Inspired? Get Writing!: Winning adult prose and poetry

Organised by the National Galleries in partnership with the English-Speaking Union and the Scottish Poetry Library, this year the competition attracted more than 1,200 entries, an increase of more than 40 per cent.

Entries are judged in five categories: Under 12s, 12-14s, 15-18s, Adults Prose and Adults Poetry, and prizes include writing workshops and free tickets to major exhibitions. Here, in the final part of our coverage, we print the winners of the adult prose and poetry competitions.

THE DOCTOR

CAT DEAN, Edinburgh

Inspiration: For the Last Time by John Davies

THE morning after the Museum of London was looted, I was late. I arrived sweating and out of breath but before Elliot.

“Divination in twenty minutes!” he shouted as he came in, depositing a wire cage on my desk. A gnarled red claw poked out and scratched at my keyboard.

Six months ago I would have been skeptical about this method of forecasting the markets but that was before the riots, before Black July and before the heads on spikes all over Canary Wharf.

“Come in for a pow-wow,” Elliott murmured to me, his hand resting on the edge of my desk.

I picked up my dandelion latte, some herbal crap they’re selling as coffee these days, and followed Elliot into his ofﬁce.

He sat down and picked a silky white feather off his pinstriped sleeve, his ﬁngers curved into tweezers. He looked at me for a moment and then leant forward.

“HR called about the Decimation Scheme.”

“Great,” I said. I thought of Crawford’s shiny black shoes tap-dancing in mid-air, his dick tentpoling his Jack Soni pinstripes, the urine blooming darkly over his crotch. The Olympic Stadium vibrating with the roar of eighty thousand people. The scent of sweat and burgers in the air.

“Your name came up.”

“Fantastic.” I said.

“Obviously Rosemary would beneﬁt,” I nodded. I looked outside and watched the ravens hopping along the heads from Lehmann, Goldman, Deutsche, RBS. Why wasn’t Elliott down there with his mates? He hadn’t even been branded.

“I hear they’ve appointed a new hangman. Ex-teacher. Thorough chap, apparently. Think about it, it’s a good deal.”

Outside, a raven had stuck its beak into an empty eye socket and was poking about.

Morgan Stanley or Merrill? Hard to tell now.

When I looked back at him, Elliot was wagging his ﬁnger at me in mock reprimand, saying “Glass half-full, Dougie, glass half-full!”

All the way through Divination, I was thinking about the Decimation Scheme. In many ways, Elliot was right, of course. A pension for dependants. Relocation costs. Prayers for the soul by professional mourners. A bonus for the sale of body parts. However, it was the permanent removal of names from the Register which mattered most; everyone agreed on that.

Climbing back up the stairs after Social Rehab, I was thinking of Rosie’s face when I told her she could lose the armband. She and the boys would move somewhere, start afresh. York? Edinburgh?

I pushed on the ofﬁce door and teetered on the edge of nothingness: instead of the clutter of desks, screens, chairs and pastel-coloured shirts, a grey sea of ﬂoor tiles stretched out in front of me. Square columns sprouted from the ﬂoors and cables sprung from the walls like weeds. I must have come up an extra ﬂight. In the middle of this wasteland were two solitary desks, covered in layers of newspaper. A man’s shape shufﬂed out from underneath and stood up.

“Dougie! How’s it going?” asked Robert.

I knew it was deﬁnitely Robert because of his navy-and-magenta striped tie, although blotches of beige and ochre had blossomed on the silk.

“Fantastic. Great.” I said. “Weren’t there two of you here?”

“You’ll be thinking of Alistair. I traded him,” said Robert.

“You traded him?”

“Just this morning, in fact. I got a good deal.”

“What for?”

I had meant why had he traded Alistair, but Robert had already darted underneath one of the desks. He emerged, holding a huge bird’s head. I looked at it more closely and realised it was a leather mask with a massive beak.

“Where did you get this?” I asked.

Robert tapped the side of his nose and smiled. “Just got it this morning.”

“What’s it for?” I asked.

Robert bent forward and whispered, “This recession, it’s a plague. A pestilence has been visited upon us.”

“It’s genuine?” I asked.

Robert nodded. “They wore these to sniff out the foulness,” he continued, his eyes shining.

“Can I have a shot?” I asked.

Robert considered this for a moment. He was probably thinking about the bottles of Chablis, the lines of coke we had shared down in Corney & Barrow; I know I was. He nodded and, cradling it gently, stroked his grubby ﬁnger down the length of the beak before holding it out to me.

I put it over my head and tried to fasten the straps; my ﬁngers were like swollen pork sausages. Then I felt Robert’s cool ﬁngers brush against mine, and he pulled the leather straps tight. The mask was heavy; it smelt of old leather and somehow of herbs. I turned to look at Robert. The glass eye-pieces blurred my sight, but I could see him clearly enough, nodding at me as if he had created me himself.

I jerked my head right back and, aiming straight for Robert’s eye, launched the beak forward. He clutched his hands to his head and sank down onto his knees. He stayed there for a moment, as if in prayer, and then fell forward, the navy-and-magenta-and-beige-and-ochre tie spilling out to the side.

As I went down the stairs, I paused on the landing to wipe the blood from my beak with my sleeve. The heaviness of the mask felt right, the straps tight around the back of my head felt good. In the cold wintry sunlight, the beak cast a long shadow on the staircase wall.

Everything went quiet when I went into the ofﬁce. People stopped typing, stopped speaking and slowly stood up. Elliott came out of his ofﬁce.

“Who are you? Who sent you?” he said, backing away from me. “Dougie, is that you?

“Dougie?”

I could hear the sweat in his voice.

HOW IT GOES

IAIN MATHESON, Edinburgh

Inspiration: Bells by Jannis Kounellis

You know how it goes; in a glossy

magazine a picture of something

or other, you spot some detail in

the background, let’s say a bell, the old-

fashioned kind schools once had, and you’re off

wondering how it would sound, how you’d

describe that sound to anyone who

asked (a clown, a bureaucrat), without

falling back on the usual tired

repertoire of dings and bongs. You’re well

aware that the clown might in fact be

a ghost, having passed away in a

big top mishap when his circus was

touring a small town in Italy

in which you happen to know that a

famous film-star was born, her mother

(legend says) perfected a secret

recipe for pesto, the kind you

can now buy in any superstore

where shelves are listlessly stacked by the

would-be paramour of Denise the

checkout girl who works overnight shifts

(a student of psychology, she

plans to document what people buy

at 3a.m. and why); her dog is

not allowed in the shop and must be

left at home where one night it raised the

alarm and almost saved the life of

an old man fallen asleep with a

lighted cigarette for company –

ironically a man who had

been in his own day a saviour of

dogs via the nearby animal

rescue centre, now demolished and

rebuilt as a pub, the landlord swears

his parents are aliens, a claim

so unlikely that even local

conspiracy theorists, who pride

themselves on openness to extra-

terrestrial phenomena, are

hard-pressed to suspend their disbelief.

THE PRIZE WINNERS

CATEGORY A, UNDER 12

WINNER: Eleanor Kirkland, Craigclowan Prep School, Perth

RUNNERS-UP: Jenny McGuire, Kinnoull Primary School, Perth; Ryan Cummins, Pitcairn Primary School, Perth.

SPECIAL MERIT: Liam Campbell, Port Ellen Primary School, Isle of Islay; Sasha Macquaker, Cargilfield School, Edinburgh; Rhys Aitchison, Pitcairn Primary School, Perth;

Scott Murdoch, St Boswells Primary School, Melrose; Aine Beattie, North Kessock Primary School, Inverness;

Rosie Holmes, St Mary’s Episcopal Primary, Dunblane; Emily Wallace, Cargilfield School, Edinburgh

CATEGORY b, age 12-14

WINNER: Evie Clephan, Banchory Academy, Kincardinshire

RUNNERS-UP: Jessamy Cowie, Nairn Academy, Nairn; Molly-May Allan, Sanday School, Orkney.

SPECIAL MERIT: Hannah Ledlie, James Gillespie’s High School, Edinburgh; Fiona Brewis, George Heriot’s School, Edinburgh; Kate Harrison, Banchory Academy, Kincardinshire; Bethany Wise, Banchory Academy, Kincardinshire; Lara Mega, Penicuik High School, Midlothian; Jamie Arnaud, Craigclowan Prep School, Perth; Elena Thomas, James Gillespies High School, Edinburgh

CATEGORY c, age 15-18

WINNER: Peter Ratter, Brae High School, Shetland.

RUNNERS-UP: James Gao, Edinburgh; Josie Rogers, Lochgilphead High School, Argyle.

SPECIAL MERIT: Jessica McGoff, High School of Dundee, Dundee; Danilo Falzon, McLaren High School, Callander, Stirling; Roanna Tait, Stewart’s Melville College, Edinburgh; Laura Rutherford, The Mary Erskine School, Edinburgh; Maria Fernandez, The High School of Glasgow, Glasgow; Gregor Gordon Keir, St Columba’s School, Kilmalcolm, Renfrewshire; Leeann Chen, High School of Dundee, Dundee.

Category D, Adult Prose

WINNER: Cat Dean, Edinburgh.

RUNNERS-UP: Michelle Wards, Edinburgh;

Margaret Sessa-Hawkins, Edinburgh

SPECIAL MERIT: Catherine Simpson, Midlothian;

Robert Powell, Edinburgh; Carey Morning, Edinburgh; Rosemary Wake, Edinburgh; Helen MacKinven, Stirlingshire; Jerry Simcock, Edinburgh; Norma-Ann Coleman, Midlothian; Ewan Gault,Argyll

Category e, Adult Poetry

WINNER: Iain Matheson, Edinburgh.

RUNNERS-UP: Ian McDonough, Edinburgh;

Dan Spencer, Glasgow;

SPECIAL MERIT: Greg Michaelson, Edinburgh; JA Sutherland, Edinburgh; Lesley Harrison, Angus; Lesley Harrison, Angus; Joan Lennon, Newport-on-Tay, Fife; Sheena Blackhall, Aberdeen; Joanna Lilley, Canada

l A public reading of all the winning stories and poems will be given at the Hawthornden Lecture Theatre, National Gallery of Scotland, tomorrow (no need to book). Under 12s: 10.30-11.30am; 12-14s, 16-18s: 1.30-3pm; Adults Poetry and Prose: 5.30-7pm.