Inasmuch as the 2020 Conference of the International Lawrence Durrell Society, On Miracle Ground XXI, takes place in Toulouse, France in late May, we thought a suitable theme for the 2019 White Mice Poetry Contest would be \u201cThe Heavens.\u201d Though renowned for its architecture and history, Toulouse is also the \u201caerospace capital\u201d of France, an appropriate place to contemplate human interactions with the other-worldly.<\/p>\n
Heavenly bodies (both human and astronomical) make many appearances in the work of Lawrence Durrell. In his poem, \u201cLesbos,\u201d \u201cThe Pleiades are sinking cool as paint \/ . . . Like dancers to a music they deserve\u201d (Selected Poems 15). \u201cThe dispiriting autumn moon, \/\/ In her slow expurgation of the sky \/ . . . is brooding on the dead\u201d (15).<\/p>\n
Thus have humans since the dawn of time contemplated the movements of the stars and seen in them omens, refractions, evocations, and commentaries on themselves. The poems submitted to the 2019 White Mice Poetry Contest explore wide-ranging intersections between the galaxies and human experience. The first-prize winner, \u201cReflections of an Astronaut, Looking Down on Earth Below (a love poem),\u201d is a persona poem as well as a sestina, a challenging lyric form masterfully handled by Daisy Bassen of East Greenwich, Rhode Island.<\/p>\n
\u201cAugust Missions,\u201d by Daryl Scroggins of Marla, Texas, is more light-hearted yet also touching. Ten-year-old boys shoot a little sister\u2019s Barbie doll into orbit in a re-enactment of rock-launching that earned this poet second prize. \u201cSlippages,\u201d the third-prize poem by Jesse Arthur Stone of Hedgesville, West Virginia, features an elder poet whose pages \u201copen and close \/ like butterfly wings\u201d and become \u201ca ball of ice burning in space.\u201d<\/p>\n
This year\u2019s cohort of entries was the largest we\u2019ve ever received, so selecting winners was exceptionally difficult. Among three poems selected for honorable mention was Katharyn Howd Machan\u2019s \u201cHaiku in Terza Rima,\u201d carefully-wrought tercets in which the moon and stars weave through and \u201c[leap] down from the sky.\u201d Marie Henry\u2019s \u201cFilling in the Spaces\u201d focuses on the singularities of middle-age and the enchantments of naming and claiming stars and constellations. Graham Burchell\u2019s \u201cTraveller\u201d offers a double-voiced perspective riding on a boat along the Nile \u201cperfumed with diesel\u201d while contemplating the moon, \u201ca sunken crescent . . . darker than the sky.\u201d<\/p>\n
Given the record number of submissions this year, our judges decided to recognize four additional finalist poets, listed alphabetically by author\u2019s last name: Bo Niles, Rev. Jennifer M. Phillips, Marjorie Stamm Rosenfeld, and Eileen Van Hook. Congratulations to all the winners and thanks to all those who submitted their work.<\/p>\n
The rich textures of these poems reiterate the human need to situate our lives in space and time, not merely on Earth but also among the ongoing circulations of stars and planets. The universe is ever a place of wonderment and projection, hypothesis, counterfact, dark matter, and blinding light. And somehow the movements of sun and moon touch us viscerally. We know suicides and murders increase at the full moon, and depressions deepen during long periods without the sun. So the astrologers may have a point that the patterns of the heavens designate our lives in unforeseen yet noticeable ways. The 2019 poems demonstrate that fascinating gravitational intersection between human consciousness and worlds beyond.<\/p>\n
David Radavich<\/p>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n You become accustomed to awe, the moon Having fled with all rich color, with heat. There\u2019s no one to love Can\u2019t shock me. I\u2019ve always known the seas that rose Or hopeless. Those I\u2019ve learned are more the same than not, the baby\u2019s cry The strain of ocean upon shores, our ovulations, to desire. Dream Layered, removed, anomie sustaining me. What pearl Remains, a bitten pearl. My soul has no refuge, no moon \u2014Daisy Bassen<\/p>\n Daisy Bassen is a poet and practicing physician who graduated from Princeton University\u2019s Creative Writing Program and completed her medical training at The University of Rochester and Brown.\u00a0 Her work has been published in Oberon<\/em>, The Delmarva Review<\/em>, and\u00a0The Sow\u2019s Ear<\/em>, as well as multiple other journals.\u00a0 She lives in Rhode Island with her family.<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n Everybody was ten then, I \u2014Daryl Scroggins<\/p>\n Daryl Scroggins has taught creative writing and literature at The University of Texas at Dallas, The University of North Texas, and the Writer\u2019s Garret, in Dallas.\u00a0 He now lives in Marfa, Texas.\u00a0 He is the author of Winter Investments<\/em>, a collection of stories (Trilobite Press), and This Is Not the Way We Came In<\/em>, a collection of flash fiction and a flash novel (Ravenna Press).<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n The elder poet reads a book in the light a page and the forest leans in the wind. and he follows it. Swaying in the dark, he sees \u2014Jesse Arthur Stone<\/p>\n Jesse Arthur Stone\u2019s poems have appeared in numerous literary magazines.\u00a0 He has won awards from the Arvon International Poetry Competition, Artemis, Atlanta Review<\/em>, the Dallas Poets Community, Paumanok Poetry Award Series, and West Virginia Writers 2018 Annual Writing Competition.\u00a0 He lives in West Virginia with his wife, poet, novelist, and dance educator Lynn Swanson.<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n Khonsu, Chonsu, Chons, are names I recall Back in winter on the upper deck of a boat I whispered these names. I even called him Traveller, But on that night, perfumed with diesel, a sunken crescent under a disc darker than the sky. Then, from somewhere far out, a cry, \u2014Graham Burchell<\/p>\n Graham Burchell lives in Devon and has four published collections.\u00a0 A 2013 Hawthornden Fellow, he is the winner of the 2015 Stanza competition, runner up in the BBC Proms Poetry Competition 2016, a 3rd prize winner in the 2017 Bridport Prize, and a poem highly commended in the 2018 Forward Prize.\u00a0 He helps organise the Teignmouth Poetry Festival.<\/p>\nFirst Prize<\/h2>\n
Reflections of an Astronaut, Looking Down on Earth Below<\/h3>\n
(a love song)<\/h3>\n
\nFilling up the window, too close to believe it pearl
\nOr a fine round of waxy cheddar. Bleached of the rose
\nSunset brings to a waste, a desert is left, the dream
\nA coyote might wake from, desolate, and cry
\nThat the night was empty. Abandoned, love<\/p>\n
\nSo far away from our home. You\u2019re solitary as the moon
\nWhose goddess is usually a virgin, whose sharpest cry
\nIs reserved for the revelation her breasts are not pearl,
\nNot the silky, milky flesh of his fatuous dream.
\nThe discovery there is no thorn-less rose<\/p>\n
\nSwallowed what they wanted, anything that tending love
\nMade particular, set apart; everything collected using the logic of a dream,
\nThe dirty jumble of a mind or the sweeping tides. Once in a blue moon
\nMeans never, here– it means the deceit of bent light, of a pearl
\nHiding at its center, contamination; it\u2019s a hopeful cry<\/p>\n
\nWe never stop hearing, the incurious hairy bee in the rose
\nBoth stinging, breathing; both such sweetness. The pearl
\nIs the abscess\u2019s sister; the assertion it\u2019s better to love
\nDisruption into form than cast it off like the moon
\nWas from early, unruly earth, relegated to the object of dream,<\/p>\n
\nOn is an order than says you\u2019ve failed, darling, and cry
\nMe a river has lost all ordinary sense, faced with the moon
\nAnd her waterless, tranquil seas. Any exile who rose
\nUp and demanded to return to her first love
\nYou would understand better than me, my eyes made of pearl<\/p>\n
\nDo you not put in a lined case? What I now dream
\nOf, the dark cetacean noise of my own heartbeat, all I could love
\nSince I have been here, much closer to nothing than you. My cry
\nIs the sound across the deep that creates. The sun rose
\nTo my ululation and if I turn away, only the battered moon<\/p>\n
\nAsteroid caught, or expelled with a mother\u2019s cry, her long, labored dream
\nLaid in her arms like roses. I am all, all I have left to love.<\/p>\n
\nSecond Prize<\/h2>\n
August Missions<\/h3>\n
\nmean except for
\nparents off somewhere working,
\nand my friend Paul,
\nwho had an ammunition collection
\nand also rockets\u2014kits with
\nshotgun shell sized cardboard engines
\nthat would send your balsa-finned tube
\nand payload out of sight until
\nthe red parachute bloomed\u2014sent his little sister\u2019s
\nfavorite Barbie almost into orbit as she screamed and
\ntore at his shirt tail.
\nBut when we all ran into a field of
\nweed stubble and recovered the doll, she was
\nscorched and smudged, silent, but still brave.
\nPaul\u2019s sister quieted, taking her back, and was from
\nthen on famous among her friends, who all
\nwanted to see the Barbie that never complained once
\nabout reentry or fire at the window.
\nPaul looking all important
\nas he headed back to control.<\/p>\n
\nThird Prize<\/h2>\n
Slippages<\/h3>\n
\nthat slips away. Words meld together
\nin the air, and soon he hears voices
\nspeaking of stars, those quickening seeds
\nin the soil of darkness that grow like ideas
\nin the leaves of the book he is reading. He turns<\/p>\n
\nIs this how it goes, he wonders, the mind passing
\nlike the moon through the slow slippage
\nof constellations? The pages open and close
\nlike butterfly wings, and before his astonished eyes
\nthe book rises up and flies back to the treetops<\/p>\n
\na ball of ice burning in space.<\/p>\n
\nHonorable Mention<\/h2>\n
Traveller<\/h3>\n
\nas I find the Easter moon tinged orange
\nand bloated behind branches.<\/p>\n
\non the Nile, with whisky inside me
\nand no-one to hear except the moon god himself,<\/p>\n
\nfor that\u2019s what he is, what his ancient names mean,
\nalluding to his nightly crossing.<\/p>\n
\nhe seemed to hang there, looking down on me,
\nwatching over, showing only as a bright smile;<\/p>\n
\nThe only sounds were the rhythmic throb of engine,
\nand river being sliced.<\/p>\n
\nand I could feel him turn,
\nbe on the move again.<\/p>\n
\n