By offering a tri-partite package of financial assistance, mentorship and pamphlet publication by Faber, the scheme intends to provide care and direction to four talented new stars in 2009, with four similar awards to be made in 2010. In 2009, the awarded poets are Fiona Benson, Heather Phillipson Toby Martinez de las Rivas and Jack Underwood.
Lares
I keep going back to that bird, snagged
by a halter of skein of fibre or yarn
and strung from the gutter of the opposite house
where it quartered in the wind, each bead of its spine
and the dead-drop of its skull
lit up against the breeze-block wall,
claws pushed out as if sk idding to a halt while its beak transmitted code.
I say a prayer to you, small ghost, small noosed spirit of the eaves,
dangling from the prow of the house
singing all four winds, the spindle and pin
and needle and thorn of your hollow bones
riding you on air that is redolent with spores
after the fact of your scavanged heart,
the stolen tissues of your wings.
