Mist and Mountain Residency & Gerard Rochford Poetry will be publishing a selection of poems from the competition entries that were Highly Commended by Dr Wayne Price.
We hope you enjoy them –
HIGHLY COMMENDED POEMS
๐๐ถ๐ฟ๐ฑ๐๐ฎ๐๐ฐ๐ต๐ถ๐ป๐ด ๐ช๐ถ๐๐ต ๐ ๐ ๐๐ฎ๐๐ต๐ฒ๐ฟ – ๐๐ถ๐ป๐ฑ๐ ๐ฉ๐ถ๐ป๐ฐ๐ฒ๐ป๐
T๐ต๐ฒ ๐ฆ๐ฝ๐ฎ๐ฐ๐ฒ๐ ๐ช๐ฒ ๐๐ผ๐ป’๐ ๐ข๐ฐ๐ฐ๐๐ฝ๐ – ๐ก๐ถ๐ธ๐ถ๐๐ฎ ๐ฃ๐ฎ๐ฟ๐ถ๐ธ
๐ง๐ต๐ฒ ๐๐ผ๐ป๐ฒ๐๐ผ๐บ๐ฒ ๐๐ผ๐๐ฏ๐ผ๐๐ – ๐ข๐๐ฒ๐ป ๐๐ฎ๐น๐น๐ฎ๐ด๐ต๐ฒ๐ฟ
๐ฆ๐ถ๐ ๐๐ฒ๐ฒ๐ป – ๐๐ป๐ถ๐๐ฎ ๐๐ผ๐ต๐ป
๐ช๐ฎ๐ถ๐๐ถ๐ป๐ด ๐ฆ๐๐ฎ๐ด – ๐ฆ๐ฎ๐ฟ๐ฎ๐ต ๐๐ฒ๐ฎ๐๐ฒ๐๐น๐ฒ๐
๐๐ป๐ถ๐๐ต๐ฏ๐ผ๐ณ๐ถ๐ป – ๐ ๐ถ๐ฐ๐ต๐ฎ๐ฒ๐น ๐ฆ๐ต๐ฎ๐ป๐ป
Doing ๐๐ฎ๐บ๐ถ๐น๐ – ๐ฆ๐ฎ๐บ๐ฎ๐ป๐๐ต๐ฎ ๐ฆ๐ฎ๐บ๐ฎ๐ธ๐ฎ๐ป๐ฑe
๐ฆ๐น๐ถ๐ฝ๐๐๐ฟ๐ฒ๐ฎ๐บ – ๐๐ผ๐ต๐ป ๐ฃ๐ฎ๐๐น ๐๐ฎ๐๐ถ๐ฒ๐
Ch๐ฒ๐๐ – ๐ ๐ถ๐ฐ๐ต๐ฎ๐ฒ๐น๐ฎ ๐๐ผ๐ฝ๐น๐ฒ๐ป


BIRDWATCHING WITH MY FATHER
Many days I would watch while you stood,
binoculars pressed to your face,
a full stop in our walk, rooting you in place.
While you twitched, I fidgeted to move on.
Birdsong was like hold music to my ears,
an unnecessary pause in conversation.
Waiting in the stillness of the wood,
I marked messages in the dust,
checked under logs for adders, found pill bugs.
If there was nothing to be seen
you would peel away, hands locked at your spine,
alert for what might be in the next tree.
If patience paid off you would bark out the find:
Nuthatch, Redstart. Warbler, Siskin.
You would hold me up to look and listen.
I was always unfocused, in the dark.
I never could catch a thing,
but a flash of gold on a retreating wing.
You read feathers like runes,
tuned to the songs like a wireless dial.
As we wandered you piped
the slow ribbon whistle of the Curlew,
the telephonic insistence of the Chaffinch.
I hear them again across the distance,
a familiar ring from a thicket, the click
as it comes through, the line no longer busy.
The world shrinks to one bird, finally.
The years telescope to fit in my hands,
and I raise them up to see.
ยฉ Cindy Vincent
* * *
Aฬฒbฬฒoฬฒuฬฒtฬฒ ฬฒCฬฒiฬฒnฬฒdฬฒyฬฒ
Cindy Vincent has had poetry shortlisted for the Wells Festival of Literature Poetry Prize and is soon to be published in the upcoming Roger McGough Poetry Prize Anthology, โIdentityโ. She lives and writes in Norfolk.

The Spaces We Don't Occupy
(For Hemant, 20-ish,
who passed away too soon)
One minute, you are a boy on the
edge
of quivering possibilities, the next
a speck of white light, a tear on
the face
of your mother, and all mothers
who have silently hovered around
you, quiet
maternal fortitude, warm cicadas,
in moving spheres, you know, like
mothers usually are.
I think of you, and the sheer vastness
you now embody, and would someone
please
tell me what becomes of spaces
that were, that used to be, and now
just aren't:
trapped air between hands enveloping
a brother in a hug, the chasm between
a handshake,
places that collect drops of sweat,
and vacuums that are pushed away
by moist, warm
breath? What becomes of it all?
ยฉ Nikita Parik
Nikita Parik holds a Master's in Linguistics, a three-year diploma in French, and another Masterโs in English. Diacritics of Desire (2019) is her debut book of poems, followed by Amour and Apocalypse (2020), a novel in translation. She is the recipient of the Nissim International Poetry Prize 2020 and was shortlisted for the Rama Mehta Writing Grant 2021.. She has been invited to read her poems at the Sahitya Akademi Multilingual Poets Meet and Sahitya Akademi Young Writer's Meet programmes. Her works have appeared in Rattle, U City Review, The Alipore Post, Vayavya, The Bombay Literary Magazine, Bengaluru Review, and others. She currently edits EKL Review.

The Lonesome Cowboys
Iโd arrived back home and without thinking
I leapt onto my fatherโs back and was carted
like a child, his arms my saddle. I was twenty.
He galloped through the house. Digging
my spurs in, I egged him out onto the prairie
of the concrete court for neighbours to witness.
I donโt know what prompted that sudden surge
of intimacy. I seized the reins tight, clung
like a rodeo rider. Nothing was said.
In that moment, we were fused, father and son,
neither of us aware of what we had done.
A man can say I love you without speaking
and youโre never the same again.
I dismounted. He rode off into himself.
ยฉ Owen Gallagher
Owen Gallagher โ Bio
Owen Gallagher was born of Irish parents in the Gorbals area of Glasgow. His most recent collection is "Clydebuit', Smokestack Books. 'She swept the litter out of my head' is forthcoming from Drunk Muse Press.

Sixteen
There was that day in May during study leave
when you asked if weโd like to go for a walk.
We packed cheese and ham sandwiches,
three oranges, some chocolate
and flasks of water and juice.
Weโd walked these fields
for more than sixteen years,
even so, you showed us a new path
from Kitleyknowe to Carlops.
We skirted Mill House, climbed
Patieโs Hill and watched the view steadily open โ
Lammermuirs and Moorfoots to the south-east,
Pentlands firmly under our feet.
You asked why the earth was spherical
and whether there was an easy
explanation for gravity
then turned, like the wheeling gulls,
to trace the line youโd taken winter sledging,
the place youโd baled out โ where hill
plunged to burn and fence wire.
You explained the qualities of snow,
how jump skis differ from slalom skis,
how, come winter, youโd travel to France,
train as a ski instructor.
We settled back in the wind-blown grasses,
absorbed the rare and sun-soaked afternoon,
listened to meadow pipits, crows, gulls,
the whisper of water under the bridge.
Your voice danced, light as the orange-tip
butterfly, newly emerged,
making us forget the journeyโs doubt,
uniting mother and father
with their last-born child,
their late-born boy.
ยฉ Anita John
Anita John - Bio
Anita is a published poet and playwright and runs wildlife writing workshops for RSPB Scotland Loch Leven. Her books include Childโs Eye (short stories and poems); Unveiled Secrets (playscripts with Oliver Eade); and Plays 1 with Borders Pub Theatre. She writes about family and nature and more of her work can be found at https://anitajohn.co.uk/

Waiting Stag
Mist tissue-wraps the fields and sky,
as my father and I drift down the lane,
his stick tapping out our pace.
A herd of deer scissor across
the golden stubble beside us,
bare-bladed by late autumn sun.
They reach a stone wall, leap over
without breaking their shared stride,
until only one hesitant fawn is left.
On the other side of the boundary,
the stagโs antlers fork the horizon,
millennia of earthly instinct
condensed into each bated breath,
as he waits for his youngest
to join the rest.
I place my hand on Dadโs arm,
as if to steady him.
ยฉ Sarah Leavesley
Sarah Leavesley - Bio
Sarah Leavesley is a prize-winning poet, fiction writer, journalist and photographer, who thrives on creativity and loves being outdoors in nature, walking, cycling or simply observing. Website: www.sarah-james.co.uk.

Inishbofin And seeking that lost summer light I set outย along the Low Road with my two daughters and my son, a cool breeze cleansing our faces. ย All ears for the corncrake, we passed by the slumbering inn,ย then rose through banks of fern, haze of fuchsia, and what Iโd later read was wild thyme and hogweed and red clover. ย On a swell of the narrow lane we sailed over the bogย then followed the dune grasses to a small bay. This is it, I said. No, this is definitely it!ย ย We stepped down onto the sand like moonwalkers and stared at the oceanโs glinting as if weโd always kept inland. There, I said, beyond where the waves are breaking,ย ย but not too far out, I asked your mum to marry me. I donโt know how I got her in, it was freezing,ย and afterwards by those bare rocks we dressed again. ย And that little cafรฉ back there, we were the only customers. I remember we had big bowls of hot soupย and dreamed our wedding and our travels and our children, ย and now youโre here on Inishbofin and I love it that you love Inishbofin too. Your mum gifted me an island, and this same island I give to you. ย ยฉ Michael Shann Michael Shann โ Bio Originally from Yorkshire,ย Michaelย Shannย has had three books of poems published by the Walthamstow based Paekakariki Press:ย Euphrasy,ย Walthamstowย andย To London. He is a member of Forest Poets and works for the charity Carers UK. His forthcoming book,ย To London Two, will be published in 2022.ย www.michaelshann.comย ย ย ย

DOING FAMILY
Sometimes doing family is in the learning
to hurt and then move on without
being destroyed, the way good cooking
is in the negotiating with fire, manipulating
the tenuous lines between the simmered
and the seared, the raw and the burned.
I accept the love that makes me
small because blood is its own kind
of containing and the injuries of intimacy
are their own kind of branding. It is the necessary
violence that is also discipline, eroding
the self until less pours out each time.
ยฉ Samantha Samakande
Samantha Samakande - Bio
Samantha Samakande is a Zimbabwean poet currently based out of Bloomfield, New Jersey. She is a graduate of Allegheny College in Pennsylvania and is a junior editor for F(r)iction. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The American Journal of Poetry, Sugarhouse Review, Pif Magazine, Hobart, Gordon Square Review, and South Florida Poetry Journal.

* While we are unable to publish John Paul Davies entry 'Slipstream' at this time, we are delighted to share these details so you can find out more about his work.*
John Paul Davies โ Bio
Born in Birkenhead, UK, Johnโs poetry has appeared in journals including Banshee, Southword, Channel, Crannรณg, The Manchester Review, Maine Review and The Pedestal. Runner-up in the 2017 Waterford Poetry Prize, and longlisted for the 2018 National Poetry Competition, he helps run a creative writing group based in Navan, Co. Meath, Ireland (Twitter: @Bulls_Arse).

*Whilst we are unable to publish Michaela Coplen's entry 'Chest' at this time, we are delighted to share these details so you can find out more about her work.*
Michaela Coplen - Bio
Michaela is a poet and doctoral candidate at the University of Oxford. She earned her BA from Vassar College, where she served as a poetry editor for the Vassar Review. Her poems have been published online with The Atlantic and Poets.org, as well as in the Bellevue Literary Review and Up the Staircase Quarterly. She won the 2019 Troubadour International Poetry Prize, the 2020 York Poetry Prize, and was included in the 2020 Best New Poets anthology.