits, and I hope they will be treasured.

All in all the children have proved that they have just as much to say in a variety of ways as the adults have, and well done to them all.

Milli Hill Prose Report

As a writer I am acutely aware of the painful process, not just of writing, but of then taking that carefully crafted arrangement of words and putting it out into the world. This takes courage, and like all art-sharing, the experience leaves you exposed and vulnerable.

Judging this competition was therefore a difficult process for me — in particular I struggled to make a ‘no’ pile — as I could see something beautiful in every entry! Each one moved me in some way, had some little turn of phrase that captured my imagination, or simply impressed me with its rawness or honesty.

Nevertheless this was a competition and I simply had to pick some winners!

I have chosen The First Winter to be the winning piece of prose. It has an easy, well-crafted rhythm that took me on a journey, at first to familiar places that made me smile and reminisce about the early days of mothering my own first-born. But just as I relaxed into the tale, the writer jolted me so hard I gasped out loud. I found it riveting, and — although I have never found myself in the writer’s terrifying position — I could empathise so well with the dreadful anxiety that motherhood so often brings. I also liked the subtly implied idea that some episodes of our lives are like being underwater and holding our breath. The writer tied this idea in with seasonal references to bring another atmospheric layer. Overall, the effect was a very clear and simply told story that belied the writer’s efforts to create something with beauty and a deeper meaning. I enjoyed it very much.

I have chosen to award ‘Commendations’ to fifteen further pieces of prose.

I would like to give a special mention to Birth Stories – those of you who know of my work as a birth writer and activist will understand why this story in particular drew me in. It’s a truly excellent piece of writing and is brutally honest about the emotional experience of a traumatic birth. The writer takes us with her as she struggles to make sense of what has happened, and the last four paragraphs I found especially well-crafted and moving. Anybody who has ever trotted out the cliché, “All that matters is a healthy baby” should be made to read this work.

Bernadette is a great piece of writing, like a carefully made fishing net, imbued with the sights, sounds and smells of the sea. The woman of the title leaps to life from the first sentence, and it takes great skill to paint such a vivid scene in such a short word count. It was also good to read a story of motherhood in which the love of the child plays a supporting rather than a central role.

A Nepalese Adventure takes us to another world entirely, and is an inspiring story of adventurous travels with small children that made me want to broaden my own horizons. It was lovely to read of a mother’s love for her children as she considers her place in the world, against the pure and uncluttered backdrop of the Himalayas.

Co-operative Shopping offers no easy explanation for itself and I liked this quality very much. Is the person they describe autistic, or simply a difficult child, or something else? It is not revealed, but the quick, flicking prose seems to inhabit a place in between the mother’s voice and the stream of consciousness of Ruari as they navigate the everyday complexity of the grocery shop: a fascinating read.

Spinning Straw is a very heartwarming tale and of course reminded me immediately of putting my own children to bed and how I similarly feel so very tired and yet find the experience so incredibly precious. We must not wish these times away, I found myself thinking!

Home from the Sea traces beautifully the notion of roots, and adds in the poetic image of wings too as the writer celebrates her own small child against the backdrop of her seaside house. I liked very much the way the writer gathers together the threads of past, present and future with wonderfully evocative and rich imagery.

Life Cycle: The Circle of Us has a real confidence: the kind of writing that can seem ‘effortless’ but that can take an hour a sentence — well certainly for me anyway! I found it very poetic and I loved the links and connections that looped cleverly between the imagery.

The Story of Us (When people ask…) took me to a different place — the simple history of how our parents and grandparents met, which always, as the writer points out, highlights the randomness of our existence. This piece of writing is a lovely reflection on blood lines and the impact of the tiny details of our ancestry on our bodies and minds.

A Journey to Love won me over with its brutal honesty: this is not an idealised portrait of motherhood but somehow its realism ended in tenderness and reminded me very much of the ‘bad days’ we surely all have as mothers where, in spite of everything, our last thoughts as we fall asleep are still filled with love for our children and a resolution to do better tomorrow.

I liked the way The Story of Us (It started with you…) jumps from the writer’s day to moments of her children’s births as she reminisces on the pivotal points in the growth of her family. Some lovely writing — quite broad and rightly confident brush strokes in places painting a touching and life-like picture.

The Love of Five Dolls is a story of a mother’s love and loss, sewed carefully into the stitches of the dolls she crafts for her children. It left me feeling terribly bereft, as undoubtedly the writer herself must be. A moving story that, like the winner ‘The First Winter’, and indeed like every entry, takes the reader into the fragile world of motherhood, a place filled with infinite love and agonizing vulnerability.

Our Dancing Hearts painted a lovely picture of a day out with children: I liked the way the writer portrayed how the excited presence of children can transform a simple errand — in this case to buy ballet shoes — into a grand event.  The twist at the end was touching and sad, and revealed a pressure all mothers of siblings surely feel, regardless of their qualities or inequalities.

My First Born transported me at once to the difficult transition from one baby to two. I felt keenly the pain of the writer as she explored with honesty the tug between the first little child who is so very loved and the delicious newborn who demands so much of us. How can we ever find that elusive ‘balance’?

I Whisper His Name switches narrative between serenely pregnant mother and rather more anxious father in a way that is quite touching. I liked how the writer portrays the way that pregnancy and parenthood can divide the sexes, but also shows how the love for a newborn can transcend this. The Story of Us (Once upon a time…) also brings a father’s perspective to the journey of mothering and parenting, and it was good to hear so much praise for the comfort and stability that a man can bring to the ups and downs of conception, birth and motherhood. As the writer puts it, dads are also, “on the roller-coaster, just in a different seat.”

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Writing Prize update and other news

It seems to have been a very long time since I managed to write a post for this blog, but as most of you probably know I’ve been very, very busy! The busyness has been very positive though – some of it has been to do with the Writing Prize, and some of it has been to do with the new website (I hope it looks sufficiently stylish?!) and of course some of the busyness has been to do with the next book we’re publishing: The Forgotten and the Fantastical.

With regard to the 2014 Writing Prize I’m delighted to be able to say that after much deliberation, the two judges, Cathy Bryant and Milli Hill, have made their final choices. The winners will be announced next week, right here on this blog. If all goes to plan, Wednesday 4th March will be the day of the big reveal…

Although of course I can’t say much about the winning and commended pieces, I CAN say that we had an increased number of entries compared with last year – in particular, there was a huge amount more prose sent in. The quality of the writing was simply outstanding, with both judges being in turn humbled, moved and delighted by the poetry and prose on offer. They had to make some really tough decisions, and I certainly didn’t envy them their difficult task. The good news is that because we had an even greater number of entries this year the judges were able to select even more commended pieces. So I’m already looking forward to putting the book together and getting it published this September! In other news, our new book-to-be The Forgotten and the Fantastical is ready to be pre-ordered. If you’d like to get £2 off the RRP of £8.99, then why not pop along to the store and get it today? Pre-orders really, really help us. They give me a better idea of how many books to print, meaning there is less money trapped in unsold books. Mother’s Milk Books only just about keeps afloat through our sales (and of course the work of all us volunteers!) so if you want to support us, please do consider pre-ordering a book, making a donation, or buying a stack of greetings cards… We’re going to have a big old sale next week (2nd – 8th March) so it’ll be a great time to buy a ‘something’ in time for Mothering Sunday.

Lastly… if you’re about in Nottingham on World Storytelling Day (that’s the 20th March), please do consider coming along to the launch of The Forgotten and the Fantastical. There will be storytelling, drinks, and lots and lots of fairy cakes! The launch will take place at the Nottingham Writers’ Studio (of which I’m a member) and it’ll start at 7 p.m. It’s free to enter, and anyone interested in stories (or cake!) is very welcome to attend. And p.s. we’re also open to submissions for our follow-up to The Forgotten and the Fantastical. Details can be found here.

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Photos of poetry in action, and a new book

Although I wasn’t able to make it to Cathy and Angela’s poetry readings at 8th Day Coop in Manchester last month it looks (and sounds!) to have been a great event, with an appreciative audience (and they were particularly happy to buy Cathy’s new book Look At All The Women. This is good news for me as a publisher!). And just a reminder, you can still get Cathy’s book, and Angela’s wonderful collection of poems Letting Go at a discounted price in our store at the moment. I thought I’d share some photos of the event, hopefully encouraging anyone who’d like to perform their poetry, to give it a go! Sarah Miller and Rosie Garland were also there, giving fine performances, so thank you to all who attended and made it a night to remember.

Angela Topping
Cathy Bryant

And another couple of lovely photos to share: the cover of our new book, and a box of the new books hot off the press!

It’s not too late to get £2 off the discounted price by pre-ordering from our store. The Writing Prize Anthology is officially published this Tuesday (30th September), so it’ll be shipped out to those organized folk who have managed to pre-order. And every copy of the book bought pays for one entry ‘fee’ to the 2014 Mother’s Milk Books Writing Prize. Bargain! Go on, why not write your own ‘Story of Us’ and send it to me. It’ll make me very happy.

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Writing Prize & YouTube video goes live!

It’s official! The 2014 Mother’s Milk Books Writing Prize is now open and accepting entries. For more details about the prizes, who the judges are and how to enter please click here.

Also… as I’m writing this post, two of my authors, the wonderful Angela Topping and Cathy Bryant, are getting ready for their poetry gig at 8th Day in Manchester tonight. They will be joined by the poets Rosie Garland and Sarah Miller. Due to family reasons I can’t be there unfortunately, but hopefully this video of Cathy reading her poem ‘Look At All The Women’ will be *almost* as good as being there in person! Please do have a watch and share it if you enjoy it.

‘Look At All The Women’ by Cathy Bryant

Wonderful reviews for Look At All The Women keep popping up. The reviewer in the summer issue of Mslexia thought it “wickedly funny” and Zion Lights – writer, journalist, mama – recently wrote on Twitter that she was “Blown away by Cathy Bryant’s poetry in Look At All The Women“. Stephanie Siviter, who won a copy of Cathy’s book in the Story of Mum Twitter party giveaway, commented: “Delighted to win a copy. Shed tears reading it & laughed too.” She also added that “it has inspired me to start writing poetry again. A woman definitely to aspire to.”

I don’t think you can ask much more from a poetry collection can you?!

If you’d like to get inspired by Cathy or Angela’s poetry collections why not pop on over to The Mother’s Milk Bookshop and buy yourself a book or two – they’re NOW ON SALE! Every purchase made provides the buyer with one paid entry ‘fee’ to our Writing Prize…. I hope that that is inspiration enough to GET WRITING and GET ENTERING!

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Latest news and dates for your diary

Things may seem quiet around here, but actually I’m busier than usual. I’ve been putting together not one, not two, not three but FOUR contracts (and unusually this isn’t for just 4 authors but 5. Hmm… intrigued? Hopefully you will be!). More about the contracts and authors another time, when everything has been signed, sealed and delivered.

In other news I’m putting together the first ever Mother’s Milk Books Writing Prize Anthology. It should, fingers-crossed, be out mid-September, and I’ve also been looking ahead to the start of the next Writing Prize (beginning 28th August, to coincide with Cathy & Angela’s upcoming poetry performance). I’ve been in discussion with the wonderful judges and putting together flyers and adverts. I’m delighted to be able to announce that Cathy Bryant is going to be the sole adjudicator of the poetry category and Milli Hill is going to be judging the prose category. Many thanks to Cathy and Milli for taking on these tasks.

So come on wonderful writers, I dare you to make their job good and challenging by sending in some fab poems and prose pieces on the theme “The Story of Us”. Intrigued…? Details will be online in another week or two.

The Mother’s Milk Books authors (and past and present judges Angela Topping and Cathy Bryant) are also extra, extra busy as they are going to be performing some of their poems from Letting Go and Look At All The Women at the 8th Day Café in Manchester on 28th August 7 – 9.30 p.m. Rosie Garland and Sarah Miller will be joining them to make it a really fab (& feminine) event.

If Manchester’s just that bit too far, why not buy Look At All The Women and see if, unlike the reviewer at WriteOutLoud, you can read it and avoid getting sunburnt! Lowdham’s The Bookcase is the latest independent bookshop to stock our growing list of books (along with The Melton Bookshop in Melton Mowbray and Five Leaves Bookshop in Nottingham) so if you’re local to Lowdham, or passing through, you can always buy a copy of one of our books there.

Lastly… the ever-enthusiastic and energetic Pippa at Story of Mum is hosting a Twitter Party Make Date on 13th August from 8.30 – 10 p.m. UK time. Party-goers will be sharing where their eyes have lingered and celebrating what they see (both the bad and the good) in their day-to-day lives. One lucky party guest will be winning themselves some neat goodies – a paperback copy of Look At All The Women being one of them.

Enjoy the rest of August, and when I come out from under my mountain (well, okay, small pile) of contracts I’ll be blogging more about the anthology and the Writing Prize. Yay!