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  • Writer's pictureKayleigh Willis

THE WINNERS PT 1: HIGHLY COMMENDED CATEGORY

Updated: Sep 21, 2021




Here are our three winners in the 'Highly Commended' category (all from the north of England!):




'Thirteen' by Natalie Crick


Julie is still mine – but maybe

only for another year, or less.


Her window is open and she is looking

past me, to the end of the road,


where the streetlamp glows sodium pink

where the road meets the dark sports field

where the boys have gathered


in black hoods to smoke, their breath

wisps of smut kisses.


I put my hands into Mam’s

Sunday meat in the big pot


just to feel the blood.

There may not be a reason why



Natalie Crick (Newcastle, UK) has poems published in The Moth, Banshee, The Dark Horse, The Poetry Review and elsewhere. She is studying for an MPhil in Creative Writing at Newcastle University. Last year one of Natalie's poems was commended in the Verve Poetry Festival Competition 2020 and awarded second prize in the Newcastle Poetry Competition 2020. This year a poem was highly commended in the Folklore Poetry Prize and highly commended in the Wales Poetry Award. Natalie is co-founder / poetry editor of a small literary press based in Newcastle and Prague, Fragmented Voices.





'the knife' by Jane Kite


the knife in the kitchen drawer

was just an impulse away


it was mild steel

made in Sheffield

six inches of blade and had appeared

in my mind insistently for weeks


had to gather my nerve

had to be quick

took it and put it

in a strong brown envelope


the knife

and like a mad woman

wrapped it in layers of newspaper

as you would broken glass

layer on layer of protection

like the parcel at a children’s party


then string round