Welcome to the Competition Pages of Words in Watchet.
Here you can find details of our Poetry and Flash Fiction competitions, how to enter and also some information about winners from previous years.
Enter the poetry competition here:
Words in Watchet 2027 Poetry competition
Enter the Flash Fiction competition here:
Words in Watchet 2027 Flash Fiction Competition
View winners from previous years below:
Words in Watchet Poetry Competition 2026
Judges: Annie Fisher and Graeme Ryan
JUDGES’ OVERALL COMMENTS
Annie Fisher: Graeme and I felt it was a real privilege to judge this competition.
What we were both looking for was craft plus emotional impact … or rather emotional impact created by means of poetic craft. The impact could be humorous or serious – or could include both aspects. I’m firmly of the opinion that humour isn’t taken seriously enough in poetry. We read some very good humorous poems and some, as you will hear, managed to play skillfully with both the light and dark aspects of our lives.
Graeme Ryan: Some poems rhymed. Some used traditional forms such as the list poem or sonnet. There was one very good prose poem. Most poems were in free verse. The variety was impressive: such a wealth of ideas and subject matter, ranging from the spirit of place in Somerset, ecology, politics writ large and small, ageing, family and relationships, the supernatural, grief, childhood and much more.
Annie: We had the sense that each entry was written by someone who reads and relishes the written word. We were also looking for authenticity. Not in the sense of ‘literally true’ necessarily, but a poem that ‘got under the skin’ of whatever it was addressing in a true and convincing way without being obvious or using cliché.
Graeme: We both read all the poems several times and each of us identified twenty out of the 70 plus entries. We then discussed both shortlists (which overlapped but not completely) for many hours.
Annie: In the end we were both convinced we’d arrived at what was for us, the right decision. But it wasn’t easy.
A & G Many, many thanks to everyone who entered.
Here are the Commended entries (in no particular order)
Meeting the Ebbtide Rachael Clyne
- This evocation of the Bristol Channel estuary casts a real spell in its mood, layout and lovingly written description
Appropriation Debate 2025 Angela Ellis
- The tightly wrought couplets in this skilful poem reflect the struggles we can all feel in these days, caught in the moral crossfire yet needing to bear witness to it.
Couple Observed in Le Petit Prince While Waiting for the Cobblers to Open
D G Herring
- We eavesdrop on a witty and memorable encounter between a couple. This highly original poem intrigued and rewarded us in equal measure
The lament of the landlocked Polypus Abigail Rowland
- This captive octopus speaks eloquently to the human world with far-reaching knowledge - and without any illusions.
all paper is past, all past paper Rachel Wilson
- Inspired by the work of Two Rivers Paper in Watchet, this poetic account of paper- making is fascinating and strangely moving.
What Remains John Lancaster
- A story shared on a train journey is shared with us - the compelling story of a deceased husband’s control and the widow still grappling with her feelings. Her tightness and pain are written into the texture of this poem.
3rd Prize Winner - The Capercaillie by John Lancaster
The Capercaillie
Grieving at signs of both fledging – hangovers after sleepovers;
seeing doctors on their own, boxing up toys for jumble sales; men’s
not boys’ sizes; university offers – the trip would be a letting go.
A piece on their rarity and calls for sightings had laid the idea
to celebrate those years with what phone photos could never equal –
though a snap shows us rucksacked where tarmac frays to track
climbing to misted pinewoods below Carnferg. To a tent-sized clearing
where at nightfall they cooked by fire, surprised me with wine;
argued music – is rap crap?; had my strictness ruined teenage years?
till darkness doused love’s imperfections. They shook me awake
into the scent of crackling bacon – and coffee sending me desperate
into dew-dripped ferns where zipping up I trod on a fallen branch
and at the loud crack we heard a flapping, whistly squawking,
startled honking racket, saw sooty feathers break the air flothering
twigs and needles as an ancient, proto-type-looking huge bird
bumped branches, lumbered to take off, flee the shock of us
to fly, glide away a hundred yards then plummet like a shot duck
to crash land, shiver debris from plumage, stagger to hide away again,
safe deep in flowered gorse and purple ling. And silent – like us. Us
suspended, changed – like pilgrims – in our witness at this gift of nature
before logging eastings and northings for the survey, co-ordinates
bonding us forever – a thing between us we would never want to see
extinct, a thing between us of which we would never want to let go.
This poem has great energy and a strong narrative. It takes the reader with admirable economy straight into a family situation: boys on the verge of manhood accompanying their parent on a camping trip to Scotland. The hook for the expedition is to see the rare capercaillie bird but it is about much more.
We were impressed with the way all the elements of the poem interwove so naturally, like the family, and the way the symbolism – and sheer physicality - of the bird earns its place, never forced, marking the unexpected preciousness of the family connection and the bonds of love they never want to let slip as life moves on to its new phases. The whole poem is an event, strongly described and suffused with feeling.
2nd Prize Winner - Ninety-six not out by Richard Side
Ninety Six not out
I’m fine where I am she says doggedly from her bed,
uncompliant again, and because she doesn’t know she isn’t,
still clings to what she knows, can’t see
her touch and go fragility. And never mind the black mould
on the cheese in the fridge which she says she had for lunch.
Outside in the sudden relieving damp
one of the paramedics gets me to show him the best way out
through the garden in the darkness, down the crumbling steps, sharp left
past the sundial we bought them for their fortieth,
to the ambulance waiting in the road outside.
I don’t know how we’re going to do this, he says.
The corners are too tight. We can’t get the gurney round here.
It’s not like it bends in the middle.
Neither does she, I say, tiredness blackening my humour.
And presumably the same is true of a coffin.
Well there is that, he says.
Into their seventh decade together,
she and the house have conspired in their inflexibility
to make sure she never leaves. As if she willed
the house to grow round her,
boxing her in.
But she has forgotten the wheelchair parked
in the dust of the dining room,
still in its plastic wrapping because
I’m not letting people see me in that.
They coax my mother into it, drip attached,
as if this is the one occasion it was waiting for,
then manoeuvre her past the overgrown shrubs
and the broken wheelie bins
to the bright receiving maw of the ambulance.
The night air and smell of the earth perk her up. She’s glad
of the chance to get out, enjoying the drama,
whooping at the game of it, performing as always.
Outwitted, finally.
Although old age was a much-written-about subject, this poem avoids any trace of sentimentality, and it avoids cliché. Its rhythms are finely tuned– it flows. There’s no excess. Every line, every word counts. There’s huge respect for the feisty ninety-six year old mother in this poem. She’s brought to life for us with subtlety and restraint through perfectly chosen images and some poignant, darkly humorous banter between a paramedic and the poem’s narrator.
It’s dark but true. It’s STOIC – the poem is a testimony to how we often cope in these hard situations.
And the ending is marvelously handled. It’s heartbreaking but contained… the poem, like the old lady is BRAVE! We were very impressed with this poem,
1st Prize winner - Three Umbrellas by Rosie Jackson
Three Umbrellas
She’s lived inside this Bermuda Triangle
for months, wanting to believe herself invisible.
Three extended canopies, hooked together,
angled in different directions: the spitting gargoyles
of the cathedral, side road to Wetherspoons,
an insurance company, Your future protected.
She’s rarely seen, the only other clues
a smooth sleeping bag, paperback,
Harrods carrier, small pair of boots.
The men, by contrast, sprawl in brightly lit
doorways – Russell and Bromley, Tesco Extra,
M & S – wasted beyond anger in a word of calves,
ankles, turned-away shoes. Like others, I shuffle past
uneasily, proffer the odd coffee, sandwich,
change, awkward apology, battle in wind and rain
with my huge brolly, thinking of those three makeshift
shields wedged together, wonder if they’ll hold,
wonder what memories she might dream
of dispossessing – the once-husbands, homes,
arguments, days that felt too heavy to lift,
love that could collapse with one violent squall.
We had no doubts about this poem. As with the previous poems we’ve heard, it had that ring of authenticity. This is a real experience. It’s about a young homeless woman living on a city street – and it says so much in 21 short lines,
Listen out for how the theme of three-ness runs through the poem -
· There’s the title: Three Umbrellas.
· And in the first stanza – the reference to the Bermuda Triangle – straight away we’re in a dangerous place – people disappear here!
· The poem is written in three-line stanzas
· The makeshift umbrella shelter she’s living in faces three ways. It’s at a sort of three-way crossroads
We don’t even see the woman – she’s disappeared momentarily – we just see the tell-tale signs of her life through images..
There’s the symbolism of harsh, unrelenting bad weather
There’s so much compassion in this poem – and an evocation of guilt –the feeling of ‘there but for the grace of God’ that we’re all familiar with.
We feel we too are briefly out there on the street– we can hear and feel the hiss and splash of rain in the words..
It was a poem that stayed in our heads long after we’d read it. It’s exceptionally well done.
Watchet Resident Prize winner - Numbered by John Bowcock
Numbered
I wheeled you forty feet from your front door
Manoeuvred you into the car seat
And you were soaked
The infinite drum beat downpour
Sudden. As unexpected as the call.
We drove four minutes to the surgery
The clouds had cleared
Sodden clothes the only clue
To what had fallen
The come-through summons chimed thirty minutes late
While waiting we looked up forecast charts
And found the one red rain pixel of the day
Had covered our moves then disappeared
We talked about the certainty of the weather
Back home you sat beside your ‘coffee without the coffee’
The murky white milky swirl slowing to still
As indefinable as the look in your faraway gaze
The countdown of days begun. That much was clear
There are things you want to say to me
As much as things I want to say to you
It’s not easy to squeeze emotions into statistic
Next week you will be ninety three
We both know this nmber will be set in stone.
This poem movingly describes the frailty of an ageing relative or friend being taken to a hospital appointment in the pouring rain: ‘I wheeled you forty feet from your front door…and you were soaked.’ The weather’s ‘infinite drum beat downpour’ is a constant presence as we witness what it reveals: the dissolve of a life before our eyes; the helplessness of either the poem’s narrator or older person to say what they really mean and capture the significance of the relationship between them. They both know the older person’s days are numbered; the way they cannot find the words to express this is captured with admirable simplicity:
‘There are things you want to say to me
As much as things I want to say to you’
The punning starkness of the final line is soberly effective – a real full stop moment.
Thanks again to all who entered the competition.
See you next year!
Annie Fisher and Graeme Ryan on behalf of Words in Watchet 2026
Flash Fiction Winners 2026:
1st Existential Crisis by Fenja Hill
2nd Running the Gauntlet by Virginia Griem
3rd Oh so English by Lin Broadley
Highly Commended Scrumptious, Surreptitious, Surrender by Christine Human
Judges Comments:
First Place - Existential Crisis, we loved the simple, clearly told story arc with the twist that effortlessly matched the title.
Second Place - Running the Gauntlet, the beautiful, evocative language drew a very clear picture.
Third Place - Oh So English, we found the humour and the honesty of the situation made it feel realistic.
Highly Commended - Scrumptious, Surreptitious, Surrender, this poem tapped into desires we have all felt, even if we have never acted on them and the language helped us to empathise with the protagonist.
2025 Poetry Competition Results
1. Coat by Dawn Gorman
2. Vincent by Angel Patmore
3. I dreamt of going home by Jane Allsop
Highly Commended
Piano by Jane Allsop
Leaving by Dawn Gorman
Evening Poem Molly’s Bench by Viv Grant
Beginners Please by Margaret Ingall
Testament by Peter Krijgsman
Faith by Hamish McNeill
How do I tell you? by Hamish McNeill
The Question by Hamish McNeill
2025 Flash Fiction Results
Winner The Shout – Jean Armin
Second Prize God – Simon Parkin
Third Prize What you get is what you want – Janet Jones
Highly Commended
A Teaspoon’s Life – Chip Tolson
The Road to our Story – Vicky Tate