POETRY PRIZE

The Browning Society Poetry Prize

  The young Elizabeth Barrett confessed that she was dreadful at sewing, needle-work and other such female accomplishments, but she loved to write poetry. When she was only nine years old her father dubbed her ‘the Poet Laureate of Hope End,' the family home in Herefordshire. As a toddler, Robert Browning made up rhymes while walking round the dining room, clinging to the table to steady himself. ‘I cannot remember the time when I did not make verses and think verse-making the finest thing in the world,' he once said. To encourage interest among young people in the work of these two poets and the writing of poetry, The Browning Society has established an annual poetry competition.

The competition, open to students who are citizens of or resident in the United Kingdom , is divided into two different age groups: 9 to 13 and 14 to 19. The winner of the first group (9-13) will receive a cheque for £100; the winner of the second group (14-19) will receive a cheque for £200. Both winning poems will be published on The Browning Society website, and the winners will be invited to the annual wreath-laying ceremony in Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey.

Congratulations to the 2005/6 winners! The judges were hugely impressed by the quality of the poems submitted this year. Well done to everyone who entered! Special congratulations go to the two winners, 17-year-old Catherine Reeves of Edinburgh and 13-year-old Alfred Briggs of Devon, both of whom based their poems on Robert Browning's tale of jealousy and murder, ‘My Last Duchess'. Catherine's poem, ‘ Victoria, Deceased' , is a perfectly drawn and terrifying portrait of a father's stifling love for his daughter, while Alfred's entry, ‘ A Brokenhearted Girl ', is a simple yet clever exploration of young love.

To read the winning poems, click on the titles or go to the bottom of this page.

The final judges for the 2005/6 competition were Jacqueline Wilson, Children's Laureate, Karen Simmonds, Head of English at the Harrodian School , Michael Meredith, Librarian of Eton College, and Dr Pamela Neville-Sington, biographer of Robert Browning.

How To Enter Next Year's Competition:

For the 2006/7 Browning Society Poetry Prize, entrants should draw inspiration from or write in the style of one of the two poems printed below: ‘ Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came ' by Robert Browning or ‘ To Flush, My Dog' by Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Dedicate your poem to a much loved pet, like Elizabeth did for her cocker spaniel, Flush. Alternatively, reveal in verse the secrets of the Dark Tower or what happens once Childe Roland blows his slug-horn at the end. Please, no poems longer than 70 lines; entries can be much shorter, perhaps just few stanzas or a sonnet of 14 lines. Use your imagination!

Rules : Poems should be in English, no longer than 70 lines, typed or word-processed, doubled-spaced, printed on one side only, and the pages (if more than one) numbered. Please do not write your name anywhere on the poem, but include a cover sheet with your name, title of your poem, address, phone number, e-mail address, date of birth, and the name of your most recent school or place of education. Do tell us how you heard about the competition.

Please send three copies of your poem – postmarked no later than 15 March 2007– to the following address: The Browning Society Poetry Prize, 84 Addison Gardens, London W14 0DR. You may also email your poem (as an attachment, please, in Microsoft Word or a similar word processing program) to Pamela Neville-Sington.

If you have any questions, please contact Pamela Neville-Sington.

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To Flush, My Dog Loving friend, the gift of one
	Who her own true faith has run
Through thy lower nature, Be my benediction said With my hand upon thy head,
	Gentle fellow-creature!
Like a lady's ringlets brown, Flow thy silken ears adown
	Either side demurely
Of thy silver-suited breast Shining out from all the rest
	Of thy body purely.
Darkly brown thy body is, Till the sunshine striking this
	Alchemise its dullness,
When the sleek curls manifold Flash all over into gold
	With a burnished fulness.
Underneath my stroking hand, Startled eyes of hazel bland
	Kindling, growing larger,
Up thou leapest with a spring, Full of prank and curveting,
	Leaping like a charger.
Leap! thy broad tail waves a light, Leap! thy slender feet are bright,
	Canopied in fringes;
Leap! those tasselled ears of thine Flicker strangely, fair and fine
	Down their golden inches
Yet, my pretty, sportive friend, Little is't to such an end
	That I praise thy rareness;
Other dogs may be thy peers Haply in these drooping ears
	And this glossy fairness.
But of thee it shall be said, This dog watched beside a bed
	Day and night unweary,
Watched within a curtained room Where no sunbeam brake the gloom
	Round the sick and dreary.
Roses, gathered for a vase, In that chamber died apace,
	Beam and breeze resigning;
This dog only, waited on,
Knowing that when light is gone
	Love remains for shining.
Other dogs in thymy dew Tracked the hares and followed through
	Sunny moor or meadow;
This dog only, crept and crept Next a languid cheek that slept,
	Sharing in the shadow.
Other dogs of loyal cheer Bounded at the whistle clear,
	Up the woodside hieing;
This dog only, watched in reach Of a faintly uttered speech
	Or a louder sighing.
And if one or two quick tears Dropped upon his glossy ears
	Or a sigh came double,
Up he sprang in eager haste, Fawning, fondling, breathing fast,
	In a tender trouble.
And this dog was satisfied If a pale thin hand would glide
	Down his dewlaps sloping, --
Which he pushed his nose within, After, -- platforming his chin
	On the palm left open.
This dog, if a friendly voice Call him now to blither choice
	Than such chamber-keeping,
"Come out!" praying from the door, -- Presseth backward as before,
	Up against me leaping.
Therefore to this dog will I, Tenderly not scornfully,
	Render praise and favor:
With my hand upon his head, Is my benediction said
	Therefore and for ever.
And because he loves me so, Better than his kind will do
	Often man or woman,
Give I back more love again Than dogs often take of men,
	Leaning from my Human.
Blessings on thee, dog of mine, Pretty collars make thee fine,
	Sugared milk make fat thee!
Pleasures wag on in thy tail, Hands of gentle motion fail
	Nevermore, to pat thee
Downy pillow take thy head, Silken coverlid bestead,
	Sunshine help thy sleeping!
No fly's buzzing wake thee up, No man break thy purple cup
	Set for drinking deep in.
Whiskered cats arointed flee, Sturdy stoppers keep from thee
	Cologne distillations;
Nuts lie in thy path for stones, And thy feast-day macaroons
	Turn to daily rations!
Mock I thee, in wishing weal? -- Tears are in my eyes to feel
	Thou art made so straitly,
Blessing needs must straiten too, --
Little canst thou joy or do,
	Thou who lovest greatly
Yet be blessed to the height Of all good and all delight
	Pervious to thy nature;
Only loved beyond that line, With a love that answers thine,
	Loving fellow-creature!
Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came
My first thought was, he lied in every word
	That hoary cripple, with malicious eye
	Askance to watch the working of his lie
On mine, and mouth scarce able to afford
Suppression of the glee that pursed and scored
	Its edge, at one more victim gained thereby.
What else should he be set for, with his staff?
	What, save to waylay with his lies, ensnare
	All travellers who might find him posted there,
And ask the road? I guessed what skull-like laugh
Would break, what crutch 'gin write my epitaph
	For pastime in the dusty thoroughfare,
If at his counsel I should turn aside
	Into that ominous tract which, all agree, Hides the Dark Tower . Yet acquiescingly
I did turn as he pointed: neither pride Nor hope rekindling at the end descried,
	So much as gladness that some end might be.
For, what with my whole world-wide wandering,
	What with my search drawn out thro' years, my hope Dwindled into a ghost not fit to cope
With that obstreperous joy success would bring, I hardly tried now to rebuke the spring
	My heart made, finding failure in its scope.
As when a sick man very near to death
	Seems dead indeed, and feels begin and end The tears and takes the farewell of each friend,
And hears one bid the other go, draw breath Freelier outside ("since all is o'er," he saith,
	"And the blow fallen no grieving can amend";)
While some discuss if near the other graves
	Be room enough for this, and when a day Suits best for carrying the corpse away,
With care about the banners, scarves and staves: And still the man hears all, and only craves
	He may not shame such tender love and stay.
Thus, I had so long suffered in this quest,
	Heard failure prophesied so oft, been writ So many times among "The Band"--to wit,
The knights who to the Dark Tower 's search addressed Their steps--that just to fail as they, seemed best,
	And all the doubt was now--should I be fit?
So, quiet as despair, I turned from him,
	That hateful cripple, out of his highway Into the path he pointed. All the day
Had been a dreary one at best, and dim Was settling to its close, yet shot one grim
	Red leer to see the plain catch its estray.
For mark! no sooner was I fairly found
	Pledged to the plain, after a pace or two, Than, pausing to throw backward a last view
O'er the safe road, 'twas gone; grey plain all round: Nothing but plain to the horizon's bound.
	I might go on; nought else remained to do.
So, on I went. I think I never saw
	Such starved ignoble nature; nothing throve: For flowers--as well expect a cedar grove!
But cockle, spurge, according to their law Might propagate their kind, with none to awe,
	You'd think; a burr had been a treasure-trove.
No! penury, inertness and grimace,
	In some strange sort, were the land's portion. "See Or shut your eyes," said Nature peevishly,
"It nothing skills: I cannot help my case: 'Tis the Last Judgment's fire must cure this place,
	Calcine its clods and set my prisoners free."
If there pushed any ragged thistle-stalk
	Above its mates, the head was chopped; the bents Were jealous else. What made those holes and rents
In the dock's harsh swarth leaves, bruised as to baulk All hope of greenness? 'tis a brute must walk
	Pashing their life out, with a brute's intents.
As for the grass, it grew as scant as hair
	In leprosy; thin dry blades pricked the mud Which underneath looked kneaded up with blood.
One stiff blind horse, his every bone a-stare, Stood stupefied, however he came there:
	Thrust out past service from the devil's stud!
Alive? he might be dead for aught I know,
	With that red gaunt and colloped neck a-strain, And shut eyes underneath the rusty mane;
Seldom went such grotesqueness with such woe; I never saw a brute I hated so;
	He must be wicked to deserve such pain.
I shut my eyes and turned them on my heart.
	As a man calls for wine before he fights, I asked one draught of earlier, happier sights,
Ere fitly I could hope to play my part. Think first, fight afterwards--the soldier's art:
	One taste of the old time sets all to rights.
Not it! I fancied Cuthbert's reddening face
	Beneath its garniture of curly gold, Dear fellow, till I almost felt him fold
An arm in mine to fix me to the place That way he used. Alas, one night's disgrace!
	Out went my heart's new fire and left it cold.
Giles then, the soul of honour--there he stands
	Frank as ten years ago when knighted first. What honest men should dare (he said) he durst.
Good--but the scene shifts--faugh! what hangman hands In to his breast a parchment? His own bands
	Read it. Poor traitor, spit upon and curst!
Better this present than a past like that;
	Back therefore to my darkening path again! No sound, no sight as far as eye could strain.
Will the night send a howlet or a bat?
I asked: when something on the dismal flat
	Came to arrest my thoughts and change their train.
A sudden little river crossed my path
	As unexpected as a serpent comes. No sluggish tide congenial to the glooms;
This, as it frothed by, might have been a bath For the fiend's glowing hoof--to see the wrath
	Of its black eddy bespate with flakes and spumes.
So petty yet so spiteful! All along
	Low scrubby alders kneeled down over it; Drenched willows flung them headlong in a fit
Of mute despair, a suicidal throng: The river which had done them all the wrong,
	Whate'er that was, rolled by, deterred no whit.
Which, while I forded,--good saints, how I feared
	To set my foot upon a dead man's cheek, Each step, or feel the spear I thrust to seek
For hollows, tangled in his hair or beard! -It may have been a water-rat I speared,
	But, ugh! it sounded like a baby's shriek.
Glad was I when I reached the other bank.
	Now for a better country. Vain presage! Who were the strugglers, what war did they wage,
Whose savage trample thus could pad the dank Soil to a plash? Toads in a poisoned tank,
	Or wild cats in a red-hot iron cage--
The fight must so have seemed in that fell cirque.
	What penned them there, with all the plain to choose? No foot-print leading to that horrid mews,
None out of it. Mad brewage set to work Their brains, no doubt, like galley-slaves the Turk
	Pits for his pastime, Christians against Jews.
And more than that--a furlong on--why, there!
	What bad use was that engine for, that wheel, Or brake, not wheel--that harrow fit to reel
Men's bodies out like silk? with all the air Of Tophet's tool, on earth left unaware,
	Or brought to sharpen its rusty teeth of steel.
Then came a bit of stubbed ground, once a wood,
	Next a marsh, it would seem, and now mere earth Desperate and done with; (so a fool finds mirth,
Makes a thing and then mars it, till his mood Changes and off he goes!) within a rood--
	Bog, clay and rubble, sand and stark black dearth.
Now blotches rankling, coloured gay and grim,
	Now patches where some leanness of the soil's Broke into moss or substances like boils;
Then came some palsied oak, a cleft in him Like a distorted mouth that splits its rim
	Gaping at death, and dies while it recoils.
And just as far as ever from the end!
	Nought in the distance but the evening, nought To point my footstep further! At the thought,
A great black bird, Apollyon's bosom-friend, Sailed past, nor beat his wide wing dragon-penned
	That brushed my cap--perchance the guide I sought.
For, looking up, aware I somehow grew,
	'Spite of the dusk, the plain had given place All round to mountains--with such name to grace
Mere ugly heights and heaps now stolen in view. How thus they had surprised me,--solve it, you!
	How to get from them was no clearer case.
Yet half I seemed to recognise some trick
	Of mischief happened to me, God knows when-- In a bad dream perhaps. Here ended, then,
Progress this way. When, in the very nick Of giving up, one time more, came a click
	As when a trap shuts--you're inside the den!
Burningly it came on me all at once,
	This was the place! those two hills on the right, Crouched like two bulls locked horn in horn in fight;
While to the left, a tall scalped mountain . . . Dunce, Dotard, a-dozing at the very nonce,
	After a life spent training for the sight!
What in the midst lay but the Tower itself?
	The round squat turret, blind as the fool's heart Built of brown stone, without a counterpart
In the whole world. The tempest's mocking elf Points to the shipman thus the unseen shelf
	Strikes on, only when the timbers start.
Not see? because of night perhaps?--why, day
	Came back again for that! before it left, The dying sunset kindled through a cleft:
The hills, like giants at a hunting, lay Chin upon hand, to see the game at bay,--
	"Now stab and end the creature--to the heft!"
Not hear? when noise was everywhere! it tolled
	Increasing like a bell. Names in my ears Of all the lost adventurers my peers,--
How such a one was strong, and such was bold, And such was fortunate, yet each of old
	Lost, lost! one moment knelled the woe of years.
There they stood, ranged along the hillsides, met
	To view the last of me, a living frame For one more picture! in a sheet of flame
I saw them and I knew them all. And yet Dauntless the slug-horn to my lips I set,
	And blew. "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came."

Senior Prize  

Victoria , Deceased

by Catherine Reeves

I see your eyes, sir, wander to the stair --

Perhaps you note the portrait hanging there?

That girl's my daughter, dead this year or so . . .

Nay, sir, it was God's will that she should go --

Victoria -- although but seventeen.

(Named for her mother, and our sovereign queen.)

It travels with me, though for memory

Rather than ornament; for, as you see,

She was a homely maiden, and a plain.

So much the better: I would have no vain

And idle chit coquetting at my board.

For, so proclaims the Prophet of Our Lord,

There is no vice so foul as vanity,

And so full often did she hear from me.

For girls not hampered by a pretty face

Are tempted the less frequently from Grace,

And, I recall, I often bid her bless

The God who made her plain. Mark, sir, her dress,

Chaste, black and sober. Had she had her way,

She would have worn some frivolous, filled, gay,

Beribboned, rose-silk thing she begged to buy

One Christmas-time. Needless to say, sir, I

Refused. I saw the clothing of her peers,

Dressed up like slatterns, far beyond their years,

And would I let my child bedeck her so

And gad about with brazen minxes? No,

I dressed her modestly in black, and kept

Her back from company, who else had swept

Her down the giddy road to frippery.

I had her better occupied, sir. She,

On my advice, was dedicated much

To Mission work: knitting for heathens, such

Small acts of faith, along with steady, good,

Maturer women of our neighbourhood.

After my wife's demise, I having saved

Her leisure from the peers her weakness craved,

Her time was better-used still, making shift

(Under my principles of stringent thrift)

To budget for our household — though at first

I had here to reprove her, too; for, cursed,

As I suppose, with gluttony, she decked

Our meagre Christian board without respect

For means or moderation, so that I

Was used to reprimand her frequently

For her edification; saying, sir,

That Jesus Christ had not created her

Like to the swine, solely to eat and feed,

And wallow in her idleness and greed,

Daily becoming fatter and more gross,

But rather to lay hands upon the Cross,

And to abstain from fleshy joys. I deemed

She saw that it was wisdom, for she seemed

Thenceforward to avoid that deadly sin,

And grew in consequence more pale, and thin,

Wan in her cheek, as you may see her here

(The portrait painted in her final year),

And holily and meekly bowed her head,

As pleases God; although the doctors said

It was consumption sapped her strength; but I

Believe, sir, it was her humility

And filial duty to my words that broke --

Bowed, I would say — her spirits to the yoke --

The gentle yoke — of Jesus. Well, she's gone,

I pray, to Paradise . Let us move on --

You have not seen the upper rooms. The rent

Is reasonable, sir, you will assent.

The house is over-large for me alone . . .

Nay, come, sir, let us go. You shall be shown

My Sunday room: it weekly pleases me

There to reflect on Christian charity.

_______________________

Junior Prize

  A Brokenhearted Girl

by Alfred Briggs

That's my friend I say,

his countenance captured in frame.

I took it in the garden two years ago.

See him sitting on his shiny bicycle.

He looks at the camera,

his smile could will larks to ground.

The girl next door stares at him

and blushes as she passed him a piece of paper

which has been cleverly folded into a heart.

He thanked her well

but he never thanked me for my gift

of a fifteen-year-old friendship.

If only he had known my stare was not,

as he thought, of admiration,

but of pure affection.

When I looked he smiled, oh yes he

smiled,

but never like he smiled at her.

Then last year he left with the girl

and though he invited me I could not accept

for I was hurt. But now I wish

oh I wish that I had said yes

for to see him again would end this,

to see him again would repair my broken heart

and let me love you.