Cardiff International Poetry Competition

Second Prize-winner - Anna Wigley

Anna Wigley is from Cardiff and works for George Thomas Hospice Care. She has published two collections of poetry The Bird Hopistal (2002) and Durer’s Hare (2005) both from Gomer and a collection of short stories Footprints (Gomer, 2003). Anna has previously won the Mencap Prize (1998), the Robert Bloomfield Award, the Geoffrey Dearmer Prize (2000) and the Guardian Essay Competition (2001). A new collection of poems is due out in 2009.

Cuttings

Visiting Woolworths in mid-January
when my garden is a stew of wet soot and lank hair,
I stop at a bay stacked with boxes of Eden:
wistaria, honeysuckle and flowering currant
make eyes at me from their photographs -
plush, blowsy, and shameless with perfume.
I pick one up. And turn it round.
Inside is a stick like a bird’s leg.
One black withered leaf clings like old droppings.
At the top, a hair-strand of green pokes from the stick,
and from that hair-strand a fuzzed baby-leaf
the size of a lentil. That’s it.
I consider the pathos of this distance
between reality and aspiration.
Those photos are application forms for jobs,
advertising hoardings, the Saturday-night face
a girl puts on to get her man. I do it myself
each morning: carefully hide my twig and withered leaf
with an illusion of ripe blossoms.
I feel sorry for the orphaned wistaria,
its Oliver Twist scrappiness clinging on
despite cellophane wrap, strip-lights and no water.
So what if it’s a con. That sliver of pistachio
deserves a clod of wormy soil,
a place in the sun and rain. Not pity
but a leg-up is what that cutting needs.
I take it home like a new pet, excited.
In three months it has closed the gap
between reality and dream.