A 19-year-old Cambridge undergraduate is the youngest ever winner of the Poetry Society's National Poetry Competition, it was announced on Thursday night. Eric Yip won £5,000 with his poem ‘Fricatives’, described by judges Fiona Benson, David Constantine and Rachel Long as  a poem that makes its way “through the murky and treacherous waters of language, race, migration, and of being heard when ‘Nobody wants to listen/ to a spectacled boy with a Hong Kong accent.’ ”

The judges selected the winning poem from 16,729 poems entered in the competition from 7,012 poets in 100 countries. All the poems were read anonymously by the judges.

Rachel Long said: “Some poems are worlds. This deeply affecting poem is two, or three. And how well it navigates them! – which is not to say that the poem does not have to confront them, thrash with them; the poem itself ‘a rubber raft’ attempting to make its way through the murky and treacherous waters of language, race, migration, and of being heard when ‘Nobody wants to listen/ to a spectacled boy with a Hong Kong accent.’ How it moves still on and into another kind of language; love, sex; another learnt language, another sort of survival.”

David Constantine said: “An English-as-a-foreign-language speech lesson, the difficulty of fricatives, at once in the poem becomes an education into the struggle for existence. How hard life will be, the damage and the shame of it. This – including the sexual transactions there in the very etymology of the word – is what it will cost you to accommodate yourself, to survive.”

Fiona Benson said: “ ‘Fricatives’ is an immensely ambitious and beautifully achieved poem. It puts its reader into the position of ESL learner, the fricative consonants tangling our mouths as we speak the poem, and intriguing us with the alternate meanings that rest precariously on the pronunciation. ‘Proper’ achievements – the correct pronunciation, the good education abroad, and the proud parents are countered by an underworld of risky, grim sex. What a tensile, high-wire reckoning.”

Eric revealed that he had “never had anything published before in a journal, let alone win any competition, so I feel very grateful to have my poem recognised in such an inconceivable way. I’m also honoured to contribute a small part to the growing literary space of Hong Kong poetry, which was carved out piece by piece through the wondrous efforts of many Hong Kong poets I admire.

“I was always interested in the colonial nature of English and how it can be used to divide and oppress. I also wanted to examine the transformation of my city, as well as accompanying sentiments of anger, frustration, and diasporic guilt. I tried to explore these themes without compromise, and I wanted to almost trap the poem in a sonic cage of repeating sounds.

“I see the poem as a coming -of-age for the speaker, reflected through the transformation of his city. It’s about different types of oppression and how the speaker navigates them. The poem begins by looking at tthe legacy of colonialism in influencing how we speak, or how we think we should speak. Then there’s the political dimension, which feels impossible not to write about. There’s also submission in the sexual sense, but even that scene has colonial undertones. And finally, there’s assimilating into an English-speaking country. All this mirrors Hong Kong’s journey from a colony to a battleground, to a site of exodus.

“I think there’s definitely an element of survivor guilt in the poem. Hong Kong is experiencing its largest emigration wave in history, but not everyone has the means to move to another country. For me, being able to write this poem is a form of privilege. I’ve always done my creative writing in English, and now that I’m in the UK, I speak a lot of English as well.

“What does it mean to abandon my mother tongue, and by extension, my home? At the end of the poem, the speaker tries to re-establish that lost connection through food. Restaurants run by immigrants are an interesting space for me; they’re a facsimile of home and a nourishing shelter for the diaspora. But for the speaker, something is irreversibly lost in that restaurant. I think the poem is my way of figuring out what that exactly is.

“It’s perhaps a reminder of how much we must leave behind to survive. The speaker ‘makes it’, so to speak, but has done so by expunging a part of himself and his past.”

Nine other winners were also named, including Jed Myers for his poem ‘I Picture Him Driving’ (second prize, £2,000), Emma Purshouse for ‘Catherine Eddowes’ tin box as a key witness’ (third, £1,000) and seven commended poets (£200 each): Jo Haslam for ‘a lyke wake for auntie’; Lindsey Holland for ‘A Riddle of Hamsters’; Martin Reed for ‘Durleigh’; JC Todd for ‘Old Friends, Here and Gone’; Kizziah Burton for ‘We Were Learning Not To Look Away But To Look Through It Like A Wind-Eye’; HLR for ‘When I First Bled’; and MR Peacocke for ‘Out of School’.

Congratulations too to all the longlisted poets:

Aileen Ballantyne, Amy Wolstenholme, Andrea Witzke Slot, Anita Ngai, Anna Whyatt, Anne Bailie, Anne Macaulay, Ayokunle Falomo, Blair Bourassa, Brian Herdman, Bridget O’Bernstein, Bunmi Ogunsiji, Caleb Leow, Carla Grosch-Miller, Carol Woods, Caroline Stancer, Catherine Edmunds, Catriona Wright, Charlie Druce, Charlotte Shevchenko Knight, Christine Webb, Christopher Wellings, Conor Cleary, Cory Ingram, Damen O’Brien, David Bleiman, David McLoghlin, David Robertson, David Swann, Denise O’Hagan, Dolores Walshe, Donald Futers, Elena Croitoru, Elizabeth Oxley, Ellen McAteer, Emily Harrison, Etan Kerr-Finell, Ewan Mackinnon, Fiona Bennett, Frank Jones, Geraldine Clarkson, Harriet Torr, Helen Mort, Hilary Taylor, Hugh Holme, I. Patterson, Inua Ellams, Jane Draycott, Jane Houston, Jane Warren, Jeanette Burton, Jennifer Hall, Jenny Martin, Jenny Mitchell, Jestyn Portugill, John Hussey, Jonathan Bates, Jonathan Edwards, Julie McNeely-Kirwan, Kate Segriff, Kathryn Bevis, Kirsten Irving, Lance Larsen, Laura Theis, Lauren Garland, Leonardo Boix, Lindy Barbour, Lynn Foote, Lynne Burnett, Lynne Jones, Maeve Cullen, Mark Fiddes, Maxine Backus, Mel Elberger, Merrie Joy Williams, Michael Forester, Midnight Dean, Mike Pullman, Miranda Peake, Moss Selkin, Neal Hoskins, Neil Fleming, Nicholas Samaras, Nick Drake, Nick Hawker, Oli Isaac, Oluwaseun Olayiwola, Partridge Boswell, Patch Fusi, Peter Krumbach, Rachel Burns, Robert Maxwell Duncan, Roger West, Ros Woolner, Sanah Ahsan, Scott McKendry, Simon Costello, Steph Morris, Tabitha Hayward, Tanvi Roberts, Tyler Jones, Valentina Rindunica, Vanessa Lampert, Victoria Adukwei Bulley, Vijaya Venkatesan, Wendy Manning, William Stephenson, Zelda Chappel

 

 

FRICATIVES

by Eric Yip

 

To speak English properly, Mrs. Lee said, you must learn

the difference between three and free. Three men

escaped from Alcatraz in a rubber raft and drowned

on their way to Angel Island. Hear the difference? Try

this: you fought your way into existence. Better. Look

at this picture. Fresh yellow grains beaten

till their seeds spill. That’s threshing. That’s

submission. You must learn to submit

before you can learn. You must be given

a voice before you can speak. Nobody wants to listen

to a spectacled boy with a Hong Kong accent.

You will have to leave this city, these dark furrows

stuffed full with ancestral bones. Know

that death is thorough. You will speak of bruised bodies

skinnier than yours, force the pen past batons

and blood, call it fresh material for writing. Now

they’re paying attention. You’re lucky enough

to care about how the tongue moves, the seven types

of fricatives, the articulatory function of teeth

sans survival. You will receive a good education

abroad and make your parents proud. You will take

a stranger’s cock in your mouth in the piss-slick stall

of that dingy Cantonese restaurant you love and taste

where you came from, what you were made of all along.

Put some work into it, he growls. C’mon, give me

some bite. Your mother visits one October, tells you

how everyone speaks differently here, more proper.

You smile, nod, bring her to your favourite restaurant,

order dim sum in English. They’re releasing

the students arrested five years ago. Just a tad more

soy sauce please, thank you. The television replays

yesterday on repeat. The teapots are refilled. You spoon

served rice into your mouth, this perfect rice.

Steamed, perfect, white.