Category: Writing Prize

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

I’m delighted to be able to share this interview on the blog – Helen’s answers make for an interesting, and very inspiring read.

1. Can you tell us a bit about yourself?

Mama of three lovely home schooled children, (8, 4 and 18 months), I’m a writer, knitter, bookbinder and maker of things. We live just outside of Paris, France, with my French husband. I’ve studied literature, drama and art therapy in my time before devoting myself full time to mothering. It turned out to be a wild ride of a journey which led me to discovering much about myself as I met other mothers and made many important choices about what kind of mama I wanted to be (natural weaning, co-sleeping, carrying).

We spend our days outside a lot, listening to the birdsong, building stuff, dancing, singing and learning about whatever interests us on any given day. I try to live in the present moment as much as possible and share these brief days of my children’s childhood with them fully.

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

I don’t really remember not writing. I always liked to scribble down stories as a child and I remember having great writing projects with my best friend in my early teens. I think I’ve always had a compulsion to tell stories, to reinterpret my world through words.

Since becoming a mum I’ve been keeping a journal. Originally this was to notice things about being with my daughter and to work through the many difficult decisions that come with parenting. It’s become a keystone of my mindfulness practice, helping me to notice the exceptional and the precious in the everyday and the normal.

3. How often do you write?

Haha! I wish I could give a precise answer to this but with three kids at home all day and all our homeschooling activities my writing schedule is very erratic. I do keep a little notebook and pen with me all the time these days and jot down poems and thoughts when they come to me if at all possible. I also recite poems to myself in my head if I can’t get to pen and paper, like when I’m nursing our little one to sleep, in order not to lose them. I write something every day, from a scribbled note in my journal to a full blown poem or piece of prose.

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

I saw the competition advertised in Juno magazine and I thought wow, what a great name for a publisher, I’m sure they must work on things that would interest me and I do have a lot of writing, poems and prose about mothering, so why not. After checking out the website I was sure this was the right place for my writing.

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

I was really pleased. I believe I may have been seen jumping up and down very excitedly in our kitchen. It’s been very motivating to keep on writing and made me begin to think about how to take my work further. I’ve had a lot of ideas and projects simmering away in the background for a long time now while I’ve been busy growing babies and taking care of them and it feels that the time is now right for me to take some time for myself and let my writing projects develop.

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

The ‘A Train’ is a poem I originally wrote about my oldest daughter Maya. I loved carrying her and dancing or walking her to sleep. I would sing to her a lot, jazz songs and lullabies and pop too. I revisited the poem as I’ve had two more babies and I thought even more about how important carrying is to them and wanted to record my sweet memories of that and also of being pregnant. I loved my stretched belly so full of baby and how the sling and the wrap made me feel still so attached to my little ones. The title is in reference to the wonderful jazz standard by Billy Strayhorn. I love the Ella Fitzgerald version, it has a beautiful lilting rhythm.

It’s a free form poem, I don’t often write in a set poetic form. I like to write the words down as I would speak them, trying to make the rhythm and breathing come through the shape of the poem.

7. Any future writing plans?

I have a host of poems that I’m working on, I’d love to get more of them out there. I’d also really like to finish the novel I began which is three quarters of the way there. I’d also like to work on factual prose pieces about parenting and creativity. I have some crazier projects like a sound, poetry and art installation about babies which I’ve been dreaming up for a couple of years. As a knitter, sewer and bookbinder, I’d also like to work on making some of my own books and artwork. Oh and of course, my children are waiting for me to make into books some of the stories I’ve made up for them!

8. Any tips for writers?

Write. If you’re a writer you’ll never feel whole if you don’t. And I suppose don’t be afraid to try, to let someone else read your work. Your personal voice is just as important and interesting as any one else’s, the world needs our stories.

Helen’s winning poem ‘The A Train’ will first be published in the summer issue of Juno (out June 2014) and then in the 2013 Mother’s Milk Books Writing Prize Anthology which is to be published this September.

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Poetry on Mothering Sunday

It seems appropriate to share these two lovely poems today – the winning poem and the commended poem from The Mother’s Milk Books Writing Prize children’s poetry category. Congratulations again to the two young winners and I hope they inspire more children to get writing!

Winning poem:

My Family

My dad is at work
He works really hard
But when he comes home I’m ever so glad
’cause he helps me even when I’m sad!

My mum is the best
much better than the rest
I don’t know how she does it
but we love her so oh yes we do
my mum is the best!

My littlest sister
I always love to play and share with her
she is always smiling and cheery too
I love my sister, the lovely sister I have.

My other little sister
oh sister you’re just like a monkey and great the way you are
you’re lots of fun and I love to play and run with you
and I will always too.

There is nothing I could want more
than my loving funny, cheery, cuddly, kind and brilliant family
I love you all!

JORDAN CLARKE (aged 13)


*

Commended poem:

Breastfeeding

Breastfeeding is what breasts are for
And breastfeeding is perfect
That’s why we do breastfeeding

LANORA CLARKE (aged 3)

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

I love a good story – of course! – and some of the most interesting ones are about writers. So I thought it would be a good idea to interview the winners of the Mother’s Milk Books Writing Prize with a view to learning more about them and also to (hopefully) encourage more of you wonderfully creative folk to enter this year’s competition (to be launched September of this year). First we will hear from Barbara Higham, the winner of the prose category.

1. Can you tell us a bit about yourself?

I’m a dreamer who is approaching 50, dwelling on those hands of time. A mother of three: Felix (almost 16), Edgar (12) and Amelia (8). I am managing editor of Breastfeeding Today magazine for La Leche League International and have worked in LLL publications since becoming a Leader in 2004. I work in a school part time with a child on the autistic spectrum and have just begun a job in a nursery and pre-school one day a week. Before I had children, I read German language and literature at Manchester uni, then worked as a librarian, qualified as a solicitor, sold children’s books in the world’s biggest bookshop and worked in legal publishing.

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

As a young child in notebooks. I liked writing stories and poems. Then diaries and letters.

3. How often do you write?

I correspond with friends by email daily. I’ve written a few articles in magazines and a few stories that I haven’t shared with anybody.

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

Teika suggested it. I had just received a rejection from a magazine to which I’d sent ‘Dusty Bluebells’ and didn’t have time to write anything else.

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

Flabbergasted and thrilled. A real lift.

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

I think the piece speaks for itself.

7. Any future writing plans?

I enjoy writing but am not at all sure anyone else might want to read what I’d write.

8. Any tips for writers?

I wouldn’t have the audacity!

Barbara’s winning piece ‘Going Back or Dusty Bluebells’ will first be published in the summer issue of Juno (out June 2014) and then in the 2013 Mother’s Milk Books Writing Prize Anthology which is to be published this September.

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Results of the 2013 Mother’s Milk Books Writing Prize

I am delighted to be able to announce the results of the inaugural Mother’s Milk Books Writing Prize. Thank you to all those who entered and supported our very first competition – I’ve appreciated every single entry and am pretty impressed by the amount of fantastic writers there are out there. And I already can’t wait for the 2014 prize to begin!

Please note: first publication of the winning poem and an extract of the winning prose piece will be in the summer issue of the fantastic magazine Juno (out June 2014). We also aim to publish an anthology of the winning and commended poems and prose pieces this autumn. Please look out for it!

Poetry Category (adult)

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

THE WINNER:

Left to right like the A-train – Helen Goldsmith

THE COMMENDEDS:

Accident – Jan Dean

Blue Bonsai – Sarah James

Caleb Hollow’s Room – Cathy Bryant

Road Trip: Kennack Sands, 1950s – Abigail Wyatt

Troubled Mother – Kimberly Jamison

Babushkas – Julia Prescott

Intergalactic Love – Alison Parkes

The Ballet Lesson – Alison Parkes

Cutting Strings – Sharon Larkin

Lucky Lucy, Lucky Last – Rachel McGladdery

Making Tea for One – Susan Cooper

Dyad (We slowly learn the dance) – Alison Bond McNally

This Work – Stephanie Arsoska

Poetry Category (Children)

THE WINNER:

My family – Jordan Clarke (aged 13)

COMMENDED:

Breastfeeding – Lanora Clarke (aged 3)

Prose Category

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

THE WINNER:

Going Back or Dusky Bluebells – Barbara Higham

COMMENDEDS:

And She Sucks – Lindsey Watkins

The Mothering Ocean – Anna Burbidge

Mother Tells Me a Meaningful Story – Cathy Bryant

When you are tired, I carry you – Helen Goldsmith

Intimacy – Helen Lloyd

Milestones – Clare Cooper

Night Flower – Alison Jones

Mother of five – Dawn Clarke

Angela Topping poetry report

This competition was a real pleasure to judge: so many good poems were submitted. I spent a few afternoons by the fire reading the entries, and sorting them into piles, attaching sticky notes and re-reading. It took me a while to reach my verdict but in the end after much reading aloud and leaving things for a few days to see what stayed with me, I went for one which had jumped out at me in the first instance. ‘Left to right like the A-train’ has excellent imagery, wonderful rocking rhythm and a beautiful structure. Its warm tone and universal appeal really struck me. It is a very worthy winner.

I was thankful that Teika had asked me to select the best runners up for a pamphlet, because there were so many other striking pieces covering different aspects of parenthood. ‘Cutting Strings’ is an original take on the sorrow felt when a child leaves home, using the symbolism of destroying an old sofa. ‘Accident’ is a tight thin poem which expresses the shock of a dreadful accident happening to one’s grown up child. The lexical choices are startling and the mother’s ache of the memory of him as a baby, ‘sleeping like a Y’. ‘Caleb Hollow’s Room’ is a spare poem written in the uncaring tone of officials stating that the dead child’s room should be dismantled. It’s a heartbreaking and understated take on the cruelty of The Bedroom Tax.

‘Intergalactic Love’ I liked for its unusual approach to the theme, reaching across the stars for any other mothers who might be doing the same peaceful moonlit breastfeeding as the speaker. The tender tone is achieved by soft words and open vowel sounds. ‘The Ballet Lesson’, too, catches a moment between mother and child and the desire to remember it. The description of the child is touching without being sentimental: ‘the wavy parting of her hair/ the wispy plaits’. ‘Blue Bonsai’ is mysterious and a rich approach to expressing a child’s wonder. Again, the language is spare and restrained, leaving space for the reader to pick up on the visual clues.

‘Road Trip: Kennack Sands, Late 1950s’ is a breathless and wonderful rush of memory with great sense of detail and fun, a feast for the senses and gorgeous language. I thought the imagery of ‘Babushkas’ very apt for the subject of passing parenthood down the generations. ‘Dyad (We slowly learn the dance that soothes all woes)’ is a strong, compact poem, a beautifully turned formal sonnet which celebrates the beauty of breastfeeding with soothing rhymes and gentle iambics. ‘Making Tea for One’ is another formal poem in which the rhyme works very well and seems natural. It’s a sad topic which rang true for me, of a daughter wishing her mother could be there still to drink tea with her as they used to do.

‘Lucky Lucy, Lucky Last’ also struck a chord, as I was the last child in my family too. It was the descriptions of the child that tipped this poem into a commended, and the lovely sensory words like ‘dandle’ and ‘toddle’ and ‘dowel’. The speaker worries about the challenges the child will face after this phase is left behind, and ‘Troubled Mother’ addresses that anxiety beautifully. The rhyme words act as a comfort as the speaker tells the mother not to worry, pointing out all the good things about the son, and the wisdom of allowing him to make his own mistakes, trusting in the upbringing he has had.

And finally, ‘This Work’ encompasses the whole of parenthood. I liked its structure with the repeated opening to each stanza and the progression from the negative aspects to the positive. It is fantastic to know what a fruitful subject parenthood can be and also to read so many beautiful poems which include breastfeeding and all its joys.

The children’s winner is ‘My Family’ for its sense of fun and the way each family member is characterised. I like the way parts of it rhyme but the poet has not forced a pattern on the poem as a whole, but just let them occur where they fall. ‘Breastfeeding’ was a commended because it was good to see a young child enter and with such a concise celebration of breastfeeding.

Susan Last prose report

Winner – Going Back or Dusky Bluebells

I’ve chosen this for several reasons – one of which, I confess, is a ‘Going Back’ moment of my own. My parents had a copy of Iona and Peter Opie’s Lore and Language of Schoolchildren on their bookshelves when I was a child, and once I discovered it I devoured it greedily, dipping in and out of the rhymes and songs and comparing them with our own playground ditties. This piece brought back those days, sat cross-legged in front of the bookshelf in our spare room, and made me smile at that recollection. I enjoyed the way this piece reminded me of the brief, joyful and magical moments that come and go throughout our lives, and the importance of being ‘in the moment’ to appreciate them. I’ve resolved not to rush my own children out of the bath too quickly so that they can enjoy the delights of sliding up and down very fast! I thought the piece was well-structured too, with easy movement between the author’s personal experience and the more factual information, and the well-drawn images of childhood (skipping, bathtime, bedtime reading) perfectly illustrated what the author means when she describes our awareness of our own past childhood as our children grow.

Commendeds – in no particular order

And She Sucks: I loved this breastfeeding story – there were so many telling details in it that spoke to me about what a unique relationship it is. The ‘spidery little hand exploring’ made me smile in recognition, and the image of the mother breastfeeding while out on a hike when her partner was carrying the baby made me chuckle out loud! The rhythm of this piece was very well-crafted and the repetition of the core phrase never became clunky.

The Mothering Ocean: I enjoyed the image at the heart of this piece, of mothering as like ocean tide rolling in and out and bringing gradual change; I’ve personally been very aware of this as my small children have grown up and I now no longer have a baby in the house. I thought that this was an interesting lens to examine parenting through and that the piece was very successful.

Mother Tells Me a Meaningful Story: This piece was special because it was a parenting piece written by a non-parent, which reminded me that of course we all have our own experiences of parenting whether we have children of our own or not. The way in which the author describes her evolving relationship with her downtrodden mother is very touching.

When you are tired, I carry you: This brought a tear to my eye because it brought back such clear memories of carrying my first child around in the sling – I carried all my children and this author captured all that I felt about it in a really beautiful way. I found the descriptions evocative, and the emotion very genuine and tender. Lovely!

Intimacy: This piece is a beautiful depiction of the incredible closeness that exists between a mother and her child; the author manages to put into words a feeling that many of us have, but few can articulate so clearly. I loved the vocabulary and imagery of this piece too and the bittersweet feeling that such an intense intimacy can only ever be a passing phase as the child grows.

Milestones: I liked the idea at the centre of this piece, of examining the milestones of parenthood alongside those of the growing child – it expands on the idea that when a child is born, so is a mother – which is a concept that I personally have found important in my own parenting journey. I enjoyed being invited to reflect on how motherhood has changed me, and reading the author’s own experience.

Night Flower: This piece was absorbing and richly evocative; the author has tapped in to the magic of birth and used all the tools of our language to describe that most intense of moments in a really original piece of writing. (It was such a poetic piece I half-wondered if it ought to be in the poetry category!)

Mother of Five: I thought the central image at the heart of this piece was a very strong one that worked extremely well as a way of describing the incredible depths of feeling motherhood brings; it was touching and heartfelt and makes a strong point about the different, yet very real, emotional bonds we have with all our children.

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Writing Prize, books and submissions

Thank you again to all those who entered the inaugural Mother’s Milk Books Writing Prize. It’s been great to collect (and have a sneaky read!) of all the great entries, and I’m probably just as keen as the entrants to hear who the winners will be! We will have to wait patiently though as the judges, Angela Topping and Susan Last read and read and read… and then make their final decisions. I’m certainly looking forward to it.

As well as receiving a cash prize and a year’s worth of Juno magazines, the winner of the poetry competition will receive a limited edition hand bound hardback of Letting Go by Angela Topping. This book has been hand bound with such care and attention to detail – it is simply beautiful – and I’m sure the winner will appreciate the beauty of the words within and the beauty of the book craft too.

If you’re not sure about your chances of winning (!) or perhaps didn’t get around to entering the writing prize this year there is another way to get hold of this lovely book… We now have 2 copies for sale in The Mother’s Milk Bookshop, so if you’re looking ahead to Mothers’ Day and want a special something this could well be it! (With the JANSALE code you can also get 20% off your entire basket too.) The sale ends 31st January though, so if you’d like to stock up on breastfeeding-friendly books, mothering/new baby or general greetings cards, or art/poetry prints now is a great time. (Susan Last’s book Breastfeeding: Stories to inspire and inform is also available in the store. The prose winner will get a signed copy of this fab book, but again, if you’re not too sure that’s going to be you, you can get hold of a copy here!)

Thank you again for all your support and if you’re just as keen as me to find out who the winners will be, WATCH THIS SPACE!

p.s. we are also now open for submissions, so do check out our guidelines if you think your writing may well suit our publishing interests.

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Happy 2014! and The Latest News

Our big news so far is that there are only 4 days to go until the Writing Prize comes to a close. We’ve received some great poetry and prose submissions so far but would always appreciate more! We also really need more contributions from children; this category is free to enter and any amount of lines on the theme of parenting (silly, funny, serious or sweet!) would be very welcome.

We also have our January sale now on, which means that you can get 20% off your shopping basket when you use the code JANSALE at The Mother’s Milk Bookshop (a good chance perhaps to get some early Mothers’ Day gifts in?).

We’re also now open to submissions, hooray! If you’re interested in submitting your work please do read the submissions guidelines carefully and email me if you have any queries.

Thank you so much for all the support and encouragement you’ve given me over the past year, and I wish you all a very healthy and happy 2014, with a good dollop of soul-enriching creativity thrown in!

Best wishes from Teika x