2009 Sheffield Poetry Prize
The Sheffield Prize category honours the best single poem from a collection submitted to the Book & Pamphlet Competition by a Sheffield entrant. The category was launched in 2008 to celebrate The Poetry Business' move to Sheffield, and is sponsored by The University of Sheffield.
In 2009, the competition judge was Andrew Motion, and he selected Beverley Nadin's 'R.S.V.P.' as the winner. He gave second place to Liz Cashdan's 'Hay for Horses' and third to Jenny King's 'Signal'.
R.S.V.P.
Mrs Baker has squeezed a suitcase shut
and thrown some things into plastic bags
— passport, soap, the essentials.
She waits in the yard
where a dozen clothes pegs
criss-cross the line like finches.
Mr Baker's bicycle tyres, she notes,
have softened and spread
the way his swollen feet did,
pressure-sored at the heels
and the handlebars look stiff at the neck
with rigor mortis.
The Singhs are frying somosas.
The smell rolls in on the five o'clock tide.
A turd has staked its claim
on the empty vegetable patch, tight as a turban.
Or snug as a cat, thinks Mrs Baker.
Her husband never liked cats. She pats her skirt
for the stutter of paper where
Rue la Bruyère,
some dutiful numbers
and
we hate to think of you alone...
trill in freehand. A cab beeps, twice.
Mrs Baker thinks she can hear
the slate roof gritting its teeth.
The Poetry Business receives financial assistance from Arts Council England.
