For our final fourth place winner, we have Fokkina McDonnell’s winning poem Interior with a Table. This is an ekphrasis piece inspired by Vanessa’s Bell’s painting of the same title, which you can view here.
Interior with a Table
For the mystery of black skirting boards,
for the deep brown shadows,
leaking slowly into the corner,
for the curtains, cut off so precisely
above the tiebacks that hold them,
for the spots, like hyena or leopard,
for the chair and its dark wood curving
and coiling like an octopus,
for the wooden table and light
reflected on it: sheets of grey paper,
for the flowers in the vase,
for whoever put them there,
not knowing the rule
of the superiority of odd numbers,
for the number of visitors who’ve
stood by the window and
remembered the hard facts
of the war they left behind,
for the buttery yellow of the wall
outside, for the red pantiles
captured in the glass rectangle,
for the army green,
for the round canopies of trees,
for the speed of marbles,
the hard sound when they hit,
for the hills, sky, and the water.
Fokkina McDonnell’s poems have been widely published and anthologised. She has three collections and a pamphlet. Fokkina received a Northern Writers’ Award in 2020 for Remembering / Disease, published by Broken Sleep Books. She blogs and features guest poets on www.acaciapublications.co.uk Fokkina now lives in the Netherlands.
The Kent & Sussex Poetry Society 