The Runners- up: 2026
The following were runners-up in the 2026 Competition:
Tracey Rosenberg: Trio
Melanie Branton: I've polished Mum's serving spoons
Joe Spivey: Big Lil
Chiwenete Onyekwelu: In Memoriam
Trio
Tracey Rosenberg
They meet on the beach on Sunday afternoons.
Marko does one-armed pushups and gripes about his girlfriend –
she goes clubbing and “accidentally” dances with her ex, that Russian suka.
Aleksandr paces along the water’s edge; the beach
is where he ponders the wind
and the greatness of the world.
Anton chases after his son, bright-eyed and quick
and pointing all around, asking why, why, why?
Why do birds stay up in the sky?
Why does Mummy have yellow hair?
Why do Russia want to bomb us dead?
A misfit trio in a factory town.
After school, it was out on the wrestling mats –
size up, shuffle, pounce and drop,
struggle, hold,
roll out, get up, start over.
The boy is just beginning to learn.
Watch the water, shoot the breeze about the boss and the gym
and the politicians, they're all corrupt, they're all the same.
Cellphone ring – Marko's girlfriend hates her ex
and she hates Russians and she just wants to dance
and these accusations are just not fair –
okay, okay, okay, I didn't mean it;
I'm still with the guys. I'll be home soon.
.....
The shelling never stops.
Life dwindles to a blanket, a bucket
of melting snow, explosions and hunger and fear.
Marko's girlfriend ditches her clubbing shoes,
trains to be a sniper.
Aleksandr burrows underground, huddles with others,
stares at concrete and tries to see water.
Marko drops hard. He yells, suka!
He grabs his buddy's arm, holds, struggles to roll out.
Anton trudges west, through rubble and bodies and broken glass,
his boy on his back pointing all around, asking
why do bombs in the air make the ground so loud?
Why did all the birds fly out of the sky?
Why didn’t Mummy get up?
Why, why, why?
I've polished Mum's serving spoons:
Melanie Branton
Big Lil
Joe Spivey
For Lillian Bilocca and The Headscarf Revolutionaries
They’ve put your face on the corner.
At night, you’re lit by the streetlights
and takeaway shop windows, leant on
by chaps stuffing their face with cheap chips,
taking turns being the lookout
while the other one pisses on your chin.
Then, by day you’re the meeting point
for the boys and girls who skip last period
for a sneaky smoke and a cheeky snog
before returning home,
and when they’re home, I wonder if they ask,
who’s that woman on the wall with the thing on her head
and all those ships behind her?
Then, if Dad sits them down
puts an arm around them and tells them
of the headscarfs and all the lives you saved,
the power of community and speaking your truth,
and how a small group of women changed the world.
Or if they push all that to the side
and demand,
why does your school jumper smell of fag ash?
Photo of mural near Kingston-on-Hull, England, of 'Big Lil' by Gerald England: Used under Creative Commons Licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/
In Memoriam
Chiwenete Onyekwelu
What we found in the infinite lush
is green. The clean bones of lime,
the lowered arm of birch. Grass calls
to dew in that same voice as my father
calls to me. I am teaching him
to walk again. I measure my pace
to guide his body disfigured by a stroke.
One foot at a time; one quivering step
before the next. The endpoint of a stroke
is to return the body to its earliest state.
I knew the man and now I must know
the boy: my father who, like an infant,
has lost control of his legs, his machinery
for speech. As we walk, he tells me to remember
him, by which he means I should keep
the lamp of his memory lit. Let the oil
of my own living reflect his tenderness
and the redwood of me, his warmth.
Dying at a quickened pace, he’s asked
of me the simplest things: to love others
as he’d done, to be the shoulder on which
friends and strangers could lean;
to give, as he did, yams and corn
to our old neighbour crippled
from war; and to tend his sheep,
making sure they were fed and kept
away from cold. Some days I starve. But if even
one hungry mouth is fed, I know my father
would rejoice for this exact hour
when he asked me to carry on his name. But, for now, he’s still alive. I am teaching him
to walk again. Around us, cicadas shriek.
Crickets sing aloud underground.
As if they know my father’s death is near,
but not even that would erase the love he gave
even when his own organs failed.