A poem by Miruna Fulgeanu
winner of the 2023 Oxford Poetry Prize
ESMERINE
Most people go in and leave unchanged, whereas
if I walk into the deep woods, she disappears.
Still, I stand by the purple azaleas and talk as though
she can hear: As a child, I was only kind to my dolls
for fear of their inevitable insurrection. She likes me –
sometimes leaves up-rooted moss in the shape of a mother
for me to find at the field’s edge. I have said ‘tree’ or
‘moon’ for ‘person’, but it’s no use having people
stand in for people. Once I wanted to confess, I have been in a bad,
sad orbit, but I knew she had been the whole badsad
since the beginning. I have already said everything
I could choose to say. Like the cheek flattened against a window
peering in, like vespers in the undergrowth –
she resolves & readies.
MIRUNA FULGEANU is a Romanian-born poet and translator based in London. Her poems have appeared in Poetry London, The Yale Review, London Magazine, The Rialto, and Berlin Lit among others. She won first prize in the 2023 Oxford Poetry Prize and the 2024 Patricia Eschen Prize for Poetry, and is part of the 2024-25 Southbank New Poets Collective. She’s currently working on her first collection, which has been supported by the Fieldnotes Development Grant Programme and the Prototype Development Programme.
‘Esmerine’ was first published in the winter 2023/24 print issue (no. 96) of Oxford Poetry after winning the 2023 Oxford Poetry Prize, judged by Will Harris. Illustration (above) by Anina Takeff, commissioned for the issue.
This year’s edition of the Oxford Poetry Prize is currently open for entries:
The prize is awarded annually by Oxford Poetry for a single unpublished poem and is open to poets writing in English around the world.
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