Note from Events Poets UK, organisers of Lennon Poetry Competition

Liverpool Lennon Poet 2010

Paper Poet 

Jaki McCarrick

The Beatles Story are proud to announce that the Liverpool Lennon Poet 2010 was a fantastic success.

Jaki McCarrick was declared as the first ever winner of the Liverpool Lennon Paper Poetry competition by Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy.

The glittering ceremony was held on Saturday the 6th of November in the Sir Paul McCartney Auditorium at Lipa (Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts.)

May I personally thank everybody who supported the event and encouraged such an amazing rersponse.

I enclose a copy of Jaki McCarick's deservedly winning poem

Roger Cliffe-Thompson

Competition organizer

eventpoets.co.uk

"In my poem ‘The Selkie of Dorinish,’ I imagine John and Yoko living on the island of Dorinish in Clew Bay, Co. Mayo. Lennon purchased this island in the '60s. I imagine an unusual arrangement for the couple in which John is a shape-changing seal. I rarely enter poetry competitions but I got a strong feeling for this poem after coming across an article on Mayo by Tamasin Day-Lewis in Cara, the Aer Lingus magazine. Like a lot of writers, I am often at my most creative when travelling about." Jaki McCarrick

The Selkie of Dorinish

She has come to love meadowsweet,

and rubs its Germolene smell

into her sallow skin.

In the evenings she gathers wingnuts

for her new artwork

and makes eyes and beady lines

from black bluebell seeds.

Around the cottage are the trees

I planted as seedlings in ‘67:

Spanish oak, a row of limes and elder,

and everywhere the stark green water –

on which, at night,

the mainland throws

its gold and amber elvers.

Sometimes ships will stop for stones

for ballast on the western beach.

Once a sailor saw me

changing from my wet-suit;

then Yoko came and we three sat together

drinking, then watching

the grey Atlantic skies

burst open with light.

There is an island for every day

of the year in Clew.

And here we should have come

after she’d had her New York premonition.

But better late than never.

She keeps the house now

and I the sea around it.

In winter she collects her kindling

in the morning,

wearing lambswool boots

that make no sound.

If out, I’ll cast an eye across and at Croagh Patrick

then watch the mist fall over Inishcuttle,

thick as sealskin on the reeling sea.

Jaki McCarrick 2010