Winning Poem 2026
I Dated an Ex-Communist
by Iain McLure
for Rosa (1972 – 2021)
Her holidays were Party camps
with views of Loch Lomond,
peeling spuds for fifty
and hill walks in the rain.
Home was a house of books
in Dennistoun. No telly.
Important men from unions
talked long past her bedtime.
Her mother taught languages,
her father sociology:
engaged intelligentsia.
Her brother was forbidden
from joining the Boy Scouts.
A Handful of Earth
was always on the stereo.
She sang The Workers’ Song
(aged nine) to delighted aunts.
She told me, in bed,
how the rhythmic clatter changed
when trains crossed
to the DDR.
And how Braunkohle
smelt of sugar (burnt),
and how the Plattenbau
looked nicer than the Red Road Flats.
How Pioneer Republic ‘Wilhelm Pieck’
had pines at the lakeside,
water cold as Arran
and a boy from Cuba.
After an excursion
(by Ikarus autobus)
to Berlin and the Pergamon
she found herself speechless
in front of the Ishtar Gate.
Too high and too blue
in cobalt oxide glaze,
too many golden lions,
imperious and snarling,
for any mind to measure.
Like everything since ’89.
Other shortlisted poems are:
Neon Lullaby
by Manju Devi
The city breathes in violet hues,
A hum of static in the damp night air.
Reflected lights in shallow pools,
A jagged skyline drawn with care.
A siren wails, a lonely ghost,
Tracing the veins of asphalt streets.
Where shadows gather, fading most,
In alleys where the silence meets.
We chase the glow of hollow screens,
Like moths to an electric flame.
Lost inside our woven dreams,
Where every face begins to look the same.
The rain falls down like liquid glass,
Washing the dust of a frantic day.
We watch the speeding headlights pass,
And hope the morning finds a way.
Beneath the glare of endless bright,
We close our eyes and learn to sleep.
Cradled by the artificial light,
In promises we cannot keep.
Good Hands
by Tina Siderholm
He has good hands, by which I mean
the way they cradle the reins,
How conversation feels between
his fingers and the horse’s mouth.
He never pulls the horse up short,
never yanks the snaffle. For the tongue
and lips to yield, he must not lie,
not lose his temper. He must
never have an off-day. That mouth
is full of pink, fleshy secrets;
tender, from every time
hands threw a tantrum.
His hands are dark red plums.
Knuckles bruised and overripe.
I am unbridled as I watch them.
Willingly, I take the bit.
The metal heats in my mouth.
Ghost
by Graham Taylor
He still has bad days.
Days when he’s haunted by the thought
it would be better if he’d died.
When he thinks his better self did die,
because he’s turned into this zombie,
bone-tired, brain-dulled, mired in lethargy.
Less undead than non-alive.
When he’s haunted by the phantoms of sounds, colours, words
that once inspired him, but have mysteriously faded,
turned spectral, gone to dust.
When he tells himself he can’t die yet
because he can’t afford a funeral.
When he fears the cancer that left his body
is now eating into his mind.
Days when he feels too spooked to write about dying
in the first person, in case that makes it happen.
When he pretends to act as his own ghost writer,
rather than risk becoming a ghost.
Chore
by Suzi Mezei
Dogged, she gathers the line’s wash,
fingertips pinch wooden pegs,
sun seeps through her reaching
form, burrows into bones,
nestles safe and when she comes
inside to fold with roughened hands,
the skins we’ve shed a thousand
times, those pilled, wrung, renewed,
she brings with her the warmth
the sky left behind. And into home
comes light, where darkness clogged
the rooms, it dissipates, the brackish
seas inside our heads evaporate.
I see clearly for a time, as she
navigates and clears, brings an order
of sorts to all things, a composed
niche in a wider unkempt world, her
half-read book, roosted on a chair,
the pages ruffled like egret wings
by gusts of autumn air that invite
themselves through windows opened
wide. I know then that she was born
to soar but chose for our sake
this ordinary, earthbound life.
Helen Cox
