If you don´t want to witness the pathetic spectacle of some bloke gushing over his daughter´s achievement you better look away now…….

Our Pippa has just won a poetry competition and had her winning open published in the paper. It is a hell of a poem and here is what the judges said about it:

Words used to describe the poem were “gripping”, “intriguing” and “moving”. The judges agreed that the brief dialogue at the start is arresting: the reader passes to imagine the speakers, then feels an urgent need to read on. Poet Álvaro García, picking this poem out as the winner in its category added that he was pleased that it was one which had followed the recommended method of writing a poem based on two concepts: in this case “Grief” and “Clock.” Here it is:

 

The Face of Grief

“Do the hands ever stop?”

“No honey”

 

Nine and a half years later,she is gone – but the ticking remains;

The sound continues, interrupting every silence

Dividing the time, the seconds between ticks,

The days between rotations

Cutting up the little moments of loneliness,

Defining them as days, hours, minutes.

 

The day she left, the day I ceased to be a mother…

The tyres stopped spinning.

The music stopped playing.

Her heart stopped beating.

But the clock kept ticking –

 

It should have stopped. It should have waited for me.

The work should have paused, even for a moment, for her,

To think of her and everything she was –

Instead of worrying about taxes or wages or complaining about welfare.

They should have thought of her, spoken about her, even just muttered her name

But the earth kept spinning and the clock kept ticking

 

Pippa Hogan, age 17. English International College, Marbella.