Longlisted for the AUB Poetry Prize

I was delighted to be asked to read my longlisted poem for the UK’s National Poetry Day, online.

As well as having a huge amount of respect for the AUB Poetry Competition, hearing that I had not one but two poems longlisted for the 2023 prize was hugely gratifying. As all writers know, sometimes writing feels like shouting into an echo chamber and getting nothing in response – when I’m long-, short-listed or win competitions, it makes all of the lonely pain worth it!

Please find one of my longlisted poems below, the one that I read for the UK Poetry Day:

To Become a Famous Rooster, You Must First Ship Sand

He tells you that Rocky is the LOUDEST ROOSTER IN THE WORLD,

as if this is his own idea and not something said by the murderous neighbour,

Old Bu Rita, owner of a Kintamani and forefront hater of bules,

tourists, and especially surfers – you know they’re shipping in

sand now?

What, we don’t have sand?

He wants to make Rocky famous, he’s heard about YouTube

from the bule kids at the bule nursery, pasty faces learning A, B, C,

while you take Panji with you to steal kernels at dawn,

batting away the charcoal fireworks of bugs that interrupt the morning calls to prayer,

blaspheming the blade of the rusty machete,

which reflects terracotta and sunrise because it is always so early.

You tell him that there isn’t a chance in hell that Rocky will become famous.

It is healthy to kill a child’s dreams, and you sweep the old blade

through robbed corn and curse the impotence of the paddies.

It is not enough to have paddies during the ebb and flow of recession;

corn can feed, the husks used to make animal bedding, which your wife,

your patient wife, sells back to the same farmer that you are stealing from.

“Uh-uh-uhhhhh,” Panji calls, while your face drips and your identity

falls to the roots of the earth.

What is that noise, child?

“The bule kids say that Rocky goes ‘Cock a doodle do’. Have you ever heard

anything so stupid? It is UH-UH-UHHHH.”

You try not to shake with anger because Panji should stay away from those

bule kids,

the offspring of the sand shippers,

the beer drinkers.

But he keeps sneaking around the back of the nursery, his skull lifted by the universe.

One afternoon, they watch Chicken Run and Panji’s imagination runs alongside it.

You are busy feeding the chickens, skitter-scatter, shouting at the herons,

ivory wings killing the paddies in a search of mud eels, while Old Bu Rita’s dog

yap-yap-yaps and you wish that it was a fierce wolf that might rip you apart.

“We did it,” Panji says, and he’s clutching a flutter of yellow papers.

You ask what, while your wife ekes more corn from a cascade of tattered string.

“He’s famous, the bule kids put him online. People are coming to see him.

Tonight.

I need to make tickets, I promised them tickets.

See Ayah, you said there wasn’t a chance in hell.

Now we can afford uniforms, I’ve sold three hundred rupias in tickets already.

See Ayah?”

Behind the boy’s Ayah, the broken barn shows a slice of painful redundancy;

the rice paddies reflect the clouds.

A white heron swoops into the sky, its beak spilling stolen eel.