Organised by

Guernsey Literary Festival

Sponsored by

Specsavers

Supported by

Guernsey Arts

Poppy Bristow, Alderney

2nd prize: Channel Islands’ Poetry
Poems on the Move & Poems on the Buses Exhibitions

Where are your architecture critics now

At midnight I am a resident of myself soft and yellow as the butter I craved for five years and fearing collapse into my own foundations. My wife keeps the island wrapped around her, singing as she sleeps: On a nearby latitude a bunker has been built viewed south you call it gratitude viewed north you call it guilt. If only. Up on the hill, away from home’s carrion I bite the useless blade of my pencil. A decade of keeping the perfect doll’s house for this. If I could laugh I’d call it modern but the concrete fills my mouth like a brace. The question bites my dreams again and again. Bullets spat from the gun-hard face of a commandant I have never seen. I shan’t go back to bed.