THE Artists in Residence section on www.thisisthe lakedistrict.co.uk is home to a number of writers, artists and film makers. The winners of our first E Short Story and Poetry Contest were announced this week at co-sponsor's Word Market's (www.word-market.co.uk) Word Party 3. Sit back and enjoy a great read and, if you are inspired, check out ESSP 2005 contest details in our Artists in Residence section. ESSP 2004 - Short Story First Place My First Lover and I Were Like Wood
By Mollie Baxter, Morecambe My first lover and I were like wood. We lay stiffly in bed together, a bundle of sticks. Our arms and legs clattered. We tried to force each other into the shape we wanted, but in our fear, all the soft green cells of our affection stiffened into something that would not bend. We drifted apart, two twigs in a river.The forces that pull metal towards poles possessed the second. He was looking for his true mate, the source of the magnetic ache he felt in his bones. Sometimes, when we made love, his eyes would look over my shoulder and I knew he was thinking of one he had yet to meet. I tried to find a way in, but his surface was smooth and cold. Once, as he shaved, I saw him cut himself and I expected to see mercury drip into the bowl.My third lover was snow. She was delicate, and cold, and different every time I looked closely. When she settled on my skin, my heat was enough to dissolve her into tears and the sadness locked inside her crystals would pour out. Together we made an ocean and she was washed away over the horizon.With my fourth lover I burned. He was a dry flame and I fed him my fuel without thinking. Skin flushed where he touched me. He licked sweat to ease a thirst that only grew. If we hadn't been so burnt out, those hours where we lay in the embers together would have been the closest to happiness. But nothing follows fire, only ash and emptiness.My fifth lover is in the wind. When I walk home alone a gust strokes my cheek and says, Soon, soon.'When is soon?' I ask. What is soon to the wind? I'm lonely now show me your face.'But the breeze slips down the street.I look to the four quarters and wait. Poetry Winner...
> ESSP 2004 Poetry First PlaceTrench
by Elizabeth Burns, LancasterAn ironage camp on the Ridgeway
mapped in green and red inks:cross-sections, elevations
and everywhere circles- hillforts, roundhouses
storage pits, grave mounds but the trench is a rectangle
marked off with stringa segment of earth
whose layers are being peeled backas carefully as the restorer's hand
lifts off a skin of crackled varnishrevealing what is underneath,
however smudged and shadowed.Trench its depths and angles measured,
the content of its soil defined gives up its history, but something's
always blurred or not quite straight:the furtive curves and circles
that whirl and spiral over the earth.ESSP 2005 details can be found at www.thisisthe lakedistrict.co.uk in the Artists in Residence section.