Chatterton250: Odes and Elegies Winner Announcement!

After much deliberation, delight in reading the entries, and thanks to the many who submitted, we are thrilled to announce the winner and runners up of the Chatterton250 Ode and Elegy Contest, held jointly by the K-SAA and the Thomas Chatterton Society as part of the celebration of the 250th anniversary of Chatterton’s death. While the commemorative event at Keats House, Hampstead has unfortunately been postponed, we are nevertheless excited to share these poems as a way of continuing the legacy of Chatterton’s life and writing as we wait for a time when we can meet in person again. As we approach the date of the anniversary—August 24th—we hope our readers will take a moment to mark the anniversary, whether by reading these and other poems to Chatterton, reading some of Chatterton’s own work, or perhaps—even though the contest is over—writing an elegy or ode of your own.

The first place winner, as selected by judges Prof. Nick Groom, Dr. Daniel Cook, Eleanor Bryan, and Carly Yingst, is  “Ode to Chatterton,” by Amy Hill. The two runners up are Karin Murray-Bergquist’s “Elegy” and Alec Siantonas’s “Ode on Lost Renown.” The three poems are included below.

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“Ode to Chatterton,” by Amy Hill

Youth is a gift not wasted on the young

In truth, it was by cruel poverty that you were undone.

What one muse bestowed so goodly and graciously,

Did daughters Nyx cut and draw back as bloodthirsty and rapaciously

As the encroaching dawn pursues the sweet dusk

When you took your last breath, like petals falling to dust.

Weaving and casting a perfect and enchanting spell

Your death did inspire so many to dwell

On the sweet flowering of your, short life.

And, pay homage with tears and aching sighs

Still now softly whispering heartfelt fears

Hushed tones and hope of whimsical romance for 250 years.

Have lasted on that precious page,

Enduring on through the raptures of age.

Your pretty perfect poesy lived and still survives

Keats, Shelley, Wordsworth and Coleridge did thrive

On the immense inspiration your lines did provide.

To think if you had lived, what heights you could have climbed

Now your spirit is immortalised in verse, never again confined

In a mere and measly twenty lines.

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“Elegy,” by Karin Murray-Bergquist

Whatever words were yours, whatever wealth

Of beauty yet unknown

Now haunts, in silence robbed of life and health

An attic room alone —

I do not love the cruelty of that end,

Nor grudge your fame, bequeathed

By generations since, who strove to lend

A poet’s glory — wreathed

In deathly laurels, life still stubborn growing,

Despite the shadow’s reach —

But lend my hapless praise, through ages flowing

Across that ragged breach:

The grief engulfed by distance, blurred by years,

And envy, bittersweet —

That youth and striving genius, hope and tears

Could in one person meet.

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“Ode On Lost Renown,” by Alec Siantonas

O sing to me a lay of lost renown

Melpomene, who art, muse, yet as young

As when bright Sappho her bold self did drown

And so became the lyric she had sung.

Sing well what leaflets crowned so dear a head,

Most melancholy minstrel, sing his name

Who sought among the poets his own place -

Gone to his death-bed

Before thy sisterhood secured his fame:

Sweet Chatterton, whom time could not deface.

Alas, the fairest flowret of the plain

In whose buds what incense might have been:

Still shining from the early April rain,

He faded ere the flush of May was seen.

Pure prodigy! So shall we now enjoy

The image of his ardour spent, and is

Not poetry made perfect in his death?

No: he died a boy.

For lost renown I weep, that would be his

Had he but loved and sung another breath.