Third Place Winner, October 2009 InterBoard Poetry Competition

Poetry

InterBoard Poetry Competition

Third Place Winner, October 2009

WITHOUT SALT *Mandy Pannett* (The Write Idea) It’s about waking up to the sound of a bird, a bird for all birds in the tree outside, with snow on the sill, an air that is easy to breathe. And I’m still back in that favourite time – that crummy old flat in Washington Square, squatting with poets on cold brown steps, bright as the stars but hungry for syllables, words with a passion and meat. But it’s winter in Paris and years since that and they’re all long gone, those rebels are dead. I’m missing the salt, need words that are tough, am tired of courage, go on. Comments by judge Majid Naficy: “This poem rests on memory. The bird that awakes the poet brings back the memory of the poet’s youth, hanging out with fellow poets in Washington Square. I think the poem does not need the last stanza and should end with the line ‘with a passion and meat.’”