Competition feedback

Poetry competitions do seem to cause quite a bit of controversy, whether because of high entry fees, the use of 'sifters' (meaning that big name judge isn't necessarily going to see your work), or because some people see the whole idea of being competitive about art wrong.

I've never had a problem with them, as long as people know exactly what they're paying for, and the money is going to support poetry longer-term, by helping with magazine or reading series running costs, for example.

Some competitions also give some sort of feedback. This could be a full critique – when I first entered the Plough Prize back in around 2003, you could pay an extra £1 per entry to get a detailed and very thoughtful analysis of your poem from the judges. It was worth entering for that alone.

But most just publish some comments from the judge or judges when they announce the winners. The usual way it's done is to say what they liked about the winning or shortlisted poems. That can have the unfortunate effect of making you think that, if your poems weren't in the same vein, they didn't like them, but it's probably the safest option.

This, on the other hand, seems pretty out of order to me. At the very least, I think the Sentinel Literary Quarterly should be making clear that if you enter their competition, the judge might well decide to be publicly harshly dismissive of your work. I think they might find themselves taking rather a hit from this, if the reaction of many poets on Facebook is anything to go by.

The Otley Poetry Prizes 2017

The Interpreter's House Poetry Competition

You've got until the end of this month to enter Open House 2017, The Interpreter's House's Poetry Competition. It's judged by Bloodaxe poet Niall Campbell, and entry is £4 for a single poem or £10 for three.

I know some people hate the very idea of poetry competitions, but all proceeds of this one go to fund future issues of TIH, one of the very best poetry magazines out there.

The Forward Prizes for Poetry

Details here on how to make nominations for this year's Forward Prizes for Poetry. Significantly, this is the first time that there's been an opportunity to nominate work from online journals for the Best Single Poem category. You need to move fast, though - see the link for full details.

Cafe Writers competition

It's a long time since I entered a poetry competition (it's a long time since I wrote a poem - that might have something to do with it), but the Cafe Writers comp is one of the best out there.

Very reasonable entry fee, good prizes, and it all goes to support the very popular monthly Cafe Writers reading/open mic slots in Norwich. This year's judge is the wonderful David Morley, so you've all got until the end of November to come up with something to impress him.

Buzzwords Open Poetry Competition

There's still time to enter this year's Buzzwords Open Poetry Competition, which closes on August 17th. The judge this year is Carcanet poet David Morley, and as with last year, he will read all the entries.

There's a £600 prize for the winner, £300 for the runner-up, and £50 each for five Commended entries, while as always there's an additional prize of £200 for Gloucestershire residents only (this year it includes South Gloucestershire.

All the proceeds of the competition will help fund Buzzwords' regular poetry gatherings in Cheltenham.

More information on how to enter, plus previous year's winners, can be found at here. 

Ledbury Festival Competition

I'm delighted to have had a poem - Magnetite - highly commended by judge Ian Duhig in this year's Ledbury Festival Poetry Competition, especially after seeing the three outstanding winning pieces. Have a read of them and see what I mean.

Competition time

It's getting very close to deadline time on a couple of excellent poetry competitions. The Essex Poetry Festival 12th Open Competition has a first prize of £1,000, and is judged by Pascale Petit - you've only got a few days left, as the deadline is July 30th.


Meanwhile, the Buzzwords Open Poetry Competition (all money raised goes to the excellent Buzzwords reading/open mic series in Cheltenham) has a prize of £600, and is judged by Ann Drysdale. The deadline has just been extended until August 14th, so there's still time to polish up that submission.

The Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize

Alison Brackenbury sent me a link to the 2011 Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize, which carries a prize of £1,750 plus publication of your manuscript on both sides of the Atlantic.

Rather unusually, it's only open to poets who have published no more than one previous collection, although you'll need to read the small print there to see exactly what constitutes a collection. Well worth considering entering if you're looking for first publication, or if you've been working on a follow-up to a debut collection or chapbook.

Buzzwords Open Poetry Competition 2011

Buzzwords, in Cheltenham, is one of the longest-running reading series in British poetry. Having read there back in February with Luke Kennard, I can vouch for what an excellent audience it attracts - attentive, appreciative, and keen to buy books. It all makes for an entertaining and rewarding evening.

It also makes a point of paying all readers, and its annual poetry competition helps fund that. As you can see here, this year's competition is being judged by Alison Brackenbury, and carries a £600 first prize. Other prizes include one for entries from Gloucestershire. You've got until July to enter, and can pay by cheque or PayPal, so why not have a look at what's required?

BBC Wildlife success

My poem Lullaby has been named runner-up in this year's BBC Wildlife Poet of the Year competition.

It's about swifts. When I was a kid, I wasn't at all keen on them, because of that screaming sound they make on summer evenings (thinking back, it's probably just because when you're little, you resent having to go to bed when it's still light outside, and they were a reminder of that). Now, though, they're one of my very favourite species, I think because they're such uber-birds - once they leave the nest, they might not land again for years. But anyway, a friend's young daughters were telling me earlier in the year that they didn't like the screaming noise, either, and the poem just came from that. Unusually for me, I wrote it very quickly.

I won't post it up here just now (because then you wouldn't buy the mag, would you?!), but the judges - last year's winner Chris Kinsey, Poetry Please executive producer Sara Davies, Poetry Please senior producer Tim Dee, poet Philip Gross, BBC Wildlife editor Sophie Stafford, and performance poet Sarah Williams - said: "The sensitive paradox in this poem is that while seeming to offer homely comfort, it comes as an expanding vision of nature and weather that does, as it says, throw the window open on the world".

I'm highly delighted because it's the second time I've managed second - in 2007 Hares In December, which appeared in my collection Troy Town, occupied the same place.

The winning poem, A Murmuration, by Heather Reid, is excellent, I think. It's concerned with flocking starlings, quite a common image in a lot of poetry (and songs) these days, but I really like the way the poem itself shifts pace and shape in imitation of its subject. A worthy winner.

Prize time

The results of the 2008 Plough Prize are out, complete with the winning poems, the judges' comments, and more. It's a great competition, particularly for the support, guidance and potential boost it gives to new and up and coming writers, so take a look, and think about entering this year, when Alison Brackenbury will return as judge.

Buzz

I was away for this year's Templar Poetry Festival, at Cromford, near Matlock, but last night the 2008 Pamphlet Competition anthology, Buzz, had arrived in the post. As ever from Templar, it's very nicely produced, with a good selection of poets and poems. You can also find more details on the 2009 pamphlet competition at the Templar site.

Vote now!

If you've ever looked at the results of a poetry competition and thought "that's all wrong", then here's your chance to influence the outcome of one. The shortlisted poems in this year's Times Literary Supplement Poetry Competition are here, and you can vote for your favourite. I've had a quick scan through, and already have an idea which one I favour, but I'll read them all a few more times before I make a decision. Enjoy!

Competition time

I received this from Poetry Nottingham editor Adrian Buckner. Have a go - I've sketched something out, and far from feeling constrained by the imposed beginning, I think it took me somewhere I wouldn't otherwise have gone...

Poetry Competition (with a difference, or two)

RULES:
1. Your poem must begin with:
She lay on the lounger, watching
the rabbit nuzzle the lobelia
2. There is no line limit
3. Only one entry per person
4. Closing date: 3rd October 2008
5. Entry fee is 66p in postage attached to an unaddressed A5 envelope
6. Entries can be typed or handwritten.
7. Name and address must appear on the manuscript.
8. Entries to: Adrian Buckner, Poetry Nottingham, 11 Orkney Close, Stenson Fields, Derby DE24 3LW

YOU MAY:
1. Include your entry along with other poems to be considered for inclusion in Poetry Nottingham. (Entry fee still applies)
2. Alter the lineation of the required opening.
3. Inform everyone in your family, creative writing class, writers’ workshop, about this ground-breaking venture/editor’s whimsy and encourage them to enter.

PRIZES:
1. The best two entries in the opinion of the editor will appear in the next issue of Poetry Nottingham (winners to be informed prior to publication)
2. The winners will also receive a year’s subscription to Poetry Nottingham or, if already subscribing, a year’s extension to their subscription.

In the workshop

The December edition of Writers' Forum used my poem Yellow Bellies in its monthly poetry workshop, to illustrate assonance and alliteration, among other things. The series of articles takes different poems each month and uses them to offer straightforward, practical advice to writers. The magazine also includes news, a wealth of contacts for submissions and competitions, and a monthly poetry competition, so it's well worth checking out. Many thanks to Poetry Editor Sarah Willans for using my work.

The name game

Some poetry competitions, especially pamphlet comps such as The Poetry Business's, require you to put a pen name on your work, in the interests of anonymity.
I'll be honest - it's fun, thinking of a whole new name for yourself. In the past, I've tended to use names out of the old family Bible, just because most sound appropriately ordinary, although I've yet to use James James, a name that crops up more than once in my family tree. I suspect most judges would be very wary of any wacky, or overly eye-catching names, so that also rules out using the splendid Green Willoughby (my dad's grandfather, or great-grandfather, I can't quite remember). Or Skeffington Liquorish, a real name a friend came across on a tombstone in Leicester (it sounds like it belongs in a Dickens novel).
What about you? Names chosen at random from a phonebook? Family names? Fictional characters? I'd be delighted to know which...

Prizes, poems and fat cats

I’ve just seen the office copy of BBC Wildlife Magazine, which contains the winning entries in the 2007 Poet of the Year competition. I’m absolutely delighted that my own poem, Hares In December, came 2nd in the adult section. I wrote it for NaPoWriMo in April, although I made the notes for it much earlier, after walking round Rockingham Forest looking for Red Kites one December day (we found them, plus loads of Hares).
My prize, a huge package of bird food, plus feeders and a nestbox, arrived in the post the other day. The slight problem is that I don’t really have anywhere suitable to put any of it, because I have a pretty small garden without trees or high fences, and in addition the main part of the garden is out of sight of the windows (I live on a terrace, and there’s a communal path between the houses and the gardens). The one or two places that would accommodate them would be far too open to cats.
So, I thought I’d pass the prize on to my parents. They have a bigger (although far from huge), much more varied garden, and although it’s in a pretty built-up, suburban location, over the years they’ve managed to attract a fair amount of wildlife. As well as all the more common garden bird species – Robin, Blackbird (loads of them), Dunnock, Wren, Song Thrush, Starling, House Sparrow, Blue Tit, Great Tit, Long-tailed Tit, Coal Tit, Greenfinch, Chaffinch, Collared Dove and Woodpigeon – there’s plenty of corvids, including Magpies, a large family of Carrion Crows, occasional Jackdaws, and, a couple of summers ago, a Jay who insisted on filling every available space (including my mum’s peg bag) with acorns, and on trying to collect people’s hair as nesting material. There have been occasional Green and Great Spotted Woodpeckers, a regular pair of Sparrowhawks, a Kestrel, and in winter, visiting Yellowhammers, Goldcrests, Reed Buntings, Pied Wagtails, Goldfinches and Bullfinches. In the summer, Chiffchaffs and Willow Warblers are sometimes around, plus plenty of Swifts and House Martins overhead. A Buzzard flies over now and then, and a Pheasant once found its way there. There’s a Heron that lands in nearby gardens, but hasn’t yet made a visit. All quite impressive, given that they have one (very large and conspicuous) cat, plus a sort of timeshare on another (he flits between several owners). Oh, and next door’s cat likes to pop over for a bit of a light-hearted chase around the plant pots.
The reason why their cat (the unfortunately named Gizmo) is no deterrent to birds goes back to his early days. When he was about six months old, he went and launched himself at a group of Herring Gulls on the lawn (sadly, they never visit anymore, although there’s the occasional Black-headed). He grabbed one by the leg, and it and its mates then turned on him. He just managed to escape before he was carried away or filleted by their beaks, and has since shown little interest in birds (neither did the cats we had when I was a kid, although one was a prolific mouser), often stoically suffering close-range taunting from the Crows, Magpies and that Jay.
He doesn’t bother mousing, either. Again, when he was very young, he chased a squirrel in through the patio window, and it then ran up the curtains, along the pelmet, and back down the other side, before escaping back out of the window. He seemed to take this disappointment quite badly, and now refuses to acknowledge the existence of mammals other than cats. Foxes visit quite regularly, and I’ve seen him sit almost back to back with one, each pretending that the other isn’t there.
I’d imagine , then, that he’ll have no problem with Robins using the nestbox. Now and then, he’ll do that strange chattering thing that cats do at birds (Magpies are the only ones that seem to provoke him), but otherwise, he’s a walking refutation of the claim that cats are wiping out songbirds.

Trumpet-blowing time!

I don't enter many competitions, but I like to have a go at a few, to provide myself with deadlines, and sometimes just to encourage me to write on a particular theme.
I was delighted, not to say staggered, to get an email just now saying that my poem Hares In December has been selected as the only runner-up in the adult section of the 2007 BBC Wildlife Poet Of The Year competition.
It'll be published in the October issue of BBC Wildlife magazine, and I win a nestbox and a lot of bird-feed!
The email from the editor, Sophie Stafford, says: "Though the entries were strong and plentiful as usual, your poem was unanimously selected by the judges as the only other contender for the winning spot. Though we usually award 3 runners-ups awards, this year, yours will be the only one published.
"They felt your poem held a moment of stillness in a world of movement and trusted the reader to follow your thoughts and the pictures you created."
Blimey! When I say staggered, it's not that I didn't think it was any good (I was pretty happy with it, but didn't think it had a real chance of a prize), just that it was very short, and I used to have the impression (wrongly, it's now clear) that competition judges liked their winners to offer a bit more meat.
I wrote the poem in April as part of NaPoWriMo2007, when we had to write a poem a day for a month. This was the 29th, so I was obviously just hitting my stride as we finished. I was taking as my starting point each day the first song that my iPod's shuffle chose, and this one was sparked by Fairport Convention's The Bonny Black Hare. Here's the lyrics of that song - proof that thinly-veiled sexual references and double entendres aren't the exclusive preserve of modern music!

In brief

I don't enter many competitions, but I did have a go at BBC Wildlife Magazine's Poet Of The Year competition yesterday, because (a) I had a suitable poem sitting around doing nothing; and (b) It was free.
Actually, I say suitable, but in fact I haven't got very high hopes for it. It's not that I don't think it's any good (I'd have liked a bit more time to work on it, but I was pretty happy with what I managed), it's just that it consists of ten rather short lines. I'm not sure, but I always get the impression that judges are reluctant to give prizes to very brief poems, or at least when they're neck and neck with meatier fare. I'm not really sure why this should be so, but I suspect I'd be the same. Fortunately, when I was one of the Plough Prize judges last year, I was choosing the winners in the Short section, in which nothing was over ten lines.
I won't say anything about the poem I entered for now, except that it wasn't about birds.