Enjoy the poems by the winners of the International Poetry Competition. Congratulations again to everyone!

Complaints about pigeons and the loss of goldfinches
by Penny Sharman

I
get rid of the pigeons, the hoard
on these rooftops, feather & shit of them,
daily fucking, madness here,
where gold once shone brightly.

II
Of course, the blackbirds, sparrows,
and at times the bluetits soldier on, but
goldfinches are lost from the copper beech
and wild cherry, splendour of them, gone.

III
I cannot fill the feeder with Niger seeds
to tempt them back to quieter days.
It’s just plump grey pigeons, their
constant coo, here, at early dawning,
late evening, a drone like no other.

IV
Poison I hear you say, a pile of dead birds
on the grass or pebbles, a pyre of burning
flesh, murderous humans. Oh sympathy!
where art thou?

V
I hear your plea, wisdom from the Buddha,
beauty in all life. I do not know what
made them come here, the ambience,
the constant feeding from the woman
two doors down, seeds on her shed roof?

VI
When the sun burns my arm
as we sit beside rose bushes,
we forget about the misery of birds,
live for the flash of memory, kisses
of wine, nothing else but.

VII
For years the golden birds arrived,
timed to the feasting days, leaves
bursting out, flocks of gold and green,
but world is grey now, often black.

VIII
You caught me in sadness, rain,
wind, day and night. Tomorrow
I will buy a cage, fill it with
the blackest seeds, hang it on
a high branch, a sign for pigeons
to beware of the hawk.

IX
I am on a mission to rekindle
gold. You could call it war,
resurgence, karma, but I prefer
the idea of reclamation, birdsong
a gentler breeze in Eden.

X
Once there were siskins,
how they flocked, swooped
down to the washing line,
hope like a baby’s first howl.

XI
Only once the sparrow hawk,
talons ready to kill, found
a pigeon breathless in the yard.
Oh, how this summer is damp.

XII
I fear I’ve lost my way. I’ve hacked
down the ceanothus, hope a buried
notion under the penstemon and wolf’s
bane, not ready for flowering.

XIII
Time to act, get down on my knees,
bang my drum, shake the tubular bells,
cause havoc within their wings,
as if angels really are a thing.

Penny Sharman is inspired by wild landscapes and relationships between the seen and unseen. She is a published poet, photographer, artist and therapist. Penny has an MA in Creative Writing from Edge Hill University, has had poems published in The North, Mslexia, Candlestick Press, Northern Gravy and many others. She reached shortlists for The Bridport Prize, 2023 and the Michael Marks Environmental Poet of the Year Prize 2023. She was highly commended in the Fool for Poetry Chapbook competition in 2024 and highly commended in Manchester Cathedral’s Poetry Competition 2024. She reached the shortlist of 15 for the Live Canon Poetry Competition 2024. Penny won first Prize for her poem ‘Complaints about pigeons and the loss of goldfinches’ for The 2025 Charles Causley International Poetry Competition. Her 6th collection Sunbathing with Fishermen, 2024 from Hedgehog Press is available from her website: pennysharman.co.uk. Penny is Editor of Obsessed with Pipework Poetry Magazine.

Thin Line
by Carlos Andrés Gomez

Shoulders touching, we trace the faint
silhouettes of historical figures, just

enough light for each thin line to bleedthrough
& reach our sight. Guide each

careful movement of drawing what has
already been rendered. I am drawing closer

to my daughter with each shared session
before bed. So much of fatherhood

is drawn out by this kind of faith: a faint
boundary rendered by light or shadow. Is this

a line? Who drew this? I would trace
my grandmother’s intricate beauty, her sight

mostly gone, a lineage rendered beside her
eyes for each of us to map. I revise the lines

drawn as I age, pull some closer & others
further away, my hands a scarred lineage

of stark veins inherited from my mother.
On a blank sheet, I free-hand a tuxedo-wearing

octopus dunking a basketball on some hapless
kitten, & isn’t this how it starts? Disproportion,

dominance justified by unsubtle imaginations,
we abide boundaries drawn by men who could

only imagine themselves & their property in
perpetuity. My favorite color has always been

red, despite my fear of its bright tint I saw far
too often marking my assignments in school

before I learned to read. In conflict & war, a red
line signifies a point of no return, the unyielding

edge in the sand at which point nothing can
remain the same. But sand often stands at

the water’s edge, tides constantly in motion
revising & absolving the point at which

intervention, accountability, change, anything
must finally emerge. Memoryless, the shoreline

harbors the timeless secrets we refuse
to recall, someday telling our children: I stood

here. Or was it here? I was on the right side
of history. We did everything we possibly could.

Spear thistle
by Jane Wilkinson

I’m sanguine – as in bloodthirsty. Defensive
as in medieval. A miscellany of ways; wily
as a ball of thorns you call a bud, pitched
from hawthorn’s fortress. When I shred violet
into petals I set the evening air alight. Stem
tracked with broken glass cemented into brick
and sprung with needle leaves. Neck dressed
with a horror of ants ransacking night-black aphids.
Silk-tailed seeds spike glass-fibre in your lungs.
Wrist-slasher. Fur-jacker. Designated-injurer. Ha!
Nobody loves me, no one but the bees –
the bees may lick between and find the sweet.