JOHN McGIVERING WRITING PRIZE 2025 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.
2nd 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 3rd 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 7th 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.