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Local Poem Competition 2009 Winner

John Elinger

Winner of the £1,000 first prize in the United Press annual Local Poem competition is John Elinger.

But John is better known by another name. That’s because John doesn’t enter poetry competitions under his more familiar name.

“I don’t want to be judged on anything I have achieved in my personal life,” said Sir Christopher Ball, John’s real life alter ego. “So I use my middle names in poetry contests.” Christopher entered the Local Poem competition after seeing details about it in a circular from the Poetry Society, of which he is a member. “I knew nothing about the competition until then,” he explained. “But I was very keen to enter, especially in view that it’s a free competition which has a £1,000 first prize.”

Christopher is a retired Oxford Don and former head of Keeble College, Oxford. He was also the first chancellor of the University of Derby. He was knighted in 1987 for services to education. “I wrote very little poetry until I retired at the age of 70, but since then I have set myself a target of writing a poem every week,” said Sir Christopher, who is now 73 and lives in Oxford. The result is two self-published volumes. “I was shocked to be named winner of the Local Poem competition, especially in view of the fact that it attracts so many thousands of entries from right across the UK.”

THE COOLING TOWERS AT DIDCOT

The bride and bridesmaids, look. A child
Is pointing from the swerving train.
A memory I must have filed
And labelled read again, again.

So long ago. Today, once more,
My train passes those plain squat towers,
I watch three women near the door
Of a square church, they bear no flowers.

Though veiled in white, stout matrons still
And faded like a photograph
Of an old wedding day, until
They disappear. Technology’s half

Life seems so short. The towers must go,
They say. Railways will follow too.
Our great grand-children will not know
The secret Didcot sight we knew

And loved, a stately wedding march
Which none but children recognise,
Frozen in time, beneath the arch
Of spacious, grey, indifferent skies.

John Elinger, Oxford