Inverse Challenge Winners

Misplaced keys, biodegradable pots, rainbow jellycats… such “ordinary” objects, images, you might say — but they are what make Teresa Renton’s Lost Things Wait for You to Find Them but Sometimes They Don't inverse poem stand out as our winner. We are drawn into the particular world of this poem by specific visions like that. In this latest challenge, we asked you for a poem that could be read from the top or the bottom, and which takes on a different meaning depending which way you read. Teresa’s poem made me think a little bit of Elizabeth Bishop’s famous villanelle, One Art, in its conflicted engagement with loss and abandonment. A terrific achievement.

Gabriel Huizenga’s The Man Born Blind comes in second place, for its thoughtfulness, its willingness to reflect on a challenging experience in poetic language. It’s a brief poem, its language very plain and simple, but the inverse form reflects the moral choice, action or lack of action, that the poet elucidates. A difficult subject, handled with empathy.

We also enjoyed M Lee’s You, and meditation on how we find our worth; the rise and fall of Oleg in the Arctic’s it’s always half past somewhere; and the fleeting search for calm in The In Between by A Lady with a Pen. As ever we loved how you rose to this challenge, exploring what it means — and how important it can be — to look at things first one way, and then another…

You can check out the full list of winners HERE and learn about our current challenges below: