Fiona Larkin has won this year’s £5,000 National Poetry Competition with ‘Absence has a Grammar’, which was described by judges Romalyn Ante, John McAuliffe and Stephen Sexton as “very impressive, ingenious and affecting”.

The winning poem was inspired by a family visit to Helsinki. Fiona Larkin said: “I was in Helsinki last August with all my family except my son Alex, who was moving to Brisbane. I’d been  reading up on the very complex Finnish language, and its multiple declensions, which include a case to express absence – the noun itself alters to show what’s lost.

“Similarly, my son seemed both there and not-there in his shadow self on Zoom. I thought  about him with this backdrop of grammar, and suffixes, and holiday reading … and the poem started to come together.”

The judges said: “Reading the National Poetry Competition’s many thousands of entries would make any reader a little snowblind. As stanzas and subjects accrue, their assemblies of sorrow and passion, of outburst and wit, almost seem to fade into one another – and then a poem like Fiona Larkin’s ‘Absence has a grammar’ looms into focus.

“At the judges’ final meeting, our attention was rewarded when we began to notice how the poem sustains its witty, teacher-like explanation of its Finnish terms, giving us the Lego-like parts of a grammar and vocabulary, and encouraging us to put the parts together as we read.”

Fiona said of the win: ‘I’m overwhelmed with surprise and delight … Like almost every poet, I’ve had my share  of rejections when I’ve sent work out – but entering the NPC supports the excellent work of the Poetry Society, whatever the outcome. There’s a Finnish concept, sisu, not easily translatable but incorporating resilience, tenacity and aiming high, despite  the odds. So go for it!”

Fiona Larkin’s debut collection, Rope of Sand, was published by Pindrop Press in 2023. The title poem was highly commended in the Forward prizes. Her pamphlets are Vital Capacity (Broken Sleep Books, 2022) and A Dovetail of Breath (Rack Press, 2020).  She manages innovative projects with Corrupted Poetry, and in 2024 was the poetry prize judge for the Society of Women Writers and Journalists. She was born in London to Irish parents. 

The judging panel selected the winning poem from over 21,700 poems entered into the competition from 9,598 poets in 114  countries. All the poems were read anonymously by the judges.

Nine other winners were also named,  including second prize winner Matt Barnard for ‘Two Boys at Midnight’ (winning £2,000) and third prize winner Sorrel Briggs for ‘Heaven Down’ ( £1,000). The seven commended poets winning £500 each are: Yong-Yu Huang, ‘Living as My Mother’; Lee Knapper, ‘Plums’; Hannah Perrin King, ‘Inheritance’; Lesley Sharpe, ‘Eyewitness’; Chris Beckett, ‘The broom upside down’; Kit Buchan, ‘Hallowe’en Ghazal’; and Andrew Dennison, ‘Courgettes’.

 

ABSENCE HAS A GRAMMAR

by Fiona Larkin

 

I am learning to use the abessive

case as if I were Finnish,

to indicate that what I miss

is so much a part of me

that its loss is structural.

 

The suffix -tta turns a word

into a shadow of itself.

Emptied of substance,

light blows through it.

I think of moonshine,

 

of a bottle of Koskenkorva,

the Finns’ national liquor,

renamed Koskenkorvatta

when there’s none left.

Koskenkorvatta, I howl.

 

Itkin syyttä means

‘I cried without reason,’

but when a child is away

there is reason enough.

Tonight itkin syyttä.

 

If I join -tta to son

it impels me to write this –

not a sonata, nor sonnet,

but still, of course,

a little song of longing.

 

 With thanks to Diego Marani for Koskenkorvatta

 

PHOTOGRAPH: SARAH WEAL