^{EXCITING NEWS}

      

                              ^{WINNER OF SECOND PLACE}

                                                     ^IN

            ^{THE ROS SPENCER POETRY COPETITION 2025}

 

                                               

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  Colleen Keating       

  Second Place

  2025

 ROS SPENCER POETRY PRIZE 

 for

 ‘THE LAST WAY”

 

CONGRATULATIONS FURTHER FOR THE LONG LISTED POEM

Where her father walked

Both poems will be published in BRUSHSTROKES VI to  be launched in Novemeber 2025

I am very honoured and excited to be the runner up, winning  second prize in the Ros Spencer Poetry Competition 2025.

From over 600 poems to be named un the  long list then short listed and finally come out a winner is very affirming.

 It is also special to have two poems included in the latest  WA Poets  Brushstrokes VI 

BRUSHSTROKES VI

Thamk you to the contest judge, KEVIN GILLAM  and to the patron GEOFF SPENCER
It was an honour to hear him speak of his late wife Ros and read one of his poems.

The Last Way is a sestina I wrote early this year as an exercise
and in memory of a touching and powerful monumant
we visited in Minsk , Belaruse  on our Europian trip in 2017.

The monument has stayed with me these past 8 years and
wanting to write but always unsuccessfully until I tried the sestina .
Here the circuar rhythm and and repetition works well as the journey
is not a vertical journey but a internal struggle and experience  of facing death.

This is the only competition-ready sestina I have written .
Most poets regard it as a notoriously challenging form, with its six end words rotating
in a specific pattern throughout  the sestinia’s six sestets and final envoi tercet.