Josephine Abbott - winner of the 2006 Blinking Eye Poetry Competition
Josephine Abbott was born in Manchester, went to Sheffield University, but now lives in Derby. She has been published in anthologies and magazines such as Agenda, Acumen, Envoi, Frogmore Papers, Poetry Nottingham, Staple and others, and has had work commissioned for a number of poetry projects in the East Midlands region.
She has also won prizes in local and national competitions over the years, including the Peterloo Competition, the Blue Nose Poets, Lancaster LitFest, Derby Festival and a commendation in the 1999 National Poetry Competition. She reads and performs widely, runs poetry and creative writing workshops and was a founder member of Derby City Poets.
Josephine's prize is publication of her collection of poems, Trying not to Levitate. This will be launched on 7 December 2006 at the Literary & Philosophical Society in Newcastle upon Tyne, together with the anthology of commended poems, Night Balancing. The event begins at 6 pm. Josephine Abbott and two of the highly commended poets, Alan Franks and Mike Horwood, will be reading their work, together with several of the commended poets whose work appears in the anthology.
You can order the books by going to the catalogue page
Here is one of Josephine's poems:
To a cormorant on a rock
For all I know, you're still there
hung out to dry like a black swimsuit
and doing a decent impression
of the Angel of the North.
If there's a word for your stillness;
your willingness to hang motionless
in the face of the fidgeting sea
and unsettled clouds, I don't know it;
it's as if you've grown out of the rock
or are waiting to dissolve back into it;
you're offering your wing feathers
to the giant breathing of sea and air
as if immobility is a gift.
It's not for me to understand you;
there are no conclusions
you want me to draw from watching you.
I saw you on a rock in the sea
hanging your wings out to dry
that's all.
copyright Josephine Abbott, 2006.
Reproduced here by permission of Josephine Abbott, who asserts her moral right to be identified as the author of this work. No part of it is to be reproduced, stored in any sort of retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the author.
