E authors and poets

First Prize Poetry went to Wayne Auty, of Lancaster, with The Yellow and Blue Ladies; runner up was Jo Stoney, Ulverston, with Filling in the Gaps.

First Prize Short Story went to Gill Nicholson, of Ulverston, for Afterwards; runner up was Kay Sexton, from Hove, for Acorns and Conkers.

Gill Nicholson, Ulverston-based poet, playwright and author, said about the prize: "Getting published and being read motivates you and keeps you focused and enthusiastic. All this exposure is a stimulus to keep you going and a huge reward."...

Poetry Winner...

The Yellow and Blue Ladies,
by Wayne Auty, Lancaster...A note pinned to the door
Like some ranting paper Jesus
Tells me you are gone.

Your easel has booked-out too
With its sycophantic embrace
Its gangly clubfoot.

Now only your paraffin smell,
And in the hall
A cowering crow faced hook

Where your undertaker's coat once hung.
And all the cigarettes we smoked
Reveal spaces from where your dreary

Jaundiced paintings stared
Like polarised voyeurs.
Your subjects,
Those delicate oriental concubines,
The washed out hues,
- Not like you

With your nihilism shining
Its icy azure.
Not like the spaces you left behind,

Puzzling their freedom
In the naked lamp's shine.
Released at last from under taut canvas drums,

From the yellow and blue ladies
In oil and of blood.
- You were always ephemera to me, my love.

Short Story Winner...Afterwards, by Gill Nicholson

Afterwards Steph knew she had to think about clearing out his things. Everybody said it was a necessary part of moving on, what you did once the ashes were scattered. She'd taken Will in the urn, tipped him into the tarn when no one else was around. To make sure the current caught him, she waded in wearing beach shoes, staggered up to her waist holding Will aloft. The ashes floated away, their trail of scum like cast willow blossoms. She filled the urn with water and sank it too but wished she hadn't, because after she clambered out she saw it lying there. She hoped it would sink into the mud, the evidence buried. But no one had seen her. She squelched back to the car sobbing unrestrainedly, dried and changed out of her wet clothes wailing and cursing. Then she drove home with the radio on full blast.

Steph was still undecided about getting rid of Will's stuff. Why shouldn't she just leave everything until she needed space for something else? But people would not like it; the embarrassment of a dead man's jacket, his baseball cap and panama on the hallstand. Steph did not want empty pegs. Will's shoes were kept on shelves in the utility room. They were going mouldy. She couldn't take them to Oxfam. His slippers were imprinted with his toes and heels. It would be easier to start upstairs.

She tackled his wardrobe, hearing his exasperation at its old-fashioned awkwardness as she wrestled with the hangers. Without sorting them, she bundled shirts into a bin bag for the charity shop. The boys wouldn't want any. Will's medication, stored in the bottom, she popped from their foil blisters, not looking at the calendar of future days they had promised. She poured them into the lavatory bowl expecting the gushing water to sweep them away but it took three goes. Then she peered inside the wardrobe for a final check. But for fluff it was empty.

Though it matched their bedstead, Steph wanted to be rid of the wardrobe. That night she climbed into bed just as conscious of Will's absence now as she had been the night after he died. His pillows were stacked up on his side. It was no use jettisoning them to sleep with cold space on both sides. She would part with the whole suite. In the morning she would ask the boys about the unwanted furniture and find herself a single bed.

There was a mess after the removal men took the bedroom furniture to the auction. Dust was no problem but the unpainted space revealed on the wall was. Will had not been able to push the paintbrush behind the wardrobe. If you'll clear everything out first, I'll shift it when I feel better finish the job off properly, he'd promised. She had agreed but the moment never arrived. There was no paint to match the ice-blue walls; she'd checked all the tins stacked in the garage.

She tackled Will's bedside chest-of-drawers next, stuffing his underclothes into plastic bags with the KY jelly, and cuff links he'd never used. There, underneath his socks, she found more pills; not a few day's worth, but beta-blockers going back months. Her heart thumped and a cold clamminess filtered into every pore of her skin. She shook her head; refused to allow the questions entry. Swiftly she went downstairs and out into the garden. This time it would have to be burial, under the carpet of grass. She dug ferociously making a small deep pit, not caring about the mice and moles.

Her single bed was delivered just as she stamped the last sod into place. She made it, struggling with double sheets and duvet. Steph had thought the blank where the wardrobe had stood was a sign of Will's optimism. Now it shouted another story. She stared at the patch of old wallpaper: huge pink and red roses, gaudy, sentimental. They had both hated it.

That night Steph lay rigid in her new bed, a coracle adrift. The hideous roses were flotsam and she was cast away on a tide of detritus.