Cardiff International Poetry Competition

 First Prize Winner - Giles Goodland

Giles Goodland has had a number of books published, from a variety of presses, these include: Near Myths (Oystercatcher, 2010), What the Things Sang (Shearsman, 2009), The Brimstone Worm (No Press, 2008) Capital (Salt, 2006), The Brimston Worm (Kater Murr's Press, 2005), A Spy in the House of Years (Leviathan, 2001), Overlay (Odyssey, 1998), Littoral (Oversteps, 1996), Objects on Hills (Frogmore press, 1996). He works in Oxford as a lexicographer, and lives in West London with his wife and children (a lot of his writing is done on the train). Giles also writes academic papers on Early Modern language, poetry, and lexicography.

The Bees

We sleep in our pinholed shells, then
are speed or seed cameras,
pursuing a faint ascent over
the programmed grass where
are those age-old golds
the mountains whethering
and music fragmenting ahead

the songs in us sweep down loud
canyons and stack in flower-
heads of willow-herb leaning
hard on the untwined song
chief among us is one who dances
a name around corners,

run of the million the plant-planets
explode language, each one a new

understanding of the rain to
make a rope and make a fist,

we tangle into thirstless thistles,
its mud-bronze weaponry
flow coldswarms, warmscolds

each of us a furlined pilot in helicopters
the naked eye makes invisible

on the flower's ironwork landing-platform
we extend our feeding nozzles and get
a free paint job thrown in
then knock down the sky, one word at a time.