Firstly a huge thank you to everyone who entered. As you all likely know, Poetry Society stanzas are unfunded, so it is only through entrance fees, donations and initiatives like this competition that ExCite can continue. So my thanks are on two counts; for the financial support meaning we can expand and thrive in the future, and for sharing your work. It was not an easy job judging this competition, but it was a rewarding one. Ringing the winner to say ‘congratulations, there’s a £100 cheque in the post’ literally made my day. Congratulations again also go to the two runners up. All three of the winning poems are posted below. I’ll be blogging a bit more about this, alongside an interview with the winner, so keep your eyes peeled for that in the coming weeks. For those who were not lucky this time, don’t be disheartened. Keep trying - see the competitions main page for details of competitions open at the moment and have a go again next year. Thanks again to you all, Rachel 1st prize: David E. Butler 103. Monday 5th October: Mrs Baker. 52 Rosemount Gardens. I move the pots like steering wheels. Study the nitrogen rich unsmudging fibres of the compost. The train to Yeovil rattles its table under my slowly growing fingernails. Dandelions pick their way nimbly down the grassy banks. I want the special dentist to drain my root canal, as I glide past in a Virgin coach, like a queen on anaesthetic. I’ll sit in the greenhouse tonight again and change the gears for the moon. Tuesday 6th October: Mr Windle. 58 Rosemount Gardens. I say the window’s function is to picture up a view, others to let in light on the more important room, but for this an empty frame would do. I have noticed how the wind does not penetrate my house; and the rain is dashed before it spots the backs of my hands. And when it’s polished, ordinary glass can trap the light and is more beautiful in its transparency, than the embers of a stained glass window, waiting for the dawn and all its flames. 2nd Prize: Susan Williams Murmuration Beyond the seafood restaurant, birds shoal with the accuracy of fish, but faster. They weave and flaunt themselves, as free as children skip. Their mob of chiselled bodies trawl the sky with taut wing flicks, weaving to modify their all to one, in wildfire aeronautics. They land inside the bulwarks of West Pier, like cinematic smoke played backwards, then they rise up like a hat trick becoming cobra’s head... stealth drone ... ziggurat... vapour trail ... mobius strip... organza ribbon ... mermaid’s tail. A breeze of birds above the Pavilion, they’ve rushed inland to lift and flick a curtain over Brighton. Performing quantum shifts, they disappear as they tack, pleat the sky and frisk the waves when reappearing, black as Zebedee’s sprung whiskers. Eventually, the starlings fall in graceful curves like metal filings into the pier’s magnetic pull; caught up in night’s arrival. 3rd Prize: Rose Cook The Storm Out of the window, the sea churning, rough so two young men must swim to their boat tied way out bucking like the metal horse in our playground at home (don’t mention those who fell under it - legs broken) Fishermen tip toe the edge, try to haul fish life from it (don’t mention hope don’t mention dark sunlight or the storm coming in.) The early cormorants are long gone, now a family chucks stones as if to match the heave and thrust of the very ocean we crawled from - stone throwing is all we have left (don’t mention evolution.) The wild sea excites us all, flags waving people huddle with hoods up shout to each other. The young men have reached their boat. Now what? (Don’t mention the future.) Mist blurs the headland soon the foghorn will moan like a widow. (Don’t mention the shapes lying deep in the bay.)