The 2008 TLS Poetry Competition has been won by Susan Rich, of Seattle, WA, for her poem “Different Places To Pray”. She receives $4,000.

Rich has worked on the staff of Amnesty International, as an electoral supervisor in Bosnia, and as a human rights trainer in Gaza. She has lived in Niger, West Africa, where she worked as a Peace Corps Volunteer, later moving to South Africa to teach at the University of Cape Town on a Fulbright Fellowship. She has won both the PEN USA Poetry Award and the Peace Corps Writers Poetry Award for The Cartographer’s Tongue: Poems of the world (White Pine Press, 2000).

The winner and runners-up were chosen by a ballot of readers, from a shortlist of twelve poems drawn up by Mick Imlah, the Poetry editor of the TLS, and Alice Quinn, Executive Director of the Poetry Society of America and formerly Poetry editor of the New Yorker, and printed anonymously on October 24.

In second place came Peter Saunders, of Chatham, MA, with “Cape Cottage in Winter”. Saunders’s books include Ask Any Frog (Stepping Stone Press, 2000), and Heartbeat of New England (Tiger Moon Press, 2000). He receives $1,500.

In third place, winning £500, came Paul Groves, of Osbaston, Monmouth, Wales, with “The Hug”. Groves, who won the competition last year, has published five full collections of poems. The most recent is Qwerty (Seren, 2008). Fourth prize, worth $500, went to Joseph Fasano, of Goshen, NY, for “Chester”. Fasano also recently won the Rattle Poetry Prize.

There were five US poets shortlisted, and seven British poets, but the former managed to take four of the top six positions.

The other shortlisted poems were:

A) “Alaska”, and K) “Masculine Happiness”, both by David Foster-Morgan, of Cardiff, whose poetry has appeared in Poetry Wales, and a number of other magazines;

B) “To An Innocent Prisoner” by Simon Pomery, of St Albans, whose “Spiritus Mundi” we published in July;

D) “Powder Hollow Archaeology”, by William Doreski, of Peterborough, NH, whose most recent collection is Another Ice Age (AA Press, 2007);

F) “The Catalogue of Ships”, by Iain Galbraith, of Wiesbaden, Germany, a prize-winning translator of Raoul Schott, and contributor of several poems to the TLS;

G) “Late Travel”, by Graham Chainey, of Brighton, a recent TLS reviewer;

I) “The Baptism of the Bull”, by Robert Selby, of Sevenoaks, Kent, who has had a number of poems published in the TLS;

and J) “Salt Lake”, by Genevieve Burger-Weiser, of Brooklyn, NY, who is a student in the MFA poetry program at the Columbia University School of the Arts and a student staff member of Columbia: A journal of literature and art.

Our congratulations go to each of these; and our thanks to those readers who took the trouble either to enter the competition or to take part in the voting process.

Different Places To Pray

by SUSAN RICH

Everywhere, everywhere she wrote; something is falling –
a ring of keys slips out of her pocket into the ravine below;

nickels and dimes and to do lists; duck feathers from a gold pillow.
Everywhere someone is losing a favorite sock or a clock stops

circling the day; everywhere she goes she follows the ghost of her heart;
jettisons everything but the shepherd moon, the hopeless cause.

This is the way a life unfolds: decoding messages from profiteroles,
the weight of mature plums in late autumn. She’d prefer a compass

rose, a star chart, text support messages delivered from the net,
even the local pet shop – as long as some god rolls away the gloss

and grime of our gutted days, our global positioning crimes.
Tell me, where do you go to pray – a river valley, a pastry tray?

Cape Cottage in Winter

by PETER SAUNDERS

In Sagamore center
off Main Street
down a long lane lies
a vacant house cedar concealed
sitting in a saucer

scooped by glaciers,
peering over the edge
with its one-eyed gable,
nudging mansions aside
to spy the sea.

With paint peeling
shutters aslant
and downspouts drifting
this humble bungalow
invites a peek that reveals

tiny white-washed space
crammed to the eaves with books
chipped dishes shelved
wobbly chairs at a scarred table
mother seated with spaniel penning a poem.

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