Roger Elkin judges the Sentinel Literary Quarterly Poetry Competition | Closing on the 29th of February 2016
Prizes: £200, £100, £50, £20 x 3 and £10 x 3.
Prize your poem now at http://sentinelquarterly.com/competitions/poetry/index.htm
Sentinel Literary Quarterly Poetry Competition | International Poetry Contest
Sunday, 31 January 2016
Sentinel Literary Quarterly Poetry Competition | International Poetry Contest
Friday, 29 January 2016
Closing midnight 31 January 2016: Sentinel Annual Writing Competitions | International annual open poetry and short story competitions
Judges: Afam Akeh (Poetry)
Alex Keegan (Fiction)
£3000 prize fund.
Enter now
Sentinel Annual Writing Competitions | International annual open poetry and short story competitions
Alex Keegan (Fiction)
£3000 prize fund.
Enter now
Sentinel Annual Writing Competitions | International annual open poetry and short story competitions
Sunday, 24 January 2016
Results and Judge's Report, Sentinel Literary Quarterly Poetry Competition (November 2015)
Judge’s
Report
By
Oz
Hardwick
I didn’t think to count the number of
poems with which I started – it was the sort of pile I’d
be more inclined to weigh than count, anyway – but after careful and repeated reading of all of them, I was able to edit the initial submissions down to around 30. This was not as easy a process as it may sound because, while not necessarily prizewinners, there was a considerable number of good, well-crafted poems. And this is perhaps the most important point: there are a lot of people writing well – certainly well enough to share work with others – so don’t be downhearted if you haven’t made the last nine here; submit to journals, go to open mics and writers’ groups, and find where your work fits. That said, one or two (possibly three or four) writers should read more contemporary poetry; however well-written, a poem that’s too reminiscent of, say, Christina Rossetti is unlikely to resonate with a modern reader.
be more inclined to weigh than count, anyway – but after careful and repeated reading of all of them, I was able to edit the initial submissions down to around 30. This was not as easy a process as it may sound because, while not necessarily prizewinners, there was a considerable number of good, well-crafted poems. And this is perhaps the most important point: there are a lot of people writing well – certainly well enough to share work with others – so don’t be downhearted if you haven’t made the last nine here; submit to journals, go to open mics and writers’ groups, and find where your work fits. That said, one or two (possibly three or four) writers should read more contemporary poetry; however well-written, a poem that’s too reminiscent of, say, Christina Rossetti is unlikely to resonate with a modern reader.
Of
those that made the slim pamphlet of my informal long-list, probably a little
over a third adopted a regular form as a starting place though, as is clear from
the sonnets in the final nine, they often played fast and loose with the ‘rules’
– and were all the better for it. Incidentally, on the subject of sonnets and
rules, I believe everyone who reads or writes poetry should read the
introduction to Don Paterson’s 101
Sonnets: even if you agree with most of it, it’s a worthwhile argument to
join. Patterned end-rhyme was quite rare throughout – more so than I would
expect – but, as with form, irregular use of rhyme and pararhyme was deployed to
great effect in many poems. I habitually read poetry aloud when I’m thinking
about it, and there was much pleasure to be gained from this throughout. Which
brings me to a personal bugbear: what is it with these poems that don’t have
capitals or punctuation? yes i can see
how this is sometimes appropriate and i have done it myself on occasions for
specific effects but most of the time it is imprecise like a song score without
the musical notation so the reader is left slightly lost and breathless thank
you.
In
terms of topics, the two that particularly stood out were art and, I’m pleased
to say, politics. While this latter is notoriously difficult to write without
sounding hectoring and possibly self-righteous, it seems that the
ever-accelerating conveyor belt of global injustice is giving us more
opportunity than we would like to hone our verse in this area. The
1st placed poem here manages the tricky balance by remaining
ostensibly objective, giving the reader the information they need to form an
opinion and a response, without overt finger-wagging.
A
few poems nearly made the final nine: Surrender tells, in two long, slowly
unfolding sentences, the gradual capitulation to urban conformity, with the lawn yawning at the mower. Stranded Boat flits from Alto-cirrus to yak scrotums (which don’t feature in
poetry as often as they should) in its dense evocation of a profound personal
moment in which past and present collide. History also permeates Rain against the window, from the
Byzantine empire to suggested personal histories which, like liquid tracks down
glass, are patterns never to be
repeated.
Vastly
different, all of the poems have these elements in common: they have a subject
worth expressing; they display an excellent ear for the rhythms and music of
language; they say what the reader needs to know, and no more; and they say
things in a personal, original, and sometimes surprising way. And I think that’s
what poetry should, in broad terms, do.
Commended
– The Eel Men and Women
by Ewan Park (Glasgow)
This
is a poem I’d love to hear the writer read. Having read it aloud myself (more
than once), I have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed the experience. The poem’s
range of reference is the initial attraction, suggesting both narrative
development and free association, generally at the same time; but it is the
sinuous sound of the long sentences that particularly entice, along with the
surprising punctuation of short, self-contained lines. Other than which is important to them, I’m not sure
if lines and phrases elsewhere are found elements – I suspect, though can’t
precisely identify, a few – but either way, the occasional shifts in diction,
rather than destabilising the poem, provide an effective counterpoint to the
main thrust, before the harshly inarguable final couplet.
Commended
– The Follower by Dominic James
(Chalford)
One
of the things poetry can do most effectively is imprint a sharp image onto the
reader’s memory which, for all its clarity and precision, suggests all manner of
additional information and action that isn’t quite perceived at all. Take dealing out the negatives / from the bottom
of his pack / a bag of nails for everyone: practically a haiku (in form, too
– just take out a few words), it tells the reader all they need to know, except
the images’ full implications. This is so apt for the subject here; the
over-familiar visitor who is always a stranger, neatly recounted in unobtrusive,
unrhymed couplets.
Commended
– Empty Houses of the Fled
by John Gallas
(Markfield)
What
a wonderful opening stanza: that playfully dark opening line, the burgeoning ms and quick snip of drift in the second, the subtle (and all
but meaningless) distinction between the shut and the shuttered across the blank page space of
indentation, and finally that inverted description vividly reminding the reader
of the ennui in the first line: held up by vacuum-cleaners. The
remaining stanzas nearly retain this
density, though I’m not sure the indentation in the second stanza adds anything,
nor the ‘stepping’ of the indented lines throughout; this latter invites me –
and possibly other readers – to read these lines almost as a second poem, and
they don’t work together like this. Description remains vivid throughout, right
up to the peppermint Pontiac which
fills the final stanza, but I would like something beyond this: a more explicit
hint at a wider narrative, or even just a nod back to the poem’s
opening.
Highly
Commended – A Breton Girl Spinning
by MJ Whistler (London)
The
thing about unrhymed verse, of course, is that the language’s music has to work
that much harder. Here, the poet sets this up right from the start with that
repetition of breadfruit, its solid
reflection in fruit of the bread, and
that resonant echo in Breton girl –
we have the ‘Breton Girl’ of the title, and she is most certainly spinning in
more ways than one. The poem, to stick with the idea of music, is like a reel,
circling between earth and heaven or, indeed, Gauguin’s painting and the guiding
spirit of his painting. I have one concern: it being a long time since my Art
School days, I confess I had to look up phthalo, and my unreferenced internet
source informed me that it was a pigment developed in the 1930s – 40 or so years
after this painting. It’s out of my field, and the use may be justified, but
it’s the sort of thing to check – if the writer hasn’t already. Either way, the
energy, the piling up of lists, and the exuberant music of the poem are all very
well handled.
Highly
Commended – Ordinary Love
by Noel Williams
(Sheffield)
More
than a fourteen-line poem, I’d place this firmly in the sonnet pile. I’ll leave
it to other readers to look how the form is bent, stretched, and squeezed to fit
the less idealised love of middle age – something I think it does very well.
Instead, it’s the retailoring of tradition I’d like to note in particular; the
love poem par excellence lowering its
eyes from the heavenly ideal, not to turn its gaze on politics or religion, as
has been done over past centuries, but upon the truth of love as it is lived,
the subject’s hair unthread(ing) like a
blanket. Yet, as with Petrarch and his first followers, there is a warm
physicality, a celebratory eroticism, that permeates the poem and which, even as
we are reminded of literary conceits and constructions, emphatically asserts
that ordinary love is never ordinary (& sonnets still do the job).
Highly
Commended – Wednesday’s Child
by
Dominic James
(Chalford)
Mother
Goose meets Miles Davis in this impressionistic (sub?)urban minor tragedy.
Eschewing rhyme and regular metre, improvises its own rules like jazz around the
reader’s beat. Growth and time compete with static, perhaps even sterile
imagery, perfectly exemplified in the central, pivotal empties weeds grow over. Ultimately, I
would like something to tie the first and final stanzas together more explicitly
but, even as it stands, this is a poem that repays repeated visits to – and
exploration of – its intriguing subtleties and
suggestions.
Third
Prize – Emily Dickinson’s Indian Pipe by Gabriel Griffin (Orta,
Italy)
I
do like a good metaphor – who doesn’t? But I particularly like a good metaphor
which pushes down roots and sends out tendrils so that it creeps into the mortar
of a poem to the extent that, at points, one can’t separate the distinct
elements which are being likened to each other. It is pure chance that it is the
second poem of the ‘top 3’ that, after due argument, and with appropriate
tutting, sighing, and glances towards the ceiling, we’d probably call a sonnet.
However, it’s a wonderful reminder of what, given a bit of flexibility in the
rhyme and rhythm departments, the form my still contain … or
release.
Second
Prize – a riddle by Peter Oram (Schwabach,
Germany)
From
the Exeter Book onwards, I enjoy puzzling, riddling, ambiguous texts that
suggest and tease, and this mutated sonnet fits the bill perfectly. Badger, spy,
terrorist or refugee? The octave begins with human characteristics, but soon
enters the realm of the animal, burrowing
through / the undergrowth, before donning human raiment once more. He doesn’t care, announces the octave,
suggesting that mysteries will be uncovered – but no; the prosaic resting places
of the small / but heavy packages
strike a chill, but answer no questions. Consequently, the revelation that no one ever turns up to collect them
leaves an icy chill. And what is the answer to this riddle? Well, I think
it’s
First
Prize – Svay Pak Mathematics by Andrea Holland
(Norwich)
A
political poem that doesn’t let the politics weigh down the poetry is a rare
thing. Here, though, although the facts of the notorious traffic in Vietnamese
child prostitutes remains unflinchingly in focus, it is the poetry that holds
the reader and stops them from turning away. It’s all about the detail – not
only the tangible Three green
budgerigars and knuckles scraped out
– but also the evocative familiar
black smell and blood in the lies /
he tells. Voices move as perspectives move, from stolen childhood to savage
experience still not understood, while the verse itself moves in and out of
rhyme. All of these threads draw together into a poem that looks the reader in
the eye and will not be forgotten, right up until that sharp, tragic final
couplet.
Oz
Hardwick
Administrator’s
note
Many
thanks to Oz for a job well done. Just to say, he did not count the poems. There
were 294 entries this quarter. The poems have been judged blind and I have
inserted the names of the winning and commended poets in the Judge’s
Report.
Nnorom
Azuonye
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)