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Announcing: Winner and Finalists of Water Contest

7/31/2023

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The Ekphrastic Review says a big congratulations to Kimberly Hall, whose poem, "Three Symphonic Sketches" has won the Water contest!

Thank you to Kimberly and to all of the wonderful finalists below, and to every single one of you writing to these curated thematic collections.

I am especially thankful to Sandi Stromberg for her time and consideration and for this important work.

All of the reading for this contest was done blind. So we were surprised by the results after deliberations. Several finalists had more than one work in the top 20. The winner, Kimberly Hall, had three! Also surprising was how many of the finalists wrote to the same work of art. There were 50 choices to write about, but so many great pieces after the famous Great Wave painting, Klee's painting, the moonlight on water work by Henry, and my own abstract work, A River Without Water. While a wide variety of the works showed up in the entries, a few inspired many to write wondrous things.

The finalists' works are shown below in alphabetical order by name, with Kimberly's winning poem first in the sequence.

We thank each and every one of you for reading these writers, for sending your submissions, for supporting the journal, and for making this community so amazing. THANK YOU.

Lorette

**

Congratulations to everyone who entered the Water contest, and of course, to the finalists and the winner. I loved immersing myself in the myriad responses. I read each and every piece several times with appreciation for each writer’s thoughtful and compelling work. Then, I faced the challenge of making selections. Kimberly Hall’s “Three Symphonic Sketches” rose to the top for her ability to capture the symphonic sound of Hokusai’s Great Wave. But please read all the selections presented here. Each one invites us to experience more deeply the chosen work of art.

Sandi Stromberg

**

The Finalists

The World to Come, by Valerie Bacharach
The Catch, by Lizzie Ballagher
​The Glasgow Boy Speaks, by Lizzie Ballagher
​Icons, by Portly Bard
​A River Without Water, by Portly Bard
What my glass-half-empty eyes see…by Dorothy Burrows
​Rain God Vessel Lamentation, by Helen Freeman
​Nightfruit, by Julia Griffin
​
Haibun on A River Without Water, by Kimberly Hall
​Portents: Haiku, by Kimberly Hall
​Three Symphonic Sketches, by Kimberly Hall (First Place Winner)
The Shadows, by Amy Holman
Eddystone Lighthouse, by Anton Melbye (Denmark) 1846, by Sue Mackrell
​Canticle of Dreams, by Mary McCarthy
A glass of words from the kitchen tap, by Sandra Noel
What the wind knows, by Sandra Noel
​
The Mariana Trench, by Barbara Ponomareff
the river's slow face, by Janet Ruth
​Writing with Hokusai, by Janet Ruth
Final Sky, by F.F. Teague
​
Picture
The Great Wave Off Kanagawa, by Katsushika Hokusai (Japan) 1831
First Place Winner!!!!

​Three Symphonic Sketches

 
In 1905, composer Claude Debussy requested that the image of Hokusai’s Kanagawa-oki Nami Ura be printed on the front cover of the published score of his newest orchestral work, titled La mer; Debussy kept a copy of this artwork in his studio, and used it as inspiration.
 
I.
First, a wash of colour. Shimmering harps and strings like sunlight soar high above the waves, bass and bass drum rolling steady beneath them. Chords and motifs dissolve into a soundscape of blue – brisk blue wind over bubbling blue water, light flutes and dark bassoons and boundless rippling cellos – all watercolour and ocean spray, blossoming against the horizon.
 
a cloudy spring haze –
seawater and sunrise meet,
claws crest and retract
 
II.
Second, the scherzo. Not just colour, but movement. A strange and glittering dance with ever-changing steps. Phrases seem to shape themselves – texture and timbre toss each other in and out of earshot, with a sort of playfulness that cares not whether it leads its listener to familiar shores or into unfamiliar depths.
 
foam like dragons’ pearls,
dancing on the waves – waves that
scatter boats like fish
 
III.
Finally, the storm. Horns and trumpets, rumbling first and then growing, growing, as a growl grows into a roar. Wind and bass and brass and strings – the whole orchestra strengthening into a swell, swelling into a surge – surging into a thunderous chorale that reaches up through the mouth of a distant sea and brings the great wave to life.
 
the sea-god wakes, and
between its curls – the dawn’s first
glimpse of Mount Fuji
 
Kimberly Hall
 
Kimberly Hall (she/her) is a queer and neuro-divergent poet and writer. She received her master's degree in behavioral science from the University of Houston-Clear Lake. Her poetry and prose can be found in online publications such as First Flight, Sappho's Torque, and Equinox, as well as in several ekphrastic poetry anthologies and a brand new anthology from Mutabilis Press. She still gets the idiomatic butterflies whenever anyone mentions these things where she can hear them.
 
Picture
Fish Magic, by Paul Klee (Switzerland) 1925

The World to Come
 
An imperious galaxy holds multitudes. A clock ticks
past and future as gold and cobalt fish swim
in random patterns of here and gone, return and leave.
 
See the mother with her two faces, 
heart-shaped mouth when she remembered
love, 
the other all blank eye and shuttered lips.
 
A vermillion fish, nostalgic for its beginning,
glimmers. The clock ticks star and planet
while flowers sprout in scented water, spread
their leaves and petals. See the mother’s upraised hand,
empty of names.
 
The moon eats the sun, the clock spins eternity,
fish dazzle in the darkening sea.
 
Valerie Bacharach

Valerie Bacharach is a proud member of Carlow University’s Madwomen in the Attic writing workshops. Her writing has appeared or will appear in publications including Pittsburgh Poetry Review, Pittsburgh Quarterly, The Tishman Review, Topology Magazine, Poetica, The Ekphrastic Review, Talking/Writing, and Vox Viola.  Her chapbook, Fireweed, was published in August 2018 by Main Street Rag.

Picture
Jesus Walks on Water, by Ivan Aivozovsky (Russian Empire, today Ukraine) 1888

​The Catch
                                         
Hungry, still, for solitude,
he sent us off across the lake ahead of him:
went aside alone, this time, to meet
with God, his Father. 
Reluctantly, we rowed away, hauled, 
heaved against the growing surge of angry waves 
that sent us floundering, spinning, helpless
on the disfigured face of Galilee’s wide water.
 
We tasted terror then, tormented 
by the force of wind that clenched 
our innards, pitched us
into Sheol’s deeps, dashed us 
down the crags of water
into the gnashing teeth of a storm. 
Now: how in a towering tide & torrent 
were we to fare without our Lord?
 
The mast curved over, sang out, 
whined. Our puny rudder failed.
The sail sprang out & snapped,
tore, flashed away 
into a squalling wind
until we bawled in fear 
of death, shouted, eyes shoreward, 
that we saw an apparition.
 
And yet, no phantom it was 
but Christ himself in very flesh
walking the rage & roar of wave-crests,
holding wide his all-embracing arms
to clip & keep us in.
No catch of fish more dear to him!
We understood at once 
he was the Everlasting One,
 
He who then cried out to us:
Cannot I who hurled stars 
across the void, who brooded 
over deep primeval waters--
cannot I, radiant 
over chasms of blue darkness,
now walk across this wildness
so to find you, call you home?
 
Lizzie Ballagher
 
In 2022, Ballagher was chosen as winner in Poetry on the Lake's formal category with a pantoum entitled ‘Across the Barle’. Her work has appeared in print and online on both sides of the Atlantic; it has also been presented in podcasts on Poetry Worth Hearing (Anchor fm).  Several of her poems in the last two decades have, too, been set to music. Contributing regularly to Southeast Walker Magazine, she lives in the UK, writing a blog: https://lizzieballagherpoetry.wordpress.com/. 
 

Picture
River Landscape by Moonlight, by George Henry (Scotland) 1887
 
The Glasgow Boy Speaks, 1887 
 
River Landscape by Moonlight, George Henry, 1887)
 
South o’ the border all the blether’s
now aboot Victoria’s Golden Jubilee,
 
while here in the North Countree
men gang up long before the skreich o’ day
 
tae drive haem rivets, slave
at smelting lums along the Clyde--
 
and all tae keep her majesty in a style
she is entitled tae (they say)
 
with Sassenachs and swaggering lairds
who think we’re teuchters--
 
gyte as the moon that sinks down tae the river--
clarty by our guid labours…
 
Yet, open up your een, ye glaikit southren folk,
and see the braw dance o’ light
 
even in the scribble of an antic moon,
the reek o’ blazing furnaces--
 
the heft o’ steel and coal; the sweat 
on backs o’ men bowed doon….
 
Here winter days are nae sae lang, 
so we mun keek wi’ inner een
 
tae find the brilliance
o’ bonny light in darkness.                                         
 
Lizzie Ballagher

Glossary
blether                         gossip, chat
gang                            go
skreich o’ day             daybreak
drive haem                 drive home
lums                            chimneys
Sassenachs                the English
teuchters                     rough characters
gyte                             mad
clarty                          dirty
guid                             good
een                              eyes
glaikit                          gormless, empty-headed
braw                            brave, beautiful
nae sae lang               short
mun keek                     must look
 
Picture
Variety of Ship Figureheads at Cutty Sark. Photo by LondonHistoryatHome, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons

Icons
 
These once the pride beneath the prow
of storied wood from stern to bow
are now but remnants left to gauge
the wonder of their golden age
 
when keels beneath the waterline
would harness wind above the brine
in timbered sails to brave the roar
that souls defiant dared explore
 
by going west to reach the east
believing waters never ceased,
that plane ordained they ought to fear
was more illusion wrought by sphere
 
and spirit by which they were led
was more than merely figurehead.
 
Portly Bard
 
Old man.  Ekphrastic fan.
 
Prefers to craft with sole intent...
of verse becoming complement...
...and by such homage being lent...
ideally also compliment.
 
Ekphrastic joy comes not from praise
for words but from returning gaze
far more aware of fortune art
becomes to eyes that fathom heart.
​
Picture
A River Without Water, by Lorette C. Luzajic (Canada) 2017

River Without Water
 
I see the bottom of a heart
imagined as ravine
where love is intermittent rain
it always seems between
 
and idle dreams are fragile shards
that peek from coral sand
as precious trove of treasured lore
enduring close at hand
 
yet better left where widely strewn,
assembled unrestored,
in art that gives them homage due,
but leaves them unexplored,
 
accepted as the arid pain
where scars were etched...and will remain.
 
Portly Bard
 
Old man.  Ekphrastic fan.
 
Prefers to craft with sole intent...
of verse becoming complement...
...and by such homage being lent...
ideally also compliment.
 
Ekphrastic joy comes not from praise
for words but from returning gaze
far more aware of fortune art
becomes to eyes that fathom heart.
​
Picture
River Landscape by Moonlight, by George Henry (Scotland) 1887

What my glass-half-empty eyes see…
 
Upon an ink-blotched river, 
                               shimmering oil spills, patches and traces of chemical trash.
 
                                                         A concrete walkway, cracked
and lifeless; still harbouring the trunks of two dead trees.
 
From old warehouse bones
                            smart apartments, well-lit; but no brightness for the homeless.
 
                                                            Against the urban skyline,
from pyres of wrecked cars, a suffocation of thick smoke;
 
the shiver of celestial sharks, 
                                     their ghost-fins splashing in a boiling, rising ocean.
 
                                                           A gigantic plastic orange,
air-swept, bloated; bobbing uneaten above sick coral…
 
the harvest moon.
 
Dorothy Burrows
 
Based in the United Kingdom, Dorothy Burrows enjoys writing flash fiction, poems and short plays. Her work has been published by various journals, including The Ekphrastic Review. For some years, she travelled to school on a ferry boat.

Picture
Rain God Vessel, Mixtec Style, (Mexico) c. 1100–1400.User: FA2010, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Rain God Vessel Lamentation
 
It’s this stance I’m forced to hold, my left knee aches, my right elbow too and I worry about the onset of arthritis. My moustache needs a trim, coyote headdress smells of squirrel, ringed eye openings skew my vision and a developing fracture surely spells trouble. 
 
They told me I’d be given a club and shield to supplement my four remaining fangs, but to say I’m gutted at their size is an understatement – almost like a watch and pen which would have been more use. Guess I’m not too sure why I need them. Nobody asks me what I want and aren’t I the god here anyway?
 
Can someone please fill this water container or at least dampen me with mist and spritz me with dew? I long for clouds to subdue my surroundings like an arctic cloak and slick my cheeks with moisture. Mother of Jesus, tell them to fill me to the brim. Let me be drenched, overflowing, hailed by farmers and warriors, prophets and priests, parents and children the world over. Endue me, for pity’s sake, with even one drop of real power.
 
Helen Freeman

Helen Freeman started writing poetry during recovery time from a serious road traffic accident in Oman and got hooked. She has been published in several magazines and supplements including with Corbel Stone Press, Ink, Sweat and Tears, Clear Poetry, Algebra of Owls, Ground Poetry, Your One Phone-call, Open Mouse, Red River Review, Barren Magazine, The Drabble, Sukoon, Poems for Ephesians and The Ekphrastic Review. Some of her ekphrastic poems were published alongside related Diane Rendle paintings at an exhibition in Open Eye Gallery, Edinburgh. She taught English for many years in Kenya, Tanzania, Oman and Dubai and now lives in Durham, England.
​

Picture
River Landscape by Moonlight, by George Henry (Scotland) 1887

Nightfruit

 
So the bright orange
Scribbles itself by night
Into the deep blue:
 
Beauty of Seville,
Framed as a secret Spanish
Exclamation point¡
 
Julia Griffin
 
Julia Griffin lives in South-East Georgia.  She has published in Light, Lighten Up Online, Snakeskin, and some other magazines.

Picture
A River Without Water, by Lorette C. Luzajic (Canada) 2017

 
Haibun on A River Without Water
 
Dry wind carries no water across these still beds. What was once bright and fertile now hears only the echo of rain, holds only the memory of flood.
 
Scraps emerge like phantoms in the night. Feet splashing, a wet rush of blood, ripples and riptides and roaring thunder – shadows, sluggishly crawling out from darkened desert, coming to rest against eager palms.
 
Scraps, like phantoms, dissolve once more, crumbling to dust in the hot white light of day.
 
no thirst is quenched by
memory alone – where dreams run
instead of rivers.
 
Kimberly Hall
 
Picture
Cloud Study, by John Constable (England) 1822

Portents: Haiku
 
morning overcast –
clouds like honeycomb, now sweet,
hold tomorrow’s storms
 
Kimberly Hall
​
Picture
Sewing Machine with Umbrella, by Salvador Dali (Spain) 1941

The Shadows
            
It’s raining bullets in 1941, 
and the seamstress whores 
are waving white handkerchiefs 
 
in a chiaroscuro of recruitment
and sympathy. The machines 
are shielded from the commands 
 
for pleats and A-lines, fitted; 
a waste. The seamstresses are lonely, 
Surrendering their men to Franco
 
Amy Holman
 
Amy Holman is a poet, literary consultant and artist. The author of five poetry books, including the prizewinning chapbook, Wait for Me, I’m Gone, from Dream Horse Press, and the collection, Wrens Fly Through This Opened Window, from Somondoco Press, her poems have recently appeared in The 5-2: Crime Poetry Weekly, The Chiron Review, and The Night Heron Barks. ​
Picture
Eddystone Lighthouse, by Anton Melbye (Denmark) 1846
Eddystone Lighthouse by Anton Melbye (Denmark) 1846
Picture
Sue Mackrell

Author's note: Words in italics are from contemporary sources.

Sue Mackrell lives in Leicestershire, UK. She has an MA in Creative Writing from Loughborough University. Retirement from teaching and facilitating Creative Writing workshops gives her more time to write. Her poems have been published several times in The Ekphrastic Review and Agenda, also recently in Bloody Amazing (Dragon Yaffle) Diversifly (Fair Acre Press) Whirlagust III (Yaffle) and online in Words for the Wild.

Picture
Fish Magic, by Paul Klee (Switzerland) 1925

Canticle of Dreams
 
Like a fist unclenched
a leaf falling
the balance of attention
lapsed
I slide wordlessly down
past the surface
into the dark
ocean of sleep
where bright fish rise
finned and scaled
the shimmering glint
of sequins winking
in glittering spangles
that catch whatever light
shines through the water
my dreams fantastical
and strange as their
ancient shapes
whispering
without sound
like liquid
hieroglyphs
antiphon to the long
songs of whales
that fill me with
a desperate longing
to stay here with them
and learn to breathe
without air
 
Mary McCarthy
 
Mary McCarthy is a retired Registered Nurse who has always been a writer. Her work has appeared in many journals and anthologies, including The Ekphrastic World, edited by Lorette C. Luzajic, The Plague Papers, edited by Robbi Nester, and recent issues of Gyroscope, 3rd Wednesday, Caustic Frolic, the Blue Heron Review, and Verse Virtual.  Her collection How to Become Invisible will come out from Kelsay early next year.

Picture
Water Glass and Jug, by Jean Siméon Chardin (France) 1760

A glass of words from the kitchen tap
 
I hold its story in my mouth, just long enough 
for the taste of clean to paddle on my tongue, 
to hear the echo of pins-and-needle rain.
A hint of salt swaddles my throat,  
tells of another latitude, 
a time before your dark.
 
It doesn’t seem to matter how many times 
I go to the tap to refill your glass;
it remains full of wordless words, empty.
 
Sandra Noel

Sandra Noel is a poet from Jersey, Channel Islands.  She enjoys writing about the ordinary in unusual ways, nature themes and her passion for sea swimming weaving through many of her poems. Sandra has poems featured online and in print magazines and anthologies. This year she has been longlisted by Mslexia Women’s Poetry Competition 2023, highly commended in The Yaffle Press Competition 2023, and commended in Poetry on the Lake’s Haiku competition 2023. Two of her poems are currently on the buses in Guernsey as winners in the Guernsey International Poetry Competition 2022.  Sandra is working on her first collection.

Picture
The Great Wave Off Kanagawa, by Katsushika Hokusai (Japan) 1831

What the wind knows 
 
Even when the sea is turning inside out,
and the ferry lurches green folk starboard, 
the bottle on the table knows how to hold 
the wine in the shape of itself;
in the way a shadow holds 
the shape of the wave
just long enough,
until it crashes 
back to itself,
and the boat 
lurches
port side. 
 
Sandra Noel

Picture
Fish Magic, by Paul Klee (Switzerland) 1925

The Mariana Trench
 
He dreamed himself through layers of dark,
all smudge and pitch-black night
 
penetrating the earth’s mantle
in search of its core, 
he fell deeper and darker
 
past trees, houses, the clock on the tower
which faded as he passed
 
dream-memories shapeshifted objects
into pure form as if creating 
road signs to nowhere
 
memories of gardens – flowers, leaf, 
petal and stem, some formed 
like the rays of the sun
turned into symbols of loss.
 
Only the fish, magical and singular, 
appeared to know where they were going
as if connected by a sizzling current.
 
Aglow, as if lit from inside 
by lanterns carried in children’s hands.
 
Onward his body drifted 
amongst the shapes, weightless 
and heavy at once.
 
Imagining 
his own phosphorescence,
he sunk deeper and darker
through time and space
out of the known. 
 
Over 11,000 meters deep – 
 
to a depth even his dreams 
could not fathom.
 
Barbara Ponomareff

Barbara Ponomareff lives in southern Ontario, Canada. By profession a child psychotherapist, she has been fortunate to be able to pursue her lifelong interest in literature, art and psychology since her retirement. The first of her two novellas, dealt with a possible life of the painter J.S. Chardin. Her short stories, memoirs and poetry have appeared in Descant, (EX)cite, Precipice and various other literary magazines and anthologies. She has contributed to The Ekphrastic Review on numerous occasions and was delighted to win one of their flash story contests.

Picture
A River Without Water, by Lorette C. Luzajic (Canada) 2017

the river’s slow face
 
kingfisher
cackles from the shadows
seeing with ears
 
eyes seek
the river’s waking
her face turned away
 
view of sky
painted pink with dawn
just her reflections
 
rosy dreams
of cherry blossoms falling
drift of mist
 
a glimpse
where mist pulls thin
dark waters
 
scribbled
on river surface
a few reeds
 
a slight breeze
dabbles at the stillness
lifting
 
Janet Ruth

Janet Ruth is a NM ornithologist. Her writing focuses on connections to the natural world. She has recent poems in Oddball Magazine, Tulip Tree Review, The Ocotillo Review, Sin Fronteras, Spiral Orb and anthologies including Moving Images: poetry inspired by film (Before Your Quiet Eyes Publication, 2021) and New Mexico Remembers 9/11 (Artemesia Publishing, 2020).  Her first book,Feathered Dreams: celebrating birds in poems, stories & images (Mercury HeartLink, 2018) was a Finalist for the 2018 NM/AZ Book Awards.   https://redstartsandravens.com/janets-poetry/
Picture
The Great Wave Off Kanagawa, by Katsushika Hokusai (Japan) 1831

Writing with Hokusai
 
tallest mountain
a matter of perspective
my fragile boat
 
the wave crashes down
truth worse than my fears
 
bending prows
into the bite of wind
bending to fate
 
should I pray
or laugh into the howling?
salt crusts my face

Mt. Fuji diminished below
sky full of ash
 
foam reaches
like fingers at the wave’s crest
all that lies beneath
 
Janet Ruth
​
Picture
Utonulá (Drowned Woman), by Jakub Schikaneder (Czechia) 1893

​Final Sky
 
He found her there at sunrise, on the beach,
first sighting her from cliffs above the shore,
one arm extended – not, though, in a reach,
but as the tide had swept her from the floor
of churning ocean. For a while he stood
and told himself she hadn’t drowned; she slept,
that’s all. She’d wake, recovered, and they would
be happy once again. And then he wept
and fell upon the sand and beat his fists
upon the sodden grains and shells and stones
amidst the early morning milling mists
that struck their clammy chills within his bones.
And still the sun rose in that final sky
as he strode out to sea, resolved to die.
 
F.F. Teague
 
F.F. Teague (Fliss) is a copyeditor/copywriter by day and a poet/composer come nightfall. She lives in Pittville, a suburb of Cheltenham (UK). Her poetry features regularly in the Spotlight of The HyperTexts; she has also been published by The Mighty, Snakeskin, The Ekphrastic Review, The Dirigible Balloon, Pulsebeat, Lighten Up Online and a local Morris dancing group. Other interests include art, film, and photography.

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