Our Pushcart Prize 2023 Nominees

Poetry Wales is delighted to nominate the following poems and poets for the Pushcart Prize 2023:

Nurain Ọládèjì | ‘Picking Up A Stray Grief’ from Poetry Wales 59.2

“When I’m crying, if stream flows, leave me alone.
When I’m crying, if rain falls, leave me alone.” – Aṣa

The taxi stopped at a bakery, and the old woman who
flagged us down lifted her basket of freshly bought

bread into the trunk and came around

to sit on the passenger seat.

We had barely settled back on the road when she
started to cry; her head dropped to her chest and
she pulled the hem of her wrapper up to dry her eyes.

She cried quietly, privately, and the driver could only
say “Don’t cry anymore, mama,” because what else

could he say to a woman old enough to be his mother
and my grandmother? I wanted to ask why she cried
but I knew better than to disrupt such an intimate event.

Her clothes were old but clean; her face wrinkled

yet gracefully. Her wares in the trunk, which I could
see her selling at a small stall, were roughly
the cost of one leg of my shoes, and remembering
my friend being impressed by how cheap
I got them, I looked away from my feet.

She alighted, thanked the driver, and lifted her wares

to the curb. As we pulled away, I did not turn

to glance at her. Her grief, dangling like a pendant,
had just swung to rest on the left side of my chest.

Nurain Ọládèjì is a Nigerian writer. His work has appeared in Transition, Acumen, Olongo Africa, Dunes Review, The Chaffin Journal, and elsewhere. He lives in Lagos, Nigeria.

Gboyega Odubanjo | ‘There is Joy Breaking Here’ from Poetry Wales 59.2

and uncle is drunk already. uncle has his nephews

his special brew holding him up and happier
than the rest of us this bloodshot day of meat
and gisting. uncle grills burgers in knock-off birkenstocks.
plays coquet for aunty long since tired of his face
and fatuous self. uncle deep in meniscus. uncle cracks
the bone and swallows marrow. does not sweat or spill
a sip. Uncle of independent means. clapping on the ones

and threes. jiving. got the old lady and the home office

and type 2 diabetes and maze and frankie beverly
                                                                           clapping him on

Gboyega Odubanjo was born and raised in East London. Gboyega published two pamphlets: While I Yet Live (Bad Betty Press 2019) and Aunty Uncle Poems (winner of the New Poets Prize from the Poetry Business 2021). Gboyega died suddenly at the end of August 2023. He was 27 years old.

His family is fundraising for a foundation in his honour; find out more here

Bethany Handley | ‘Hiya Butt Bay’ from Poetry Wales 59.2

Castors to the sky, face to the sea

I’m sitting on my back wheels, leaning against my friend
on Rest Bay beach as we sink into the wet sand

her weight willing us closer to the waves, driving

us forwards like she’s back in a scrum, gripping my handles,
her feet digging as I clasp my push rims.

We wheel over a sandcastle, sinking into its moat,
the turret’s flag flying from my spokes,
crushed walls in my tread. Dog walkers and families

stare as we giggle, my wheels
submerged to the axel. A man approaches us,
clears his throat, informs my friend that when he

takes his mother-in-law out

he finds its best to drag her backwards.
I give him my piss off mate, we’re doing fine thanks look

but we try it anyway, slowly turning
our backs to the sea,
admire our tyre marks stretching their limbs

see the children pretending to be a train

as they jog down our tracks and we’re pushing
quicker towards the water, sand surrendering.

I used to seek footprints that obscured
my own, moved within another’s trace.
Now I survey my trenches with delight

(you could read them from a drone)

you wouldn’t guess they’re footprints:

two unsteady lines claiming the land.

Bethany Handley (she/ her) is a writer and disability activist living in Pontypridd. Her poetry has been published in POETRY, Spelt and on the Poetry Foundation and the Institute of Welsh Affairs. Bethany’s work typically explores ableism, inaccessibility, and her relationship with nature as a Disabled woman.

Sadia Pineda Hameed | ‘cinema’ from Poetry Wales 59.1

basil seed flecks in the pink syrup sky
I know that there might be other lenses I could be

looking through but this evening to me is pink
how else could I say it

and sometimes there are flashes of other light that point to other evenings

that neon green cross we failed to pause beneath its glow
and other signs we choose to ignore like the
one that said ‘we serve coffee ‘til late’

you say something about how you hope the
weather will hold until we reach some sort of covering but
I don’t think you’re saying all that you mean really

maybe gunpowder leaves in the last sip of salted tea

the evening is glowering in pink
I look to you like one of those signs we choose to ignore–

and though you give off some cool toned fluorescent divine modernity

in a good way in a beautiful way
if you were a sign you might say ‘cinema’

a sign I might pause under if the place were showing something decent

or at least something I haven’t seen yet–
and though you give off that kind of light I still can’t help but think

you glower in pink too like the pink walls of the palace of pena
can you blame me ‘I am trying to paint a picture here’

now how would you describe the small white moon appearing

earlier than it should
how about divine

or religious

Sadia Pineda Hameed is a Filipina Pakistani artist and writer based in the Ebbw Valley, Wales. She has been published with ZARF, Amberflora, Porridge Magazine and others; and is a recipient of the Paul Hamlyn Award, Rising Star Wales Award and Literature Wales New Writers Award. She also co-runs small press, radio and curatorial collective LUMIN.

Richard Gwyn’s translations of Fabio Morábito from Poetry Wales 59.2

1. There are trees that are born for the forest


There are trees that are born for the forest
and others that are a forest without knowing it.
The tree ignores the forest

and perhaps the forest ignores the tree,
all we know is the root that rummages

and the branch that also rummages,
one in its sky of mud,

the other in its sky of cloud.
Life is rummaging, and to each of us our sky.

Read all six of Richard Gwyn’s translations in our Winter 2023 issue

Richard Gwyn is a poet and novelist, author of The Vagabond’s Breakfast, which won Wales Book of the Year for non-fiction in 2012. He is also a translator from Spanish, notably of The Other Tiger: Recent Poetry from Latin America. Richard is Professor in Creative Writing at Cardiff University.

Fabio Morábito was born in Egypt to an Italian family. When he was fifteen, his family relocated from Milan to Mexico City, and he has written all his work in Spanish ever since. He has published five books of poetry, five short-story collections, one book of essays, and two novels, and has translated into Spanish the work of many great Italian poets of the twentieth century, including Eugenio Montale and Patrizia Cavalli. Morábito has been awarded numerous prizes, most recently the Xavier Villaurrutia Prize, Mexico’s highest literary award, for Home Reading Service (Other Press, 2021). He lives in Mexico City. The poems translated here appear in A cada cual su cielo (Visor, 2021).

S.K. Kim | ‘Traffick’ from Poetry Wales 59.1

The most beautiful part of your body

is where it’s headed

– Ocean Vuong

So this is the Promised Land/ Britannia

What luck/ Who wouldn’t want a better life

digging dirt on a marijuana farm/ laying bricks/ or painting nails in Birmingham

breathing acetone/ isopropyl acetate/ ethyl acetate/ chloride/ sodium lauryl sulfate

Quan Âm/ Goddess of Compassion / what did you dream when you were alive?

I dreamed/ of helping my family pay off the loan-sharks/ so I left

Hà Tĩnh to work/ We all worked/ washing dishes in Bulgaria/ chopping chicken wings

in Romania/ picking plums in Hungary/ sleeping in “Chinois” restaurants

to send money home/ getting arrested/ trapped in a migrant camp in Eisenhüttenstadt

on the German-Polish border/ escaping into the forest/ drinking water from a bog

until my parents could sell their ox/ to pay for passage/ They wept

begged me to return/ “soft slavery” they called it/ but how soft

How hard could it be to pay off their debts/ Who wouldn’t want

a better life/ Who wouldn’t want more?

Soon, soon hissed the fields of rapeweed in Bierne where we waited

to board the white lorry/ like animals crammed on the ark

driving past Dunkirk/ Ostend/ Bruges/ Zeebrugge/ ferrying across the North Sea

on a ship called Clementine/ O my darling/ to Tilbury Port in Purfleet-on-Thames/

O my darling

Dear Empire/ Dear Home Office/ even locked in a lorry my soul/ linh hồn/ dreamed

My soul could see the City/ brokers trading in futures or bonds/ We dreamed

locked in the refrigeration unit/ the driver watching a wee bit of Netflix

as we beat the walls screaming Open

breaking a metal pole/ trying to punch through the roof

scraping our nails on steel doors/ the oxygen vanishing

It’s Tuan/ I’m sorry I cannot take care of you Mama

stewing in our sweat/ stripping down/ mouths frothing as if the lorry were on fire

Mum It’s all my fault/ I can’t breathe

Hoping they’d unlock the doors if only we would keep quiet, and wait.

lungs burning/ spirits thirsting / We drink the air/ the hours like water

We drink and drink and cannot drink enough

Give them air quickly don’t let them out

Steam hissing from flesh when the doors finally open

Snake-slough / between the self left behind and the self moving on

Like a flayed man shivering, holding his bloody skin in his hands, grasping a self only

when it’s passed —

oh my god you fucking fuck

Heads bowed on both sides of the road/ as the ambulances pass/ sirens wailing

“from which you prefer to avert your gaze” —

“Visa: from the past participle of videre/ to see”

Or not to see/ inside the container/ lies

another container and inside that container lies what cannot be contained

They tracked the traffickers

to Basildon, Birmingham, Tottenham,

County Down, County Monaghan, County Armagh.

Sentence at the Old Bailey: 39 counts of manslaughter.

The head-hunters in Frankfurt, Budapest, Bucharest know:

it’s dirty work, keeping your hands clean.

Business. It’s only business.

We still owe them money for murdering our son.

[ => Voice call unanswered]

I can’t erase his voice. My son’s face inside

the little black machine. His eyes his words his breath still alive

I can’t erase his voice. My son’s face inside

the little black machine. His eyes his words his breath still alive

Mum, why don’t you answer?

I’ve been dead all night.

His words: shrapnel in the mind.

Part of me is already dead, his voice a voice-over,

waves of data, pixels of last breath crossing the continent

until his body can be returned to us in a box —

HUMAN REMAINS:

HANDLE WITH CARE.

And what did they give him?

A bucket in the corner for piss and shit.

And what did I give him?

Only silence.

And now?

Only the great silence, bearer of many names including God.