When they say your mother’s in a gutter, you gutter rat,
you’ll never see marzipan, or the sea, I say that’s not true.

Come back this time and I’ll stitch my toes to yours;
be your shadow even when there is no light.

Competition Judge James Harpur’s comments on the poem:
Full of striking images, this multi-faceted, elegant poem gains in power and pathos as the voice of Ilaria scatters her thoughts from the beyond, reaching out and drawing us into her Renaissance world, a world circumscribed by status and gender that Ilaria has now escaped from.

Song over, I feel an aching sadness, 

not because I know that fourteen year old me

walked to the bus stop alone and un-kissed, 

but because I’ll never again feel the hope I felt 

as I pulled that yellow daisy smock over my head.