We asked the judge of our 2024 Open Poetry Competition, Kathryn Gray, to award the fourth prize to four poems equally. One of these was “Blood and Men Shouting” by Vanessa Lampert.
Kathryn commented on Vanessa’s poem that:
“One of the great problems of poetry is that so often it must grapple with the big themes and hopefully provide some edification to the world – but if it deploys didacticism, then all is lost. ‘Blood and Men Shouting’ takes a familiar domestic scene and the HBO smash Game of Thrones to explore the seemingly relentless cost of toxic masculinity. It is a lightly worn (and charmingly weary) performance that all the same drives home its message with a rhetorical flourish: diminutio. Elegant touches abound in this clever and, despite it all, tender poem, from the portrait of a mother as benign tricoteuse (so benign, she falls asleep) to the absurdity of ‘an angry couple’ locking swords ‘over a dog’ to the vulnerability of the son both as baby and as man. I consider the state of geopolitics. If the measure of a quality poem is to be timely and for all time, then ‘Blood and Men Shouting’ triumphs – for the good.”
Blood and Men Shouting
Because I knit during Game of Thrones,
I’m clueless. A number of kingdoms
in bitter conflict, flow without ebb
in endless winter. My son says
If you want to keep up, don’t knit.
You’ll get used to it, Mum.
How he loves, is gentle.
Months from now, in a Netflix drama
where an angry couple lock swords
over custody of a dog,
my son will say There’s Ramsay Bolton
from Game of Thrones. He took Winterfell
from Theon Greyjoy, you remember, Mum.
How he loves, is gentle.
As a baby, he’d howl for hours, and whimper
when I tried to wash his face. Everyone said,
He’ll get used to it. He didn’t.
How little I know of the conflict
in his kingdom. How much there still is
to learn.
I fall asleep during Game of Thrones
and wake to new blood and men shouting.
My son will see when my eyes shut,
and record it so I don’t miss a thing.
How he loves, is gentle.
I’m doing my best to keep up.
The Kent & Sussex Poetry Society 