Winner: Release your inner poet

To coincide with Poets Paint Words II, the Newcastle Region Art Gallery hosted a poetry competition, inspired by the above painting by Tim Storrier. We received over 170 entries into the competition, and 11 winners were chosen by poet and University of Newcastle academic Maria Freij to receive book prizes courtesy of the Sydney Writer's Festival.

The winners were: David Swain, Amelia Filmer-Sankey, Jan Dean, Po Yu (Eric) Wang, Anne B Udy, F Lucero, Gail Hennessy, Caitlin De Pater, Claire Williams, Jake, and Robert Henderson.

Below is one of the winning poems.

Fire Stories (after Tim Storrier)

Claire Williams

An elegant fire, this, unspent

Assured and centre-stage

The log of ember extended

Bedded in calm landscape

Fire is the artist’s story

And I have my own to tell.

My fire was different, unseen and lacking beauty

Smoke only, silence, a monster sun

And just a clumsy girl to tell it.

First day of high school

Evacuated to the beach, we tried to breathe

Not home safe til evening, astonished by the world.

My father, not a religious man,

Sacrificed much (a nightly ritual)

Eyes bright, cheeks aflame, alone:

Newspapers, cartons, clothing

His wedding certificate, charred but saved

(My mother thinking it

Better to marry than to burn.)

In the shadow of Mt Wellington

Our house froze, and us in it

Save only the lounge room - Tierra del Fuego

Ablaze with roaring heat

Roasting, I disrobed, moaned, begged relief

No use – the Inferno forbade escape.

My friend, lately returned to Hobart,

Writes of drowned worlds

Recalling Lake Pedder and lost dreams.

School is gone now, and my father, and the house

But looking at this painting

I remember fire and know it still.