Plough Prize Commendation

My poem, "How it ends" has been commended in the 2009 Plough Prize. So as to enable people to publish their work elsewhere the people who run the prize only publish the winners on their website and not the runners-up. They do however publish the judges' comments which makes for a rather curious experience. It would be fun to try and rewrite the poems based on what the judges say and then compare with the originals. Anyway, here's my poem and here's a link to the Plough website. It is far from being the most prestigious prize out there but the organizers are extremely generous with their time, giving feed back on all commended poems and offering free tick box critiques of all entries received before a certain date. And they clearly have impeccable aesthetic standards. Vive la Plough!


How it ends

It was the great wind down,
clocks’ ghosts being given up,
the beginning of the end.

At first it was barely discernible,
the noise of a plane on a windy night,
a roar a little denser than the hum;
and then when it was unmistakable,
it was as if it had always been there,
and that was the middle of the end.