We are delighted to announce the winners and runners up of our Halloween poetry competition! Thanks to everyone who entered. These poems faced some scary competition but in the end were the eeriest of them all. Sit down, relax, enjoy reading them and try to ignore the creaking of the door behind you…
Winners
Under 18: Falling For You by Rowan Beddows
Over 18: The Bone Man by Sarah Mills
Runners-Up
Under 18: Or Else by Anne Holloway
Over 18: The Púca by Eilish Fisher
Winners
Falling For You by Rowan Beddows
A mirage of leaves, all around,
Falling down, to the ground.
My dress swirls around, playing with the autumn wind,
Our picnic blanket, on the grass, rocks keeping it pinned.
We spin around, underneath the sun,
No one can disturb us here, hon.
In this collage of orange, yellow and red,
With birds soaring overhead.
Our song plays; We fell in love in October, it sings,
Blasting, blazing, we open up our wings.
Stay here,
My dear,
Underneath the autumn sky,
Listening to the birds fly by.
We huddle around the fire,
Our hearts swelling with desire.
Your hazel eyes shimmering with delight,
Always makes me smile bright.
And your lips curled in a smile,
Makes me lose my breath for a while.
Cocoa is passed between us,
“There will be no Halloween this year”, I hear you say, nevertheless,
We can still celebrate with sweets and costumes,
And songs and dancing all afternoon.
Afterall, Halloween is all about ridding evil spirits,
So don’t be sad my love, I’ll sing you the lyrics.
And maybe then you won’t be so down,
I never like to see you frown.
So I’ll visit you, I’ll dance with you, I’ll love you,
I’ll stick to you like gorilla glue,
This October.
And even when the masks hides your frown,
I’ll always know your furrowed crown.
I’ll come around,
Through the battleground,
To be with you,
On this beautiful October noon.
Rowan Beddows always dreamed of becoming a jellyfish timelord, traveling through space but decided writing would probably be easier to accomplish. In her spare time, she also likes to read, listen to music, and obsess over many things to the point her friends are getting quite sick of hearing about She-Ra, Jessie Paege, and Harry Potter. She lives in Tipperary with three crazy, spoiled kitties and three equally crazy siblings, her superhero mom, and her astronomical dad.
The Bone Man by Sarah Mills
All night long he is on the road,
Never looking back at his chattering load.
Sometimes you can hear the unnerving sound
Of his rickety ride hitting grids on the ground
And for a few moments he stops to stare,
Believing that some ribs lie there
But being mistaken carries on through the gloom
To crypt and grave, sepulchre and tomb.
His wrist is watchless for he is always at work
And no can see him through the mist and the murk.
Only the moonlight dares to fall on his teeth
As he floats over hill, highland and heath.
I look out of my window and wait patiently to see
Who drives this mobile ossuary
And I remember the words my mother used to tell me:
“Do not look for the bone man or he will look for thee.”
Sarah Mills is a 32-year-old aspiring poet and writer from Wiltshire with a bachelor’s degree from The Open University in German, History of Art & Classical Mythology. She writes poetry because it has the ability to express her deepest feelings and she wholeheartedly agrees with Victor Hugo’s statement that ‘words are the mysterious visitors of the soul’. She is thrilled to be one of the winners in this competition and hopes that you all enjoy reading her work as much as she enjoyed writing it.
Runners-Up
Or Else by Anne Holloway
Soldiers take to the streets.
‘No surrender, no retreat.’
Divide and conquer:
Pound on doors
In twos, or threes,
or sometimes fours.
‘Give us what we want,
(Or else)’,
They say.
‘Give us what we want, please,
(Or else)’
Their swords are drawn,
Faces masked,
Pistols pointed,
Broom handles clasped.
‘Give us what we want, please,
(Or else)’
Anna Holloway lives in Dublin with her Mum, Dad and younger sister. She likes art, reading, knitting and watching YouTube. She absolutely loathes decision making.
The Púca by Eilish Fisher
She steps through the treeline
over bracken and bramble,
burdock and cleavers.
He watches her bend her body
like a curled leaf,
green as honeyed sap rising.
He rolls his tongue to the sky,
sipping the spicy scent of skin,
as she pauses by a lone hawthorn.
She dips her hands to wetness
drinking in clear well water,
fights against the tearing gorse.
In shaggy purpose,
he shudders through mossed woods,
bows low by her side.
In faith she climbs
up and onto his muscled spine.
Eilish Fisher grew up on a farm in rural Vermont and moved to Ireland in 1998. After more than twenty years in Ireland, she considers herself both a Wicklow and Vermont writer. Her poetry has been published in Crannog Literary Magazine, Three Drops From a Cauldron, The Ogham Stone and Cailleach literary journals and in the anthology Writing Home; The ‘New Irish’ Poets, published by Dedalus Press. In summer, 2020 she won second place in the Ken Saro-Wiwa Poetry Competition and was also awarded a place on the Words Ireland Mentoring Programme for young adult and children’s literature. Her first children’s novel was short-listed for the Mslexia Children’s Novel Award in 2018. She received a master’s degree in early medieval Irish history and literature and a doctorate in medieval English literature from the National University of Ireland, Maynooth. Eilish lives in Glenmalure, County Wicklow.
We hope everyone is celebrating with a good book! We thought we would share with you what everyone on the Paper Lanterns team is reading this week. There are some fantastic YA reads here that we would recommend checking out. Let us know what you’re reading at the moment!
