The winning entries from the Literary Lancashire Award
The Literary Lancashire Award is a creative writing competition, launched this year by SCAN’s very own Lara Orriss and Ruth Walbank. The competition spans the whole of Lancashire, open to those aged 16-30 years old. For the first year the competition did remarkably well, receiving 80 total entries in the two categories, poetry and prose. Here are exerpts of the runners up…
PROSE CATEGORY
Disconnect by Hannah Wesson
TECHNOLOGY OF TOMORROW
“It’s the craziest thing, I never used to like strawberries, but these are amazing.”
Lucy laboured a smile as Peter devoured his waffles. Crisp, golden waffles smothered in white chocolate sauce, delicately sliced strawberries all topped with crumbled biscuit. Carol’s recommendation.
“How’s yours?” Peter asked with his mouth full.
Lucy shrugged. “Amazing as always.” Bananas and toffee sauce, she’d barely made a dent. Peter finished the last bite and started scooping up the dregs with his finger. “Not hungry?”
“I mean…technically no, we never are.”
Peter gave her a look. “Alright smart arse, you know what I mean.”
Lucy smiled weakly. “Yeah. Guess I’m just not in the mood for waffles right now.”
A mans life structured in a way a specific way that leads to such a freedom pathetic by Sam Pye
NORMAL AND THE ABNORMAL
I
Am a person
that exists
In England
A place
And my name is not important
Stop asking questions
God
I often ask myself what it means to be a man because the news stories and online blogs and people that I know
I know people always have such specific conditions that I should abide because that is what it means to be a man
Man
M
A
N
Do you think adam
Another name
Cared about what people thought of him
Do you
think about it for a second
POETRY CATEGORY
Slagheap by Alex George
TECHNOLOGY OF TOMORROW
Oh God,
I may be in the last wave of people to crash against the Earth’s shoreline.
I may be the last to crack my skull on a box-TV thrown to the pile when Blockbuster died.
I may be the last to choke on the bike-chain lasso that flares from the dirt.
Oh God.
If I am caught in the final landslide of tin foil and fish-heads,
Give me strength to bite my blue hand from six-pack plastic.
And when the bottle-green screams come tumbling through my blood,
Permit me to smash the music into my squint,
And like a dog,
Plunge my head into the gramophone of death
And-
Oh God-
Know that I am extinct
And I was the last disc to be scratched.
Mrs and Mrs Reanimator by Rhiannon Hughes
TECHNOLOGY OF TOMORROW
Honey, you know I miss you, in those
Overnight shifts that see you holed up
In your laboratory; deft hands
Tinkering with God-knows-what while I
Wait here in lonely silence, sprawled out
Like a dead frog for you to dissect.
You’ve changed, my love, and I know that change
Is inevitable in your field.
But had an experiment gone wrong;
Turned you into some grotesque, gorgeous
Parody of the woman I’d loved,
Maybe I could learn to love with that.
I wasn’t afraid when you came home,
Still frothing about the committee
Cutting your funding, your mutters of
They’ll see. They’ll all see! filling the house.
You were swallowed by your work that night.
The passion I’d once loved devoured you.
Does being a wonder of modern
Technology get lonely, dearest?
Does the brain between those bolts still dream
Of kisses shared under bleach-blue lights,
Whispered promises of things that God
Had not yet permitted to exist?
Winning entries can be read in the first issue of SCAN, published in September at the start of the next academic year. The LLA anthology containing all shortlisted pieces will be available for purchase soon from Waterstones King St, Lancaster at £8 or £15 for two copies.
