John Tripp Award for Spoken Poetry

Potter Pots Gold from Poetry Competition

Clare Potter was awarded the title of the best performance poet in Wales this week at the final of the John Tripp Award for Spoken Poetry. Judges Hannah Jones, poet Philip Gross and John Tripp trustee Jean Henderson said the decision was a difficult one to make but they made the right choice in the end. The event took place on Wednesday at the Celebrity Restaurant at St David’s Hall, Cardiff.

The final is the culmination of a month’s worth of regional heats which took place around Wales in Swansea, Cardiff, Wrexham, Anglesey and Aberystwyth. Three contestants went through from each heat and met in Cardiff to battle it out for the title of the best performance poet in Wales and the prize money of £500. Under strict surveillance, the competitors had five minutes to perform their best work in front of an audience made up of their competitors and poetry fans. Ifor Thomas compared the evening and said that in the years of his association with the competition he had been a contestant, judge and now an MC, and that competing was hardest by far.

The finalists were, in alphabetical order, Nicolas Blandford from Wrexham, Neil Clarke from Swansea, Martin Daws from Anglesey, Viki Holmes from Swansea, Ron Meldon from Swansea, Nessa O’Mahoney from Anglesey, Gwyn Parry from Anglesey, Clare Potter from Cardiff, John Prior from Cardiff, Gareth Roberts from Wrexham, Alan Roderick from Cardiff and Eabhan Shuileabhain from Wrexham.

The prize is awarded in memory of John Tripp, a great celebrity on the literary scene in Wales before his death. Run since 1988, previous winners have included Ifor Thomas, Mike Davies and last year’s winner Emily Hinshelwood.

Introducing Clare:

After ten years in the Deep South, Clare was driven home by mosquitoes. She lived in Mississippi for three years where she earned an MA in Afro-Caribbean literature. She then moved to New Orleans where, the for last seven years, she taught, wrote and learned to live at a slower pace.

Throughout school and college Clare competed in Urdd and National Eisteddfodau; she thinks this helped with projection and learning to make her body and voice become the poem. She was first published when she moved to the United States. She believes that the dislocation of living away from Wales brought a new way of thinking about Wales, culture in general, and of thinking about herself.

Shortly after september 11th, Clare decided to return to Wales and follow writing. She teaches part time in a high school and in Cardiff Centre for Lifelong Learning so that she can devote real time to writing and learning about the craft. She belongs to the Red Poets and has recently finished the Academi and literaturetraining programme Touchpaper where she learned to teach creative writing to socially excluded children. 

The Winning Poems

Ladyfly

Of course, Miss Holiday enters
through the back door.
Puts on cherry lips
in a broken mirror, dusts
ivory powder on her neck.
Her white dress, an irony:
the pins that hold her together
stick, and make her bleed. But Bille belts

out her soul. She hollers
the pain in a "better watch out little brown eyes, if you’re wise"
and the white ears that listen think she means
low down dirty watch out. Even so,

like the underground railroad, she transports
the spirit of balck and white from blue
to you know where
while the dancer smoulders in the pit and rises up
rises up with a smoky "oh year, baby, sing it to me baby."
And Billie smiles gardenia smiles and sashays
her hips wile her insides crave
another kind of demon. 

In Search of . ..

Forget bible-black coal
and apocalyptic aches
from pock marked hills in Swansea.
Enter, a Bargoed boy
with a visa in his back pocket
for Tongwynlais and a belligerent
bluntness on ramshackled Wales.
Here, a culture broke, in the modernist sense,
And he trudged muck
to find his benevolent country
amongst shambled streets and churches
barbwired shut with brambles.
He banged through history books,
reeking of the museum.

Before the taking of apricot sponge and pink gin
or an acid drop from a flat tin.

Perhaps he can be found
squashing a Woodbine with tangerine-tipped fingers
walking the wrong way
up the A470, rooting
for the forge
where words
hissed and hardened.