WINNER - 2026
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In Which I’m Nice to Timmy
by Vanessa Lampert
Because Timmy is a name no one
could fear, I’m calling your depression Timmy.
It’s never too late to be a better person
Handsome Timmy. Our Timmy. Timmylove
See us offer Timmy the comfiest chair.
See us orbit his planet with cushions.
See me welcome Timmy back into the fold
Timmy by fridge-light with no appetite.
Timmy not leaving the house. Timmy
drinking. Unwashed Timmy. Timmy asleep
all day. Same old same old same old Timmy
wandering from room to room like the ghost
of a man called Timmy who looks like you.
Once upon a time, there was a man called Timmy
who laughed easily and felt better for love.
A Timmy who knew he was enough.
You must learn to manage the Timmy you’ve got.
I offer him a pillow and a clean
handkerchief. I wash his clothes and his feet.
Timmy ten toes. Beautiful Timmy.
We don’t know why he’s made from grief.
We wish Timmy well. We hope that he’ll leave.
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My mum loves a good portmanteau
by Luke Horsey
My mum loves a good portmanteau.
There’s always a coinage on her lips.
As I write this, she hits her vape
and her inhaler in one swift shift.
I remember she called the cat
Pussecco on a casual Christmas Eve.
I’m sure I picked up the cigarettes
to draw a line from her to me.
That boy was a twunt anyway,
what was his name again?
She finds morphemes to push
together when we have come apart.
She’s a good mother, she’s not smothered
by syntax. When a sad situation lacks
language, she gloriously galvanises
cacophonic crumbs of meaning.
Stressed Spelt Backwards Is Desserts
reads the mug from behind which she
smokes, sharing stories from her past.
How our word games make me laugh.
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Carcinization
by Özge Lena
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Notes from the Home Isle
by Victoria Spires
When we want to escape ourselves we climb
the rusted ladder of the track, abandoning cares
like sandwich wrappers to the sidings as we scale
the West Coast Main Line rung by unglamorous
rung. Nuneaton, Tamworth, Lichfield Trent
Valley. Everywhere, the temporal ambiguity
of freight trains, our faces ghosting themselves
in intermittent tunnels. Past cranes, corrugations
of factories, sawtooth roofs we slope. Allotments
that remind us of hope’s slow withering. Somewhere
near Preston, the sadness doubles down.
A stagger through each carriage’s interlocking
wardrobe ends in a disappointing buffet. Hemmed in
by scratty embankments, there is little to do
but look up as the engine sounds out the browns
and greys – receives no reply. Up, up – the sky
conserves its energy between ley lines of overhead
cables. Up, where security cameras swivel their backs
at potential trespassers. Up, where the land begins
to flex its muscles, crack its spine. At Carlisle,
a sudden ecstasy of purple heather signals a nothing
that could be the beginning of another life,
could just be alternate timetabling.