First Prize winning poem in the Bassetlaw Writers 10th Open Competition was that of Dorothy Cooke:

PICKING POPPIES

Monet was painting poppy fields
the year my grandmother was born.
Her favourite flower, she used to say,
bringing them back from country lanes
to our suburban house,
where the petals fell one by one
as they failed to survive.

Her three stepsons went willingly
to soldier in French fields from where
they sent back pretty postcards
to my mother, their little sister;
cards embroidered with flowers
and regimental standards.

By some miracle – or pure chance
they all came home from war,
married and raised families
whose children now might take atrip
to visit Monet's garden.
or the poppy fields of France

Second prize went to Moorside Writers' Anne Norman
who wrote:

SMALL GIRL GAZING AT A SWAN

You are intrigued with me,
with my whiteness, with
the way that water drops slide
from the sheen of my feathers,
the mystery of my face,
severely beautiful.

I glide in with the morning
on the off-chance of some
bread oblation. but you
have curled up on the jetty
and offered me yourself
in obeisance to my beauty.

You have come in your
Sunday white dress
in honour of my grandeur.
You can sense already
I am Zeus, irresistible.
The wind has whisked the water

trembling the light a little
stirring s frisson in my feathers
just too brisk for the
curve of my upturned wings
to arch and acknowledge
your rapt adoration.

In my perfection
I am watching the breeze
frisk the wisps of hair
around your face
that you ribbons seek
to constrain in symmetry.

In my perfection
I can walk tall with you
but you will know onr day
that I can lift off in liquid light
while you are grounded
in your element.

John Pratt's entry, Just Testing, attracted one of seven commendations from the Judge, Cathy Grindrod, who has just completed her two-year term as Derbyshire's Poet Laureate.

JUST TESTING.

The sun has gone, but I hang
around, catch the sand’s sting,
watch the sea break across her shins
body blanked in banks of water.

Her head alone appears, her head
that made its first appearance
at that Hastings hospital when
I was not allowed to watch;

then, in bobbing intervals, moves
further out to sea, the distance
now between us makes an impotent
connection: bloodless, soundless;

perhaps a dot in each wave-fold
threading through my doubt,
with taut irregularity.
I do not know this spiteful sea

which rushes on in double time
and yet may play an unknown song;
can feel the pulsing of her head
in my palm, tissue, soft along my arm;

and see her battle for a width
across the outdoor swimming bath;
try to think that she is strong.