Crystal Orb. Photograph Phil Hall

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by Yogesh Patel

There is a particular genuine sincerity in a prize decided not by a closed jury but by the interactive poets of a literary journal. This is the unique and honest quality for which my Word Masala Foundation sponsors the Orbis Poetry Annual Prize. It is fully in synergy with the magazine that chooses a winner for each issue through voting and awards a prize. There is no wasteful show business here. No fashion, no favour—just the quiet, cumulative judgement of those who read and write poetry for love rather than laurels.

I have decided to honour such honesty with the inaugural Orbis Poetry Prize 2025, run by Orbis International Literary Journal, under the very engaging and encouraging (rare) trait of its current editor, Carole Baldock. She takes that genuine interest in her writers, as the editor of Ars Notoria takes here. The key joy for me is the community spirit of Orbis poets and readers.
This year brought a rare and happy outcome: a tie for first place from all the poems published during the year in this journal.

Amelia Dowler and Jenna Plewes are joint winners, with Jan FitzGerald and Lynne Taylor named runners-up.

As a silent roving literary editor at Ars Notoria, I am proud to present them here, with a brief comment on each poem.

The details about the prize are at http://www.orbisjournal.co.uk. Ars Notoria takes pride in supporting Orbis and brings you the winning poems.

Joint Winners: Amelia Dowler and Jenna Plewes

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Amelia Dowler

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Dowler gazes inward to the domestic sensorium: a barking dog, chilli sting, washing machine drum, and a stunted sunflower tracking the absent sun. The poem assembles a world of accumulated noise and small violences, then ends on an image of absurd, stubborn hope. It is strange, exact, and deeply affecting. David Mark Williams, Lorna Sherry, and Isabel Greenslade’s votes for this poem suggest a readership that values the intimate as much as the epic.

Kitchen, evening

Next door’s dog is barking again,
and the dog on the other side replies,
back and forth volley through walls.
A neighbour shouts that’s enough,

and the dog on the other side replies
that it is never enough; the insistent
whine of a distant power tool
is a mosquito, trying to fix the unfixable.

It is never enough, and the insistent
drone of the vacuum makes
electricity crackle through the thunder
of the washing machine drum rolling;

the drone of the vacuum makes
me put my face in my hands, sliced chilli
stings tears, as the grey sky blankets
the silent earth underfoot.

I put my face in my hands and chilli
falls to the kitchen floor while the evening
draws in and the world is tired, so tired
but when darkness falls there is no sleep

falling to the kitchen floor while the evening
cats screech at each other from underneath cars.
Out in the garden a stunted sunflower holds on,
tracking the absent sun, petals unclosing until they fall.

Jenna Plewes

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This poem uses the pantoum form not as ornament but as engine moulding the idea further. Lines repeat, shift, gain weight, until ‘we teeter on a tipping point, staring at the stars’ becomes a quiet horror. Plewes shifts us from the birth of cells to orcas, antelopes, owls, then to “sweetshop for our greed”. The formal control never cools the repressed agitation. Poets Pen Yin and Paul Genega recognised a poem that mourns without self-pity and accuses without shouting. A deserving winner.

Tipping point

We teeter on a tipping point, staring at the stars
beneath our feet the steady pulse of time
weaving, eon after eon, the fragile web of life
Ice Age after Ice Age, pummelling the earth

beneath our feet the steady pulse of time
the birth of microscopic life, a soup of cells
Ice Age after Ice Age, pummelling the earth
lichens inching onto rock, plankton thickening the sea

the birth of microscopic life, a soup of cells
dividing, building, dying and rebuilding
lichens inching onto rock, plankton thickening the sea
creatures crawling onto land, feathering the air

dividing, building, dying and rebuilding
giving us orcas, antelopes and owls
creatures crawling onto land, feathering the air
all that we take for granted, assume is ours to use

giving us orcas, antelopes and owls
forests and savannas, mountains that pierce the sky
all that we take for granted, assume is ours to use
a playground for humanity, sweetshop for our greed

forests and savannas, mountains that pierce the sky
wild and untamed beauty, shrinking before our eyes
a playground for humanity, sweetshop for our greed.
We trample and destroy the fragile web of life

wild and untamed beauty, shrinking before our eyes
we poison oceans, rape the soil, make this unique world

Runners-up

Lynne Taylor

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A poem of erotic tension and architectural awe. The last point spoke to me through these lines:
“On the skyline, la Sagrada Familia is like an illusion in the mist. / We are far higher than any other building, yet some / are tall and haughty office blocks.”

Taylor sets a storm-ridden Barcelona against a faltering relationship: “made love in vicious desperation. Dozed. Made love again / with terrifying tenderness.” The basilica becomes a ghost in the mist; a water tank with a clock face becomes a “Time God.” The poem risks excess and earns it. Unforgettable, and deeply strange.

La Sagrada Familia

The heat breathes on my cheeks. I taste rain on your lips
before I taste you. We glide upwards
like crumpled angels; dizzily, on a spiral of elevators;
must have reached the top. There are no more.

I glance at your watch: twenty to eight,
the fingers snipping time when no-one is looking.

We heave a sigh as though
we have physically climbed, find a crowded bar walled
by gaping windows. But no, the panes are mounted,
not bounded by frames; above them we are open to the elements.
No wind. The storm is still, its passion turned in on itself.

We seize a couple of seats freshly deserted, and like vultures close in,
sink breathless onto them. Lightning stabs with its jagged blade
splitting the sky, thunder inevitable in its wake.
Under the treacherous clouds the city is drowned.

On the skyline, la Sagrada Familia is like an illusion in the mist.

We are far higher than any other building, yet some
are tall and haughty office blocks. The rest are a jumble in a heap,
and in the gloom: melancholy, deserted by a mythical child
for another toy; reduced to black and dubious shades of grey.
Other than one: hogging the limelight round and fat, a grotesque can
squats beneath an immense clock face. Lazily, invincible,
it revolves slowly, dominates the city like a Time God.

Ten past nine. Time is biting into itself; no longer tiny snippets.
Huge chunks gouge themselves out. The rain drilling, drilling.

Your eyes are far-off focused, oblivious
of this cosmopolitan mishmash of people, talking too loudly
with a non-English lack of restraint. I too want to talk too loudly
with a non-English lack of restraint. I want to scream.

We returned to the hotel for our last supper. Later
made love in vicious desperation. Dozed. Made love again
with terrifying tenderness, until we broke with the dawn.

Jan FitzGerald

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FitzGerald knows that a poem about cats can also be a poem about empire, mercy, and belonging. From Byzantine and Ottoman ruins to the Prophet cutting his sleeve rather than waking a sleeping cat, the poem moves with sure-footed authority. The closing line—”They belong to no one”—lands with the weight of a blessing and a prophetic warning. Wit, learning, and tenderness are trying to come into harmony here.

The Cats of Istanbul

Byzantine and Ottoman empires have fallen, but we are still here —
nomads of the cobblestone, both tame and wild.

Fatma, the Turkish Angora lazing in the sun,
a smoked meat gourmand, will bite your ankles
if you stand in her way when Musafa opens his restaurant.

Yusuf, a stray, prefers a slab of juicy mackerel —
his breed arrived on fishing boats
and merchants feed him by the docks.

Safiyya, the Persian, sleeps at night on a kilim in a cat shelter.
They say if you tip out a cat’s bowl,
you will have great thirst in the afterlife.

Noah’s ancestors came on the Ark, jumped ship at Mount Ararat
and swam to Van city. Van cats have an affinity with water;
and their backs bear the mark of the Prophet.

A cat called Muezza once fell asleep on Muhammad’s robe.
When Muhammad rose with the call to prayer,
not wanting to disturb the cat, He cut off the sleeve.

Blessed by Muhammad to land on their paws,
the cats of Istanbul have saved libraries from mice,
and people from disease and sewer rats.

And so it is. They belong to no one —

A Note on the Prize

The Orbis Poetry Prize has no entry fee and no celebrity panel. First send your poems for publication in the magazine. If accepted, you are in. On receipt of the issue, every subscriber votes and comments. Carole Baldock selects and prints them in the next issue. There is a winner for each issue who receives £50. At the end of the year, you vote from the poems published that year for the Orbis Prize. The results are messy, unpredictable, engaging, and always stirring! This year’s winners reflect a readership that values craft, risk, and emotional truth.

Ars Notoria is honoured to give these poems a second life. Congratulations to all.

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Shortlisted for the Aryamati Prize 2023, Yogesh Patel received an MBE for literature in the Late Queen’s 2020 Honours List. This story comes from Yogesh Patel’s Gujrati short stories, Pagalani Lipi, published by R R Seth & Co in Mumbai in the eighties. The collection was critically acclaimed as one of the best three short story collections of that decade. Yogesh has been working on bringing its echo into English for a long time.

 Patel edits Skylark and runs Skylark Publications UK, as well as a non-profit Word Masala project to promote literature. Honoured with the Freedom of the City of London, and nominated for the Pushcart Prize, he has LP records, films, radio, a children’s book, fiction, and non-fiction books, and three poetry collections to his credit. A recipient of many awards, including The International Pinnacle Accolade Award by Vatayan – Poetry on South Bank and a Co-Op Prize for the poetry on the environment, Patel was Poet-of-Honor at New York University in April 2019. Among the venues he has read in, are the House of Lords and the National Poetry Library. Patel’s poem is also scheduled for the moon aboard a NASA/SpaceX rocket to be archived in a time capsule as part of humanity’s cultural record on the moon’s Southern Hemisphere.

His writing has appeared in many notable literary journals, including PN Review, The London Magazine, World Literature Today, Indian Literature, Stand, Envoi, Under the Radar, Shearsman, IOTA, Understanding, Orbis, The Book Review, and Confluence. He has also appeared on BBC TV and Radio. Patel’s work also features in The National Curriculum Anthology, MacMillan educational series, Sahitya Akademi anthologies, and more than fifteen other anthologies across the world. Having written columns and articles for numerous broadsheets and literary journals, Yogesh was an editor at Ars Notoria Magazine (the Art of the Noteworthy) which he helped establish and writes regular columns for Confluence.