IN 2012 Ledbury Festival re-launched its poetry competition with a fantastic first prize of £1000 and a week at Tŷ Newydd the National Writer’s Centre for Wales.

Jeri Onitskansky, a Jungian analyst and poet, won first prize with her poem Ratified, of which judge Ian Duhig (former Forward prize and National Poetry Competition winner) said: “Apart from being clever, funny, syntactically imaginative and wonderfully-written, I admired enormously the way it incorporated the activity and process of writing poetry into its achievement.’ Philip Rush from Stroud came second with Brebis, and Linda Black was third with Time is of the Effervescence.

Jeri Onitskansky's 2012 Ledbury Poetry Festival Poetry Competition winning poem:

RATIFIED

You are desperate not to sully your poem with the colonoscopy
of sorts you’re performing on the dark the rat has left
for other savoury environs as, trembling, you shine a torch
into the farthest reaches of the oven – your husband saying
doing great, Honey, doing great inside the computer screen
perched on the counter – until at some interminably later date
in the week the rat dies across your silver plated cutlery
like someone’s lost toupée floating on a crest of silver waves.

You want to turn over a new leaf, move on to a new and better poem
but you can’t understand the ending yet, why you are standing there
a long time – the cooker incinerated and kitchen in ruins –
the rat has the daylight stuck in its fur and you want to say
it smells hysterical if that makes any sense at all, if that’s not
giving too much away, you’re thinking as by the grace of God
you raise its corpse with barbecue tongs and the long tail
of your mind scurries across the page and beyond.

OTHER PRIZEWINNERS

Young People:
First Prize – Flora de Falbe – Girl
Second Prize - Conor McKee – Premature Flight
Third Prize – Nicole Lai - Okay

Children:
First Prize – Mansi Rajani – The Fighting Temeraire
Second Prize – Emily Mainwaring - The Olympian
Third Prize – Rose Willis - A Recipe Of Love