Poem

A poem I wrote has won first prize in the 2009 Fish Publishing writing contest!

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, what, you write poetry? Because that's what everyone says. And then they take a step backwards in case I bust a rhyme in their face and laden them with the weight of my childhood.

Well, I don't usually write poetry — at least I hadn't done since my (largely uneventful) childhood — but I did this year when I moved back home after my trip to America. Yes, it must have been living with my parents again that drove me to verse. That, and my short-lived busking career in Belgium, when I got fed up of waiting for someone to throw a euro at my head and I entered a writing contest in an attempt to do something constructive with my unemployment. And now I've won! First prize for my poem and runner-up for a one-page story — I am simultaneously honoured and flabbergasted.

The second thing people say when I tell them is, well, what's this poem about? And that's when I take a moment to think of my friend, an actual poet, who once said to me that there are really only two preoccupations in life; one is love, of course, and the other is death. And I thought long and hard for a while — love or death, love or death, biscuits or cake, love or death? — until I finally concluded that this poem must be about both, seems it's about thinking I was in love, and then thinking maybe I wasn't.