We ask our competition judges to award four equal fourth prizes each year. Here, The Weight of Things’ by Hélène Demetriades.
Hélène’s debut collection The Plumb Line was published by Hedgehog Press, 2022. She won the Silver Wyvern award, Poetry On The Lake, 2022, was longlisted in The National, shortlisted in the Bridport, and commended in the Ver and Ware poetry competitions, 2023. She was also highly commended in the Fool For Poetry Chapbook Awards, Munster Literature, 2023 & 2024. She has recently been published in Magma, The Interpreter’s House, Ink Sweat & Tears and The Marrow. She lives and works as a transpersonal psychotherapist in South Devon. @HlneDemetriades
___
The Weight of Things
For Fern
After levering yourself
into the hospital chair for a wash,
you instructed me to squeeze out
every drop of water from the flannel.
Your breast in my palm,
what surprised me was its weight.
Push harder, go right into my fanny,
you'd said, not wanting to leave
any part unclean.
Today, grasping the soft handle
at your shoulder, I carry you in
a shroud of felted pine-martens
playing under a white woollen moon.
By the grave’s mouth I let the coil
of hemp unroll and tighten
in my hands, and feeling the weight
of my love,
lower your body into the ground.
____
Kit Fan, our competition judge, said of this poem:
With unfiltered directness like a documentary, the poem records a trauma, while prioritising intimacy and cleanliness over pain and self-indulgence. The fabric of life collides sharply and full-throatedly – yet in such a careful pitch – with the fabric of death, unburdening a deeply felt memory onto page and back into memory.
The Kent & Sussex Poetry Society 