Announcing the New Beginnings Poetry Competition winner

We’re delighted to announce the winner and runner-up of the New Beginnings Poetry Competition, selected by the CBC team and award-winning poet Anthony Anaxagorou from the 500+ budding poets that submitted their powerful poems in response to the theme 'New Beginnings'.

The winner of the prize is Trey Montague with her poem 'Mantra'. Trey has been awarded £500 and free place on our new Writing Poetry course led by Anthony Anaxagorou.

The runner-up is Minying Huang with their poem 'However Many Tomorrows Away'. Minying has won a free place on our Writing Poetry course.

We are pleased to be publishing the winning and runner-up poems on this blog, and hope you will find them as captivating as we do.

TREY MONTAGUE, winner

Writing poetry and novels around midwifery shifts replenishes me. This life-enhancing addiction began between philosophy degrees. My Yorkie takes me on coastal walks where I tease out ideas. Family, friends and the BXP podcast encourage me to reach for recognition. I recently submitted my novel, Their Hidden Five Percent, to agents.

Mantra 11.10 am: i am a runaway wife I iron your shirts, and air the rooms of whisky, cigars, my life’s blood. 3.10 pm: i am a runaway wife My suitcase glares obese with dreams, virgin jeans and socks photos of my peach-faced boys Mother’s bequeathed ring the costume watch I stole last spring. 5.03 pm: i am a runaway wife I check the bedroom for things to abandon: chequered scarves with pasts to match tights with unwelcome ladders used to climb my thighs your bloody body, stiff on the bed i fantasize. 5.50 pm: i am a runaway wife The front door clunks, dead on time my reflex smile appears yet, still, you heave your crimson rage into the bedroom onto the bed into me. Through vodka armour i acquiesce to your sweat and spit and slithering. 10.10 am: i am a runaway wife My mobile sings: the station taxi has arrived. I shall fly in a hot air balloon climb a mountain in noon sunshine sleep on a bed of gentleness… but then there’s a bang and a slap! I turn, to discover the mail, just the mail 11.10 am: i am a runaway wife My guilty ticket flutters in the train conductor’s hand he hesitates clips the wing. Spring leaves on trees speed past.

MINYING HUANG, runner-up

Minying Huang grew up in Cambridge, UK. Their work appears in wildness, Palette Poetry, Electric Literature, and elsewhere. They are a doctoral student in the Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages at the University of Oxford and a Barbican Young Poet. Photo by Robert Taylor (www.taylor-photo.co.uk)

However Many Tomorrows Away, or a Kindness of Shears Buries a Conflict of Breath I Silvered blades carry teeth, set chattering into shade—turns of sky and phrase either side of the window, dusking graph paper tiles, kitchen stool, makeshift shawl. The evening eased open, like a notebook; the room lined pencil expectation, then ink like I trust in these hands, though I never did pride in their patience until this moment, kind of like how I learned to love language too late. I thought her hands spelled the end of the world in my hair. I thought I didn’t want to ‘look like a boy’. Tonight, I wish for the shape of my desire to fall in love with the bravery of bare shoulders, the air around your nape one tomorrow, outside the playground; to love that child who lets their own laughter come last, die first— break form. II I have only the lightness of collarbone and shoulder blade breath—the lift of the spine, grace of the head—as oath, and it is enough.

Thank you to all the poets who entered our first-ever poetry competition. We were blown away by your striking originality and the quality of work submitted. We hope that you'll join us for our inaugural Writing Poetry course, which begins Thurs 17 Feb.

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TREY MONTAGUE, winner

MINYING HUANG, runner-up

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