This anthology showcases poetry from the leading writers in the 2023 competition for a Flash Fiction 150-word competition.
Adjudication | Alphabetical list of poets
Our first flash fiction competition attracted well over a hundred entries, from which the judges selected a longlist of 20 entries. After much deliberation on the longlist, the judges chose five prizewinning entries and five more that were Highly Commended.
First prize £150 — Abigail Ottley
Second prize £50 — Sharon Webster
Third prizes of £15 — Adam Elms, Catherine Leyshon, Catherine Naisby
Highly Commended (shortlist) — Alison Tanik, Catherine Leyshon, Kate Mclennon, Linda Lewis, Peter Devonald
Commended (longlist)– Aaran Thakore, Charlotte Goodman, Christine Griffin, Christopher Cuninghame, Kimberley Graham, Maisie Jack, Neil Douglas, Olga Dermott-Bond, Penny Howarth, Richard Smith,
Adjudication of prizewinners
Lead judge Katherine Parsons writes:
Many wonderful pieces were longlisted for this contest. In their midst, ‘Filling In’ and ‘In Our Footsteps’ are both outstanding for their excellent use of the flash fiction form: their use of language is meticulous and lovely, each word and sentence measured and held in balance with every other.
The winner of this contest, ‘Filling In’ demonstrates a particular meticulousness with its accumulation of short sentences. The writer places small details under careful pressure, richly furnishing the character and tone of the piece. The success of the final two sentences is a testament to this, as they reach back and quietly tap into to the unspoken potential of each previous line.
‘In Our Footsteps’ is a beautiful expression of love and loss. It is a reckoning with grief told in two contrasting parts: the felt presence of one who is absent, and the absence of one who is physically present.
‘Shellshock’ is ablaze with visceral language that centres the body in all it does. A striking combination of conflict, pain, and physical intimacy.
The cacophony of ‘Still Here’ brilliantly captures a fear of isolation. The constant presence of silence, alternately smothered and smothering, lends a dark intensity to this piece.
‘Ursula’ is a vivid tableau; a description that brings to life the mutual transgression of all imagined boundaries between humankind and the natural world.
Alphabetical list of writers
This lists all the leading flash fiction writers who wished to have their successful competition poems published in the anthology. Each is linked to their flash fiction text and audio
Aaran Thakore
, Abigail Ottley, Adam Elms, Alison Tanik, Catherine Leyshon, Catherine Naisby, Christine Griffin, Christopher Cuninghame, Kate Mclennan, Kimberley Graham, Linda Lewis, Maisie Jack, Neil Douglas, Olga Dermott-Bond, Penny Howarth, Peter Devonald, Sharon Webster
indicates one audio of a story created by the writer.
Filling In
Left to themselves they grew like Topsy. That had always been the reason she plucked. A neat arch frames and opens the eye the old-style glossies used to say. Now her eyes are open, no doubt about that. She recoils from what she sees in the mirror. Her mother used to say: It is what it is. We must do the best we can with what we have. Before she pencils them in, her face is a blank, more absence than presence. When you are old, people think you don’t care. Or they laugh because you care too much. She has chosen this day for its early spring sunshine. She will wear something light, something girlish. Whoever finds her, she hopes they will see her at her best. The polite guest knows when to leave.
Abigail Ottley lives in Penzance. Her work has appeared in more than 250 outlets including Sylvia Magazine, The High Window, Trigger Warning, Ink, Sweat & Tears, and The Survivor Zine. A contributor to the Duff anthology (2022 and Invisible Borders (2021), she was also twice Highly Commended in Frosted Fire First Pamphlet Award (2023)
Endgame
Cornered, leaden feet tired from heavy pursuit. West. Giants huddle around, spectators to slaughter. I’m one of those whose life may be due. North. For a king with no soldiers, prisoner to a fort on the other side, conceding is enticing. East. But to surrender isn’t to sacrifice my name alone, but also my life. Opposition hesitates, awaiting arrival at victory. South. There’s little refuge in a world so black or white, within its confines witnessing the slaying of my own dear wife. West. A knight breaks free, his bent sword piercing my wooden chainmail. I spring. A yard northeast, a single leap. Quick. Too quick. Fallen prey to the trap. A pawn played in an enemy’s plan. Blunt dagger to my head. I succumb and fall, black body bled on an organised tiled floor. My deaf ears close, entrapping a sound – “Checkmate”, as I hit the ground.
Aaran Thakore, born and raised in London, is currently a student at Hampton School. Whilst preparing for his A-levels, he has entered numerous writing competitions and is currently working on his first novel. As a passionate human rights activist, he hopes to one day make a difference through his words.
Snow
It was the coldest winter anyone could remember, even Bişar Ağa had never known such snow. In the village, we were cut off from Sulaymaniyah for thirty-three days, without electricity or running water. Babies were born, some died, and when that happened, both the birth and the death went unmarked in official records. Within hours, the baby would be buried, wrapped in swaddling, in a grave the size of four or five men’s footprints in the snow. These babies had never existed; they were part of the dream landscape of that particular, bitter winter.
We sat the days out, women with women and men with men, drinking sticky, steamy tea from glasses and telling. We burnt cow dung for warmth. But it’s the light I remember most, reflecting from the snow, into the house, making the middle of the night as bright as a Mediterranean summer.
Alison Tanik is a poet, performer, and playwright from Derby. Alison has studied creative writing at the University of Derby and has been mentored in performance by Casey Bailey. Alison’s work has been shortlisted for the Aurora Prize. She will be an Associate Poet at this year’s Derby Poetry Festival.
In our footsteps
I arrive across the water, the city, squinting and smiling in the brightness of the early morning light, and I leave with the dusk, so it will be forever imprinted in my mind, a stately silhouette on a smouldering sea. And in between there is strolling, a deliberate, long strided lingering, precious jewels recalled in giggling side streets, cherished exchanges in embroidered chapels. It is a brush with happiness …… with you.
That was not you in the drizzle, the gloom, of that anguished, dirty, street. And I could not find you in the over bright whiteness of the room where they let you sleep nor in the pretty, walled garden with the stones with names. You were not there. You were here.
So now, one by one I uncurl my fingers, slowly, loosen my hold, reluctantly, my heart crumbling, say good bye, let you go.
Sharon Webster lives in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire. In recent years, she has had more time to indulge a love of writing, finding inspiration in the natural beauty around her and the people who share her path. Her first poetry anthology Shadows and Daisies was published by Tim Saunders publications in 2023.
Say His Name
A carrot is a carrot. There’s only so long she can spend picking them up, turning them over, smelling them. It’s taken all my courage to go out shopping. I’ve heard about people crossing the road to avoid you, but staring at carrots…
I abandon my trolley and leave.
The next morning she’s on my doorstep with garage flowers, excuses, a mournful expression. She drinks my tea, clears her throat.
I know how you feel. You don’t
He had a good innings. He was 68
Time is a great healer. Spare me
A shroud-like silence hangs between us.
Is that the time? I’ve got the dentist. Must go. I’ll pop round again soon.
She won’t.
Not once did she mention his name.
From my window, I notice her grass is long. Richard my husband used to mow it for her.
Christine Griffin enjoys all forms of writing, particularly poetry and short stories. She is widely published including in Acumen, Snakeskin, The Dawntreader, Graffiti Magazine, Poetry Super Highway and Writing Magazine. She has performed her work at the Cheltenham Poetry Festival and the Cheltenham Literature Festival.
Fine pair
Its precarious balance on the ivy grabbed your attention, not its razor-sharp markings. The magpie clasped to the root, springing like a bad haircut above the mouldy grey fence, while you tried hard not to think about form or symbol. Your heart would have been in its beak.
As the bird lunged towards another clump, its claws lost their grip. The angle it estimated and the velocity it chose had been wrong. Force majeure – a sudden squall from the north, or a glimpse of you from the beady corner of an eye – had acted godlike.
There were flurried streaks of the lightning-blue tail feathers, a head twisted in alarm as clumsy, skinny feet scrabbled in all directions. There should have been an interested cat prowling beneath in the uncut grass. What was and what wasn’t had been saved until another day – but none of your blushes.
Christopher Cuninghame writes about what he observes around and about his home patch in East London, and further afield. He mainly focusses on poetry and flash fiction writing. Sampson Low published his prize-winning poetry chapbook Small Change and his work has appeared in Sheffield University’s Route 57, Wildfire Words and elsewhere.
Shellshock
Catherine asked Howard Timms to voice this audio.
Watching TV, straight-forward choice of channels tonight. My name is Bond, Blister Agent Bond, I am sulphur mustard, mutagenic.
Later, I wake screaming, you think I’m reacting to ‘scenes of strong violence’, hold me hard, make cytotoxic love, call me Heinz, deny it, claim you said Harry, so softly, my hair between your fingers.
Back to sleep, the sewer-wet trench. The sergeant—I howl, you wake, the fox kills for food, but badgers are gassed, there’s no line between morality, mortality. Blistered, my skin burns, my lungs, so hideous septic, I cannot be bandaged, cannot be touched.
You touch me.
Catherine Naisby is a writer, artist, and musician whose published works (as ‘Catherine Edmunds’) include two poetry collections, five novels and a Holocaust memoir. She has had numerous publication credits in journals including Aesthetica, Crannóg, Poetry Scotland and Ambit; and was the 2020 winner of the Robert Graves Poetry Prize.
Crohn’s Warrior
My prey, the beauty walking towards me, knows no trauma. Once I have feasted upon the blessings she didn’t know to count, she would be lost forever.
I skipped behind her as she walked happily along. I grabbed her spine; it stopped her in her tracks. I was excited. I filled her mouth with warm saliva to make her feel sick and happily watched her rosy cheeks turn a deathly white. Then, I filled her insides with cold porridge. I made pain sear up through every cell in her body. I could taste the fire in her eyes being extinguished by the tears of terror. I watched her disgrace herself in the street. Taking her worth, I experienced the flavours of the trauma she now lives.
She counted her blessings and she stood strong. I hid in terror; she is no prey. She is a Crohn’s warrior.
Kate McLennan is a playworker from Lincoln and is new to the writing community. Although she has never been published before, she is enjoying the start of her writing journey and aspires to be a comedy writer. In her spare time, Kate enjoys writing and creating comedy sketches.
The Job
The blades are sharp. I smile as they move through the air, making sounds like they cut souls. I turn to the trembling mass before me. My hands are steady, I know what to do! It’s nothing like my first time, when I couldn’t look them in the eye, when I sweated fear,
but now…..
The deep brown eyes start to water as they look at me, begging me not to do what we both know I have to. I’ve been paid to do a job. The money has procured my services, and that includes my tools. I have him secured on the table. He lashes out at me. I use a calm voice,
explaining, in detail, what I’m going to do to him and why. I think back, looking at the plasters on my fingers. I watch his teeth and breathe because grooming a nervous dog is dangerous work.
Kimberley Graham is a dog groomer from Northern Ireland now living in Scotland with her son. She is currently studying English literature and creative writing with the Open University. This is her first piece of published flash fiction. She has other pieces of writing in the works.
A Walk in the Woods
Stand. Watch.
The boy fidgeted. Without his smartphone, he felt lost.
Don’t talk. Listen
The boy muttered under his breath. There was nothing to listen to.
See. Look.
He glared at his teacher. The walk was a waste of time. The wood wasn’t a jungle; there were no wild animals to fight.
Stand. Wait.
Something caught the boy’s eye; an insect, hovering like a helicopter, its body covered in honey coloured fur, a long spikey thing where its mouth should be.
‘What’s that?’
‘No idea,’ the teacher replied.
That evening, the boy posted a photo on line. Minutes later, somebody identified the insect.
‘A bee fly. A fly that resembles a bee in order to parasitise a bees’ nest.’
As he learned about the creature, the boy felt proud. He knew something his teacher did not.
The next day, Darren Saunders was early to school.
Linda Lewis. Since 2003, Linda has made her living writing short stories for magazines including Woman’s Weekly and Fiction Feast. She also worked as a tutor for the Writers Bureau. Now ‘retired’, she wants to stretch her writing wings. Her book, The Writers Treasury of Ideas, was published in 2012. List of Linda Lewis books http://twitter.com/writingiseasy https://www.facebook.com/easywrite https://youtu.be/G4D5fIy0FNU
Still Here
She switches on the radio and a deep South rasp of heart-sore blues assaults her one useful ear. The television already blares with love affairs on cobbled Salford streets and grave newsreaders and overly chirpy adverts for toilet cleaner. She runs a tap to hear it thud; she vacuums fervently, sucking up the deadness; she scolds the microwave for being sedate: “You daft thing! A bloody idle so-and-so.” She fills the kettle, leaning her bird-like frame against the washing machine to inhale teeming overlaps: water’s sizzle, a harmonica in doleful flight, Carol’s grim warning of scattered showers in western areas tomorrow morning.
Once twilight drips, she is smothered by ink. Darkness lies beside, stroking her chalky haystack mane – and there is stillness. Nothing but stillness. No owl cries nor no rain ticks the window. And tremoring hands are clapped tight over ears, so silence, he cannot seep inside.
Adam Elms is a poet and playwright from Bristol. His poem ‘Fallen Comrade’ was shortlisted for the Urban Tree Festival, whilst ‘Above Chesil Beach With Constable’ was Commended in the Elmbridge Literary Competition. Theatre companies such as ‘Owdyado, Wireless Theatre, Unforced Errors, and Four Fig have produced his various plays.
Back and Forth
There’s something about the train to uni that I’ll never quite get used to
The pang of not quite sadness just an odd dullness of being left alone again
The willing and wanting and almost begging for a helping hand which once forgotten, now clings to your thoughts.
The drive and pulsation of thoughts running on money, washing, work, money, washing, work until the dull pounding of thoughts becomes an overwhelming thrush of stress and the hum of the train is the hum of my heart and my head.
There’s something about the grief I feel as I leave,
A sort of suspended sadness that doesn’t really affect or offend but just hurt slightly, for a moment.
As the thought of the approaching days cuts me like a knife.
Maisie Jack is a first year student at the University of Nottingham. She is also a keen actor, director and writer involved in projects across the Nottingham New Theatre. She is the upcoming External Relations Manager for the theatre and hopes to expand the poetry provision within it.
Alexander unties the Gordian Knot
I was never a Boy Scout. More Boys Brigade. It was the lanyards that attracted me. You can tie knots in a lanyard. You can tie knots in an argument. Aristotle taught me that, taught me loops, hitches, bends, lashings; that the figure-eight follow-through is the strongest.
I found myself at Gordian, standing next to this ox cart tied to a pillar ‒ an intricate knot, cornel bark I believe. The oracle said that whoever unravels this knot will rule Asia. Have you heard a king grunt? Seen his eyes bulge? Couldn’t shift it. Not for all the jewels in Persia. Legend has it I drew my sword, sliced it in half ‒ a single stroke of the shining blade. But the truth is I pulled the linchpin from the yoke. The knot ‒ well, it just fell apart in my hands. Funny that.
Neil Douglas worked as a doctor in London’s East End and is currently a student of Life and Creative Writing at Goldsmiths, University of London. He has poetry published in the UK, North America and Hong Kong. He was highly commended in the Frosted Fire First Pamphlet Competition in 2023 and shortlisted for the Bridport Prize (flash fiction) in 2022.
Blinded by silence
Driving home too late I turned the wipers off, allowed the rain to gather dark roads into drunken knots across my windscreen, obscuring silent houses, stricken fields. I could translate the familiar twists of country corners, as ragged floods stretched across the glass like branches, tapering to wintered stems. I had waited and waited for the counsellor to call me earlier, but checking my emails realised I hadn’t sent her a message to confirm the time. It would count as another missed appointment. I turned off the radio, let the deepening torrent lead me, intricate cataclysms making their tortured journeys to the edge of my vision. Each new deluge created a Fibonacci sequence spiralling endlessly to whirlpools, so shadow-spill was all I could see. Driving home too late, I was blinded by silence, no-one left to confess to, nothing to push away all this beauty and chaos.
Olga Dermott-Bond has had poetry and flash fiction widely placed and published, and has written two poetry pamphlets; apple, fallen (Against the Grain Press 2020) and A sky full of strange specimens (Nine Pens Press 2021). Her first full collection Frieze will be published by Nine Arches Press in October 2023.
Ursula
Ursula scratches at the locked trunk of the Buick Roadmaster. It’s parked amongst the scarlet monkey flowers and sierra butterweed in the lot at El Capitan meadow, a black metal brick thrown at nature’s window. Silvery drool escapes Ursula’s lips. Hungry and hefty, she needs snacks before heading home. Twinkies, Ding Dongs, Doritos. Smells them. Seven thousand feet of sheer rock face soar skyward, indifferent that she’s late for her nap. Six months should do it.
Hunker down while the fall colors turn tricks for the last of the fairweather tourists. Emerge in spring, rubbing her black raisin eyes. But now, snacks. Shove the car, test the doors, push the windows. Across the meadow echoes a child’s shrill complaints at her thievery. Man approaches. Apex species maybe, but stinking of fear. She rears up on her hind legs and unleashes the full-throated roar of a ravenous bear.
Rowdy Bouquet
I flowed into you, a brackish stream over stony ground. I found the place where my
tumble slowed and went meandering in peace. Or so I imagined. I never enquired
whether you loved me as much as I loved you. It was a given. I let people go to make
room for us. But the adoration in your eyes was a trick of the light. Your hand on my
shoulder was your boot on my face, pushing me under. I mistook a warning flare for
a rowdy bouquet. You tucked me away at the back of a drawer where I read your
diaries, found you out. I lived alone in pieces until someone played me a new tune
and surprised me with honesty. I allowed myself to be worshiped, chosen, loved. I
put away my nails and barbed wire. But then you came back. Because you could.
Catherine Leyshon‘s short stories deal with the foundational themes of love, fear, guilt, redemption and hope. They have been published in a variety of online and print outlets and Catherine came third in the Crossing the Tees short story competition (2023). Catherine gets her best ideas walking her dog, Treacle.
Narcissus in the Hall of Mirrors
In the mirror, the young man’s head had become a bulbous gourd, feet spindled to hooves. He sobbed. I asked if he was okay, if I could help him find his friends. He said he’d lost them. When he’d called out for them, a girl had answered. She’d wrapped her arms around him like weeds dripping from a pond. He’d fled, ended up here. I led him outside into the smoky dark, asked if he could see anyone he knew. As faces loomed towards us, sweat-slicked and garish in the yellow lights, he drooped his head, muttered horrible, horrible. As we left the hot dog stands, the calliope and galloping horses of the carousel, the ring of tents, he became calmer. The moon spotlit a way through the long grass and up the hillside. Suddenly he was gone, running into the scent of flowers.
Penny Howarth, who also writes as Penny Ayers, has had poems published online and in print magazines including Ink, Sweat and Tears, Spelt, Dear Reader as well as in various anthologies including Grey Hen’s Phenomenal Women and Cheltenham Poetry Society’s The Elements. Penny helps run the Gloucestershire Writers’ Network.
Hamlet Sleep
I saw you. I thought I saw you. The day you died.
You were sitting in the doctor’s waiting room, pensive and scared. You’d lost so much weight, face carried the weary weight of the world, eyes heavy and dulled.
I acknowledged you: a nod, smile, semblance of a wave. But you looked right through me, eyes just on the winter sun, glimpsed through the window. Resplendent but dimming. Colder now. Focussed on what happens next, you were passing on through.
The world just passed you by.
Everyone ignored you.
You were going somewhere else, a different kind of blue. Here but not here, a moonlight ghost before your time. Other people’s memories, falling, fading.
There but not there. Shimmer of crystal reflections, mirrors in mirrors, energy and life, captivating and transcendent, you were soon-to-be light. All that pain and neon, released, released, into the embracing night.
Peter Devonald is a poet/ screenwriter, winner FofHCS, Waltham Forest Poets and Heart Of Heatons. Poet in residence Haus-a-rest, 100+ poems published including London Grip, Artists Responding To…, Forget-Me-Not Press, Unconventional Courier, Poetic Map of Reading and 7 galleries. 50+ film awards, former senior judge/ mentor Peter Ustinov Awards (iemmys) and Children’s Bafta nominated.
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