History

 

REPORT AND WINNING ENTRIES

BY JANET MONTEFIORE

For this year’s John McGivering Writing Prize, competitors were invited to submit poems on the sea, to be connected directly or indirectly with Rudyard Kipling. 41 poems were submitted and judged by myself, Mary Hamer and Sarah LeFanu. There were no submissions this year from Younger Writers. The poems submitted were  in general of a high standard, and a larger proportion were actually connected to Kipling than in previous years, when a majority of competitors  tended to ignore the rubric, focusing exclusively on the set topic. Deciding on the winners entailed lively discussion among the judges. 

First Prize: Estelle Price The Sea-Wife: A fresh, modern take on a Kipling subject, with striking imagery and emotional heft.

2^nd Prize: John Gallas Dangerous Writing: A finely crafted sonnet, rich in metaphor, that speaks not just to Kipling’s relationship with the sea but to his complex writing self.  Like The Sea-wife, this poem brilliantly evokes the liminality of the sea shore.

Joint 3^rd Prize:  Gail Lawler In the Wake of Courage:  A vivid poetic refashioning of Captains Courageous, bright with metaphor and simile.

Ray Beck:  Consequences A fine use of rhyme and rhythm to create a narrative argument that echoes Kipling in his best prophetic mode. 

Highly Commended: 

Denise Bennett The Loss of H.M.., Tweed: (after Rudyard Kipling)Adroit in applying Kipling’s ‘Widow-Maker’ to a family story of death at sea.

Michael Henry The Cherry Knocker Poignantly evokes a wander around Bateman’s, with Kipling in mind.

Jakob Savage American Admiral A skilful parody of RK’s colonialist verse, bringing it up to date.

 

THE SEA-WIFE

(after Rudyard Kipling)   

BY ESTELLE PRICE 

No ceremony, no exchange of rings.

You wore blue, I, black hot-pants,

my auburn hair salted by your touch.

Me, just a girl compelled by your spit

and froth, the way you heaved spume

onto naked rocks. My promise? Always

to be briny. Half a century I’ve followed you

from coast to coast, let you chill my toes

wrap waves about my waist. Even on days

when spray slapped my face, I never turned

towards the fields. I stayed despite

your rages churning love into a thousand

broken shells. Like driftwood at sunset,

I’ve waited for you to float me

onto your lap. Once I swam out,

let silken arms hold me up, almost allowed

my limbs to sink into your benthic bed.

Oh Ocean, I understand your need

to ebb, turn to other shores. I’ve never been

your only wife. Enough to linger

on the cliff, to know you’ll soon come

flooding back, strew fish at my feet, offer me

a necklace of weed. And now when hair

has turned as white as surf, when we both know

my arthritic body will part us first, I listen

for your song from a bench above the beach.

Soon my ashes will skim across your skin –

in death, never again left, as one, dissolved.

 

DANGEROUS WRITING

BY JOHN GALLAS

‘Our brows are bound with spindrift …’  (‘The Coastwise Lights’)

I paid a lot. It’s worth it. From my lawn

the bay’s long, haunted hall of drizzle fades

among the hills, whose chest-deep army wades

like giants into space. My thoughts are drawn

with every tide behind some sail that seeks

the earth’s bright edge; and far above the geese,

like ghosts of better men, approve my peace

in passing. No one comes here. Hammer-streaks

of sunlight forge the rocks. The sea runs bright

and rolls like milling steel. This age is dead:

I wait for wonders. When the sky turns red

and bloods my house, I go inside and write.

The spindrift whispers. Stars seem cold and near.

I plan the new world. Nothing stops me here.

 

IN THE WAKE OF COURAGE

(An ekphrastic response to Kipling’s Captains Courageous)

BY GAIL LAWLER

A greenhorn boy—tossed by sea-surge—

meets brine that etches truth

into tender palms. The deck

of the We’re Here becomes

a new cradle, salt-lullaby

rocking him awake.

Within each coiled rope,

within each salted gust,

he learns the ocean’s stern vow:

your worth is cast in nets,

tested by storms that do not wait

for a soul to ripen.

Here, men’s laughter cuts the squall,

fish scales glisten like chipped coin—

each shining flake a promise of

survival or defeat.

Flung by fate into the jaws of the sea,

he spins toward himself, reeled in.

Returning home, the boy is shaped

by maritime truths:

the wave that spares, the wave that strikes—

courage gleaned in the dark trough

where gulls cry, and all echoes

answer only to the deep.

 

CONSEQUENCES

BY RAY BECK

When the great ice sheets were melted,

As the world we know now warmed,

By the sea this land was belted,

When the English Channel formed.

It brought raiders and aggression,

Then a route for trade and contraband.

But though we claim possession

To the sea we owe the land.

The sea holds wealth and life galore,

That we plunder with never a thought.

With a greed and avarice as never before,

Soon the sea shall yield us naught.

It forms the clouds that beget the rain,

Which it spreads with a bountiful hand.

While in return we pollute and profane,

The sea that waters our land.

From the mighty mountain ranges,

To the farthest snow bound shore,

Ice melts as the climate changes,

Then flows to the sea once more.

Let us pray one day we may not find,

Our kingdoms are built upon sand.

When through the greed and folly of mankind,

The sea claims back the land.

We must heed the warning, lest we conjure the dawning

Of an age we can’t understand,

When with gales and tsunamis, the sea’s mighty armies

Storm the beaches and march on the land.

 

THE SEA-WIFE

BY DENISE BENNETT

(HMS Tweed was sunk by a German U-Boat on 7^th January 1944)

The old grey Widow-maker,

Kipling’s words,

is a phrase I say on rough days

when walking along the prom in Southsea;

drawn to the drama of the waves,

thinking of lives not saved.

It was the command of war

that made you leave

your wife, your new-born son,

the hearth acre, for promotion, more pay.

I read your words about the baby,

eight weeks old,

my brother, in your last love letter to my mother.

I expect you are quite busy washing

and feeding him. I wish I were there

helping you.

Next Christmas we shall

have everything, darling.

After the telegram,

came the Commodore’s letter.

There can, I fear, be no hope of survival.

Artificer duties in the engine room;

you didn’t stand a chance.

the ship sank in two minutes flat,

went down vertical in a plume of water.

In retelling her loss to me

she would sometimes say,

I often watched him swim at Hayling Island.

He was such a strong swimmer.

Perhaps he got away …

 

THE CHERRY-KNOCKER

BY MICHAEL HENRY

I tug the bell-pull at Bateman’s

and instead of Kipling’s kindly aunt

I think of my own aunt, white-haired,

wearing an apron from cooking.

A smell of caramel from the kitchen

reminds me of her baked rice pudding,

how I scraped off thin toffee sheets

and binged on second helpings.

I walk off the memory, stroll down

to the mill where there’s a museum

for millstone anoraks, water is

the great peace-monger of the mind.

But it has to be fresh-flowing water,

not the sea where he was fostered out

and where brave wooden boats rode

the shoulders of pall-bearing waves.

I weave in and out of thistles and brambles.

Back at the house, I tug at the bell-pull

hoping, like Kipling, for some kind of solace,

but walk away before anyone can answer.

 

AN AMERICAN ADMIRAL TO ENGLAND

BY JAKOB SAVAGE

It was your birth-pangs gave us life,

O England, whom our fathers scorned!

It was in patricidal strife

That Freedom’s paladin was born.

And from that day, our native Pride

(Which oft has worked our weal–orwoe)

Bids us attempt, at every stride

Your ancient glories to outshow.

Our blood was English; it was right

That we should love, as you adored,

The wind, the spray, the tense sea-fight;

The sponge, the slow-match, and the sword.

We sparred with you from our first hour;

“Fire as they bear!” our cradle-cry

And, having faced you in your power,

Grew bold Earth’s navies to defy.

But time and tide old wounds efface

(With pride, not hate, we show the scars)

And heart of oak was soon replaced

By steam and steel of modern wars.

As friends we faced the bitter blast

Of wolf-packs grim and Rising Sun

Your honor’d years you yet surpassed;

Of many laurels, this greatest won.

But in that hour, to us you passed

Your age-old style; “Lords of the Sea”

For Lloyd’s confessed, we owned at last

Full thirty million G.R.T.

Our men-o’-war now outnumber thine, and we occupy thy throne;

But we are only our father’s sons, and the glory is thine own.

A recording of Mark Paffard’s 2 July 2025 talk to the Society can be heard on the Society’s YouTube channel. Conservative Belief and the Imagination in Kipling’s Fiction

The talk given to the Society by Susan McMahon, Executive Director of the Landmark Trust USA, on 23 April 2025 is now available to view on the Society’s YouTube channel at https://youtu.be/0yUCVcD0ark?si=nmLImpnmKPFcLtYZ or below.

 

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