The George Crabbe Memorial Poetry Competition
1968 Crabbe Memorial Competition - First Prize
Adjudicators: Cyril Fletcher, Alan Dobson, Mrs M Bottrall

He lies quite still upon the orchard grass,

Under the apple trees, wild spirit of the woods

That would drop from the tall trees in gloom of evening,

The George Crabbe Memorial Poetry Competition
1967 Crabbe Memorial Competition - First Prize
Adjudicators: David Holbrook, Miss McCarthy, Mrs Ford

“We had a devilish long journey, getting here.

Last grain ship from Alexandria, split on Malta,

Every stick lost, but every man saved

The George Crabbe Memorial Poetry Competition
1966 Crabbe Memorial Competition - First Prize
Adjudicators: Mrs T. Williams, Frances Warner, Leslie Missen

Acknowledging your skill, I sometimes ponder

the nature of your own particular daemon

whose influence is clear but more uncommon

The George Crabbe Memorial Poetry Competition
1965 Crabbe Memorial Competition - First Prize
Adjudicator: Ronald Blythe, Dr Anernethy Rev. J. Gilchrist

No Greek ever pays his penny

Back over Styx,I said;

They do not sleep unquiet’

They lived and they are dead.

The George Crabbe Memorial Poetry Competition
1964 Crabbe Memorial Competition - First Prize
Adjudicator: Edward Ritchie, Rita Spurr, Jack Lindsay

Joy will be thine, so runs the age old truth,

If thou wilt breed a son and plant a tree;

And Shakespeare tells that this thy golden youth

The George Crabbe Memorial Poetry Competition
1963 Crabbe Memorial Competition - First Prize
Adjudicator: Mrs Redwood Anderson, Leslie Missen, Paul Jennings

Because I cannot get to sleep

I snuggle down and count the sheep

And there before my shuttered eyes

The George Crabbe Memorial Poetry Competition

1969 Crabbe Memorial Competition - First Prize
Adjudicators: P Hardiman-Scott, J. Murray Simpson, W.W. Wickett

The George Crabbe Memorial Poetry Competition

1970 Crabbe Memorial Competition - First Prize
Adjudicators: Anne Ridler, Roger Hayward

“Timber!” Another piece of countryside
Crashes to the ground.
For the population expansion
A blazing trail is made.

The pylons are like giant invaders from space,
And they seem to be going somewhere.
To one of the giant cities, but why
Do they have to come through our place?

The George Crabbe Memorial Poetry Competition

1994 Crabbe Memorial Competition - First Prize
Adjudicators: Elaine Feinstein, David Dabydeen

The Private Life Of Saint Etheldreda
    (also called Aethelthryth and Audrey)

The George Crabbe Memorial Poetry Competition

1993 Crabbe Memorial Competition - First Prize
Adjudicators: Andrew Motion, Anthony Thwaite

It is the season. They are on the move
again, an emerald army shrugging glutted bodies

from the fields of old rape opposite. For days
they cross the road, undulating, like slow water;

penetrate any needle’s eye in your neat hedge.
And close in on the climb of stippled white-

While you, inside, are gradually possessed,
seeing wherever you turn the groping prolegs,