Hour of Writes is a weekly, peer-reviewed writing competition. Enter now for a chance to win, and to receive personal feedback on your entry.

Editorial

18th September 2018

Deciding on a theme for Hour of Writes is a tricky business. It must be precise enough to inspire writers to create pieces with clear connections to the theme, but broad enough that each entry will be unique. Of all things Attack And Receive could have been inspired by, it came from a playing card in the franchise that dominated my childhood: Yu-Gi-Oh. With such an aggressive phrase, I was hoping for war, embittered couples, and intrigue. I was delighted to find all this, alongside some whimsy.

I was immediately drawn to Entry 3155, which explores a situation too many of us will be familiar with. It reminds us that those who suffer from violence often turn to violence, that this cycle is not easily broken. Entry 3155 also shows that there can be a lot of power in simple language.

Entry 3160, Red Poppy Boy (gets what’s coming to him), has a lovely rhythm that drives the reader through a story of addiction and consequence. This can be seen especially in the second stanza, with: ‘an A1 stealer / all state receiver / a total syringe believer’. Successfully employing rhythm always makes a poem more compelling.

With Entry 3163, we see a regular structure and rhythm used to great effect. The images were very vivid, essential for communicating a story with such a degree of movement and as many changes in scene. I particularly enjoyed the shift in scale in:

‘Zipping through the midges and the dragonflies / We crest the spikes and fall into a murderous scrum’,

making the poem more dynamic and cinematic.

For me, Entry 3159 was the obvious winner. Gentle and concise, the piece takes us ‘inch by inch’ through a race. The poem is dense with imagery, and it is a credit to the author that they evoked such a strength of feeling in me with so few lines. I keep returning to:

‘The last water gone / Like legs / with nothing left / except blisters, cramp, / tiredness beyond enduring’,

drawn by its subtlety of rhythm and simplicity of language.

Thank you to everyone who entered. Judging this competition was a wonderful excuse to sit down, have a cup of tea, and immerse myself in varied poetry and prose. You each responded to the prompt differently, making this process an absolute pleasure. I hope you all continue to write great work for Hour of Writes, and for yourselves.

****

About The Judge

Jack Cooper works at the University of Oxford, in a laboratory that uses the sexual courtship of fruitflies as a model to understand core features of development and behaviour. His poetry has been longlisted for the National Poetry Competition, and shortlisted for The New Poets Prize and Segora Poetry Competition amongst others. Stephen King, Final Fantasy, and K-Pop are the great loves of his life.

You can find him on Twitter at @JackCooper666, and on Instagram at @JackCooper0696

Ephemera

Jemmie was never silent.

The moment she was born, she made her presence known with wails and squeals, gurgles and hiccups. Even in sleep, she murmured and sighed. There was never any danger of losing her or forgetting her. I always knew what she was doing and where she was. She wasn’t an unhappy or disruptive child, just always making some kind of noise. She wasn’t even all that loud, just constant. She existed in the world and she made sure the world knew it.

The noise of Jemmie quickly became the soundtrack to my life. Part of my attention was always fixed on her, tuned to her frequency. It got so that, when we were apart, I would find myself straining to catch a hint of her voice amongst the background noise of wherever I was. The unconscious effort would release with a physical sense of relief as soon as I returned to her orbit and could hear her once more.

That’s the worst thing. That straining is now constant, and it will never be relieved again.

The first time I came back to the empty house, the silence was oppressive. It pushed down on me like a smothering blanket I couldn’t fight my way out from under. I wanted to shatter that silence, to scream and cry, to rage against it and exert some control. Anything not to be left alone in those still, quiet rooms. But I could not produce a sound. I opened my mouth to pour forth my emotions, but they wouldn’t come out. The silence stuffed itself down my throat and trapped all my sounds within me.

Jemmie would never laugh or speak again, so neither would I. The house would stand as a monument, forever in silence because it would no longer echo with her noise. And I would stay in it, frozen in time and space. I have made my choice to remain silent in the face of the void of my existence, which no longer has Jemmie in it. I am wrapped in my failure to promote and protect her precious voice, and so I have sacrificed my own.

Silence is my penance, my only companion now that Jemmie is gone.