I am absolutely thrilled to announce that my poem ‘The Branding of Elgiva’ has won first place in the Pre-Raphaelite Society’s annual poetry competition. My winning poem will be published in the spring issue of the Society’s Review.
The competition asked for poems inspired by/responding to the Pre-Raphaelites and their circle. My poem was a short ekphrastic piece after Elgiva (pictured) by Joanna Boyce Wells, which I first saw at the superb National Portrait Gallery exhibition Pre-Raphaelite Sisters. It was so important to me that I write about the work of a female artist. The painting – and my poem – depicts the real-life medieval queen Elgiva, whose face was brutally branded after defeat in war. I was inspired by the way the Pre-Raphaelites painted women, with strength and fierceness.
The Pre-Raphaelite Society was founded in 1988 to celebrate the work of the Pre-Raphaelites. You can find out more about the Society here.
Ellora Sutton 
‘Cross a meadow clothed with flowers
Neath an oak trees sleepy bowers
There around her dress was fanned
Sat like statue roslyand
‘Pon her lap forgotten lain
A triple link of daisy chains
Fashioned half a century passed
Still the colours they hold fast
Butter gold laced peerless white
Aged but still most summer bright
Daughter born of seers and sages
Clutches she the curse’d pages
Dark the ink and black the spell
Conjured from the bowels of hell
Beneath this oak tree strong and tall
Sweet roslyand is held in thrall
Magic weaved from far and near
Has bound her ten and ninety years
Ne’er to walk the meadowed land
Ne’er to feel the suns soft hand
Sorcery like iron bands
Imprisons our poor roslyand
No day differs from the last
Nought a future nor a past……,,
LikeLike
Through the glade good morning bade
A songbird groomed for flight
Her task to tell the secret dell
The ending of the night
Serpentine through dandelion’s the bramble hides to snag
The wraggwort grows by wild rose
The oak tree ivy clad
A cabbage white it does alight
Upon a buttercup a swan or two that passes sets down to preen and sup……
LikeLike