The Write Stuff Poetry
Competition 2004.
Judge's report
It was good to have so many entries for this, our first
competition -- and thank you to everyone who entered; you
all helped make the task of selecting winners hard, the way
it should be. Due to a broken wrist, this report is shorter
than I'd wished it to be.
I have been reading poems entered in The Write Stuff poetry
competition for the past month: poems about love, ill-health,
pain, and personal hardship, poems about beauty, birds, ugliness,
war and religion, about Hobart and Iraq, and about the Canberra
bushfires. I was delighted by poems of the utmost simplicity
about childhood, memory; I got lost in landscapes of trees
and caves, farm and hearth; in the sorrows of mothers with
sick children, and of course, the sorrows of lovers. There
were poems about elderly parents equally as tender. There
were poems, I suspect by fairly young writers, judging by
the subject matter, and poems that had me laughing aloud.
Hardly any poems took on politics or the complexity of Australia's
place in the world today, but there were poems that preached
at me and poems that screamed at me, poems that tried to
get my attention with fancy fonts and bold typeface. I went
to Asia and Africa, I was in turns moved, angered, surprised,
challenged, perplexed, disappointed and delighted.
The judging process: I received the entries from the competition
scrutineers with each poem assigned a unique number and bearing
no trace of its authorship.
I read all the 370-odd entries at least twice over the space of a month, during
which time I allocated each poem to one of three folders:
(1) The folder for poems I deemed 'good' grew rather slowly.
With these, it then took me days of re-reading to whittle
down the entries to a shortlist of 20.
(2) The middle folder held a fair number of poems in suspension
while I worked out if it was a prejudice or fault of mine
that might be keeping it from the 'good' pile.
(3) The third folder was for entries that had fatal flaws.
It grew fastest: here were examples of inept and ungrammatical
writing, weak grasp of form, poorly disguised prose, poems
that failed because of over-writing, confused thinking, bad
endings, poor taste, poems that preached and pontificated.
Some in this category lacked the essential quality of writing
that makes a poem 'poem' and not prose. Others were unstable
due to their line endings -- often lines ended arbitrarily,
undermining the poem in ways the poet can't have intended.
This third folder also held, I am sad to say, a significant
number of poems condemned because of cliche. I was truly
astonished at what can only be called an utter blindness
to cliche. How can so many people ruin an otherwise adequate
bit of writing so easily? Perhaps they don't read much. Perhaps
poor standards generally have blunted their sensibilities.
Perhaps creative writing classes, mentorships and writers
workshops have served them poorly by failing to be honest
with feedback, or have neglected to point when necessary
to the basics of good style. I dare say creative writing
courses are high earners for universities, and it's not
in the bean counters' interests to be too stern.
First prize
. 'Reading the City' by Sandra
Hill (VIC)
The poem I selected as winner earned that place early on
in my reading: I returned to it with undiminished pleasure.
Initially I was disturbed by its title. 'Reading the City'
by Sandra Hill (VIC) begins with a quote from Italo Calvino's
'Invisible Cities', a book I loved long ago -- and I expected
a postmodern text, some deconstruction of my poetic frameworks.
Instead, here is an experimental poem that lasts the distance.
It takes risks, it keeps one's interest as it travels through
Hanoi. Like a well-loved face that one regards as beautiful,
it has an odd asymmetry and a harsher critic than me might
well point to a blemish here and there in its near 200 lines,
but actually, I fell in love with this poem. Its eight parts
are varied in style; there is a movement, joy even, in the
writing. It's descriptive but manages to make its subject
matter resonate, without contrivance, with something universal.
From 'Reading the City', I can read something of our present
world's dilemmas in an in/visible city in Vietnam. If I want
to. My reading can be as wobbly as the protagonist's bike-ride
though this eastern city: or as precise as her camera lens.
I am not preached to. Always I am held by the language which
is fresh, clear and engaging.
Second prize
'Shades of green' by Raymond
Francis Stuart (SA)
The poem I selected as second place is in its form and poise,
perfect. I returned to read it again and again, its inner
harmonies are finely made; they sing. Here's a writer calm
and assured, and a poem that achieves the condition of
music.
Highly commended
The Divorce Papers by Ray Liversidge (VIC) moves
through several stages of feeling as a guy looks back on
a long relationship that's ended. It's a gently ironic,
sometimes hilarious poem that flashes its brilliance and
cinematic drama at you in a playful, off-hand way I really
enjoyed.
Commended poems
Pigeon-hole by Nicola Scholes (QLD) is a prose poem
that takes us on a rollercoaster ride through time and the
stages of a woman growing to maturity. It's over the top
with lashings of forbidden excess in the form of adjectives,
adverbs and no punctuation, cleverly constructing a life
in a fast-paced snap-shot word-picture. I think there might
well be a few more paragraphs to go and a lot more to hear
from this poet.
Flyaway Peter by Sheila Spargo (TAS) is a strong,
gentle poem. To paraphrase it here is to ruin it, but I salute
the sadly desperate patient enduring a regimented life, her
mind only just held sane by watching the diurnal patterns
of two faithful birds outside a window.
Sculpting Heide by Cathy Altmann (VIC) is an ambitious
suite of poems written at the Heide Sculpture Park and accompanied
by illustrations of the statues that inspired these poems.
Although I did my best to judge the poems on their own, some
did not manage to stand alone quite so well as others. However
I'd like to read more of this poet's work -- if any was included
in this competition I could not tell. (Sometimes it was easy
to tell the same voice in different entries; again, I tried
in such cases to let each poem stand alone and speak to me).
Skydivers by Nana Ollerenshaw of Buderim (QLD) is
a delicate poem about exactly that: skydivers. It lands,
perfectly arranged. One thing spoilt it for me: a 'his' and
'he' make their appearances unattributed and I am also uncertain
as to just how many figures there are.
Macassan Discovery by Margaret Bradstock (NSW) takes
a piece of history and turns it into a well-written poem
fragile in its bird-flight of imagery.
General comments on the entries
as a whole
Several poets used the alphabet to tease out a poem, a conceit
that almost worked in two cases.
Several poems used an African theme, and given my own origins,
as a judge I was drawn to these, but I still had Antjie Krog's
heart-felt poems on last weekend's PoeticA in my mind. I
think I detected in the handful of African poems entered
a tendency to either romanticise a particular Africa or the
indelible images of memory, instead of a bold step to touch
the iron in its soul.
'Be strong daughter, leave, you must leave' by Hien Minh
Thi Tran (NSW) paints a view of loss and new life from the
perspective of a migrant coming to Australia, and the lasting
impression for me is the enduring value for this poet of
familial connectedness. This poem uses the English language
in a rhythm that is lyrical in a sing-song but quite fresh
and compelling way, a rhythm that lends weight to the compelling,
delicately told story.
I realise now one of my subterranean thoughts when choosing
my favourites was: will this last? In ten years' time, will
this poem (and its subject matter) be as interesting -- or
will it be dated? I also wished to select among winners a
variety of forms from the plethora of examples entered. The
statisticians among us might see in this shortlist no poets
from WA, and an abundance of Victorian poets. (The Peter
Cowan Writers Centre, I noted, put on their web site a note
against this competition's listing, saying that the 'owner'
of The Write Stuff was its judge.) Well, yes: as independent
publishers and as a practising poet, I wished this our first
competition to be rigorous in its administrative processes
and to get off to a well-managed start, so this was indeed
my choice. I wanted to see at first hand what I would be
inviting future judges to do. I assure all entrants that
until a few hours ago I had no idea who had entered, and
still know only those names listed above, thanks to two scrupulously
thorough scrutineers. To them a hearty vote of thanks for
hours of hard work, and to Lyn Reeves for helping too, and
thus foregoing the
chance to enter this competition.
I hope in my selection I have not disappointed anyone too
sorely: let me comfort those who are, by saying, my taste
is idiosyncratic and personal, but I strived to be an impartial
judge of people whom I guessed would be my peers and betters;
this is no judgement on your ability to perform excellently
in other places, or indeed in this competition in other times.
I heartily encourage you all to enter next year's competition,
which will be held mid-year in a slightly revised format.
I hope to find a willing, prominent poet for this wonderfully
frustrating and enjoyable task next year, having got off
to a roaring start.
Until then, I am yours sincerely,
Anne Kellas
Poetry Editor, The Write Stuff.
Manager, Roaring Forties Press.
|
Short story
competition
|
