Inspired by the writer's experience of missing out on his son after his son moved from the UK to Australia, the poem won this year's £5,000 national poetry competition.
Fiona Larkin's poem “Absence” has grammar and was chosen from almost 22,000 entries.
“The odds are so high that it feels like a lottery win,” Larkin said. When she called on the news, she felt both “distrust” and “oddly buoyancy – a floating sensation of something going on.”
After her son moved to Brisbane, Larkin was “really surprised” at how much she missed him. “I rarely write about my kids. I think they each have one poem now,” Larkin said. Her son had not read the poem until he learned that Larkin had won the competition. “He's happy for me. I think he's probably a little embarrassed, too.”
The poem incorporates the Finnish language that Larkin read when his son moved in before he went to Helsinki last summer. Her poems play in the crazy cases used to express absence and added suffixes -tta or -ttä To a noun. “I'm really interested in how knowledge in other languages sheds light on English,” she said.
Larkin's debut collection, Rope of Sand, was published in 2023. She also publishes two pamphlets, butterpie capacity and breathtaking. Winning the competition “gives more confidence in future writing in terms of experimentation and testing new things.” She is working on a second collection.
All poems were read anonymously by a judge board that includes Romaline Ante, John McAuliffe and Stephen Sexton.
Matt Bernard was selected as runner-up, earning £2,000 and third place went to Sorel Briggs, who received £1,000. The top three poems will be featured in the Spring 2025 issue of the Poetry Society Journal. Review of the poem.
The seven acclaimed poets, who won £500 each, are Yong Yu Hwang, Lee Napper, Hannah Perrin King, Leslie Sharp, Chris Beckett, Kit Buchan and Andrew Dennison.
Past winners of the contest include Carol Ann Duffy, Cinead Morrissey, James Berry and Tony Harrison. Last year, Imogen Wade received an award for poetry inspired by her experience being robbed in New York. The competition will open next in June.
There is a grammar for absenteeism
I'm learning to use Bessive
As if I was a Finnish
To show that I miss
It's part of me
The loss is structural.
After the newsletter promotion
Suffix -tta Turn the words
in a shadow of itself.
Empty matter,
The light blows it.
I think of Moonshine,
bottle of Koskenkorva,
Finnish national sake,
Renamed Koskenkorvatta
When there's no left.
KoskenkorvattaI groan.
ItkinSyyttä means
“I cried for no reason.”
But when there are no children
There's a good reason.
tonight ItkinSyyttä.
If I participated -tta To my son
That prevents me from writing this –
Whether it's a sonata or a sonnet
But of course,
A little song I long for.
Thank you to Diego Marani of Koskenkorvatta.
