Winner: Antonia Johnson, ‘Grandad’s House’
Antonia Johnson’s poem ‘Grandad’s House’ is the recipient of a 2020 Newcastle Poetry Competition Young People’s Prize.
Grandad’s House
My Grandad’s house is a home
stacked with memories piled like photographs,
scrapbooks and albums and boxes of string,
a place to remember when the years grow old.
My grandad’s house is a tidy one,
compared to my nanny’s nest of print
where she sat like a dragon hoarding gold.
My grandad’s house is a shadowed house,
where the fridge is never empty
but the cupboards are bare:
a KitKat always sneaks away
and settles on a table with a cuppa.
My grandad’s house is a Sunday roast,
with ice lollies, crisps, and a sofa for three,
a conservatory strewn with the bones of empires
and beetles rolling with wheels on their backs.
My grandad’s house is special,
a feather boa in the spare room,
a pair of laddered tights.
Antonia Johnson, 16