Ian McMillan was ‘amazed’ by the high standard of the poems he judged in Guernsey’s International Poetry competition, organised by the Guernsey Literary Festival which attracted more than 700 entries from poets all over the world.

Gâche Melée, by Sheffield poet Julian Dobson, won the open category and with it a £600 prize. Julian’s subject, gâche melée, is an apple delicacy known and loved by generations of islanders, stretching back to the times when every farm had its own orchard and the valley slopes were clothed with apple trees.

[caption id="attachment_657" align="alignnone" width="768"] Ian McMillan with the GLF team[/caption]

Second place went to Devon poet Jennie Osborne, for Your Language, and third to Janet Lees from the Isle of Man for When Charles and Camilla Came to Visit.

Simon Crowcroft from Jersey won first prize in the Channel Islands category and Bathsheba Lockwood Brook from Derbyshire scooped the first prize in the Young People’s category. Guernsey entrant Heather Despres was second in the young poets' class.

The winning 33 poems will be on display on the island’s buses for the next year – hence the title Poems on the Move - as well as at a number of island venues.

Ian spent a very busy two days in the island in May. As well as presiding over the presentation evening, at which all 33 poems were read, he kept an audience fantastically entertained the previous evening and ran creative workshops for schools and local poets.

He was extremely complimentary about the Guernsey Literary Festival, under whose banner Poems on the Move is organised, and said at the presentation night that he could ‘feel the love and the enthusiasm’ for poetry in the island. Whilst here, he also tweeted "Guernsey is so poetic even the gulls shriek in villanelles; the rhyme, the repetition, the narrative."

He also wrote a poem on air whilst doing an interview at BBC Radio Guernsey, especially for the Guernsey Literary Festival:

There’s nowt wrong with a bit of verse

It’s a shining island in a sea of prose

Cos poetry’s a blessing not a curse

Poetry’s a daffodil and a rose

There’s nowt wrong with a bit of verse

And Guernsey’s a place where poetry grows

Poetry’s a doctor and a nurse

Poetry’s an idea in beautiful clothes

There’s nowt wrong with a bit of verse

And poems are everywhere

At the end of your nose

Poetic poems clink in the poetry purse

Plant your poems in the garden and the metaphor grows

There’s nowt wrong with a bit of verse

Now have a go at writing one, go forward, don’t reverse

The poems came from as far afield as the US and Canada, New Zealand, Australia and Japan, as well as from Europe, the UK and Channel Islands. The competition was sponsored by Browns Advocates with the support of the Guernsey Arts Commission and the Association of Guernsey Charities.