Leper Window, St Mary the Virgin by Jane McKie
The contagion of lepers
has lifted.
The low glass, where they crouched
even lower,
remains, but their breath,
their rash, their lack
has passed into the lace
of shadows in the yard.
Where God looked
but did not touch,
the lip of sandstone
is purled with fissures.
That's what I call economy of style.Jane McKie's poem "Leper Window, St Mary the Virgin" has won the Edwin Morgan international poetry competition - at just 47 words long, earning her £106 per word.Inspired by a Saxon church in Arundel, McKie's poem beat more than 1,200 entries from countries across the world. Her winning poem was described by judges as "spare, musical and wonderfully imagined."McKie, who lives in Linlithgow, West Lothian, is a research fellow at the University of Stirling and runs her own small publisher, Knucker press. She is the first winner of the £5,000 Edwin Morgan prize, inaugurated in 2008, since the poet's death in 2010.
No comments:
Post a Comment