The Kent & Sussex Poetry Society

Third prize in this year’s Open Poetry Competition was awarded to she doesn’t like his talk, by Kay Syrad.

Kay Syrad is a former Poetry Editor of the longstanding journal Envoi and has written many reviews and articles. Her fourth solo collection is forthcoming with Cinnamon Press later in 2025. Other publications include the eco-poetry anthology Wild Correspondings: an eco-poetry source book (with Clare Whistler), an artists’ book with land artist Chris Drury, Exchange, and her own art-text, work of the lightshipmen:1000 tasks, is held in the permanent collection of the National Maritime Museum.

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she doesn’t like his talk

of saffron yellow being equal parts gamboge
   and gallstone and alights instead on wax yellow
like the larvae of the large water beetle   or semi-
   opal or the greenish part of a nonpareil apple
see how it takes your mind off difficult things
   what is nonpareil   for example   is it anything
we can see    whatever it is    it’s on her lips    it presses
   on the inside of her lips    this part of the apple
the question is    what is it possible to take    what is left
   after that is taken    what is the path when the pure
thing    the essential thing    is taken and returned
   broken    an unrivalled taking    when the autumn sun
is setting over the path    gilding the crying leaves

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Kit Fan, our competition judge, commented:

The almost-sonnet plays with the instability of colour and expands it towards multiple types of ambiguity – whether it’s a word or species. The erotic tension, bound up with biblical echoes, is handled with wit and care. The same applies to the tug of war between take and return, what’s intact and broken.  The poem is taut and self-assured.