The Academi Cardiff International Poetry Competition

Runner-up - Heather Richardson

Heather Richardson thought she hated contemporary poetry until she had a Damascene conversion thanks to the Bloodaxe anthology Staying Alive. In May 2007 she was awarded the Edmund Cusick Poetry Prize, for her poem Southport. She is currently a distance learning student on the MA in Creative Writing at Lancaster University. Several of her short stories are included in Short Story Introductions 1 (Lagan Press). In 2000 she won the Brian Moore Short Story Award for The Walled-In Room, which was subsequently short-listed for the British Fantasy Awards. She is a freelance writer, teaches creative writing for the Open University and lives in Belfast.

Wedding at Sea

The facts of a ship
are fish-gut and diesel,
thran metal floors
laid out like a puzzle.

The bride wore sharkskin
and carried a mixed bunch
of bladderwrack, sea lace and dulse.

Bored now, she counts the rivets
that stitch the ship together.
Restless, she opens a door,

steps over the lip,
chimes the steps with her heels
like a scale descending,

till at last, here she comes
to the car deck.  Engines
tick in the half-light.

The air is carbon.
She could stroke it,
make a pattern.
Fingermarks.  Satin.