We ask our competition judges to award four equal fourth prizes each year. Here, In Praise of Sap, by Prue Chamberlayne.
Prue Chamberlayne lives in London and France. A collection Locks Rust appeared in 2019, and a chapbook Beware the Truth that’s Manacled with erbacce-press (2022). That tackles the psychic underworld of racial experience, particularly regarding ‘whiteness’. A second collection Lizard Looks is forthcoming with Arc, and a pamphlet, Pendulum, addressing the father and son in a mixed heritage relationship, is longlisted with Dithering Chaps.
___
IN PRAISE OF SAP
Specks of white dot winter twigs,
buds erupt, then petals splay
until the window fills with froth,
pale pink-brown in earliest light
translates through cream to ivory,
as if from energy that’s sparked
and made to dance by sun’s first rays —
girl’s arms flung wide, a grand jeté.
Buttermilk transmutes to maple,
a tiger’s force is coiled to pounce —
green thrust will soon outpace the flare,
fierce voltage in the surge of sap
hauled by thirst of myriad leaves.
From seed the pattern is templated,
veins distinct as finger-prints —
white lines will feed pink hollyhock petals,
smooth-rimmed, divided, sometimes frilled,
shadows frolicking on each other —
just as I have my father’s nose,
my son his father’s eyebrow lift?
____
Kit Fan, out competition judge, commented:
Keenly observed, with tightly knitted diction that contrasts with the fluidity of sap, the poem investigates nature and its vital juice, while getting our nose close to the ground, to the process of quiet metamorphosis. We wonder what kind of poem it could have been, had the last two lines been reconfigured to something beyond human genetics. Having said that, it’s a question, not an answer that we are after, but what should the reader do if the question leans towards a particular answer?
The Kent & Sussex Poetry Society 