Results 2006 - Poetry Competition

Poetry Judge 2006:-

The winning entries to the City of Derby Writing Competition 2006 are now included on this website in our Archive.  You can read the works in question by clicking on the links below.  The results of this year's poetry competition are given below, together with our judge's report:-                                                           [Link to Results 2006 - Short Story Competition]

Poems

1st Prize               Emma Jones            Farming

Emma Jones

Emma Jones is currently in the process of completing a PhD at Trinity College, Cambridge.  She is from Sydney, Australia.  She was winner of the Cardiff International Poetry Prize in 2003, and also won the $5000 first prize in the Newcastle (New South Wales) Poetry Prize, 2005.  Judith Beveridge and Judy Johnson, the judges of that competition, described Emma as ‘a major literary voice in Australia’.

2nd Prize             A.K.S. Shaw            Trapeze

3rd Prize             Linda Lamus            Darker than Black

Linda Lamus

Linda Lamus was born in London and now lives in Bristol.  She began writing terrible odes to the moon when she was quite small.  More recently her (thankfully much improved) poems are frequently about travelling the world, the people she has observed and met, and often chronicle the surrealism of everyday life.  Linda is currently completing her first collection.  Published in numerous poetry magazines including Acumen, Poetry London, Staple and Tears in the Fence, she won the Yorkshire Open Poetry Competition in 2004, was shortlisted for the Arvon in 2000, 3^rd in Poetry London in 2001 and a runner-up in the Bridport Poetry Prize in 2004.  Along with Fiona Hamilton, Linda will be supporting U. A. Fanthorpe at the 2006 Bristol Poetry Festival.  Linda has read her work several times on BBC Radio.

The following works are considered as Highly Commended poetry submissions to the competition:-

June Whiting                                      Estuary

Sue Castle                                          Oval Reflections

John Wheway                                     Seascape

Sheila Chapman                                  Inner Vision

Paul Lofthouse                                    Essence of Green

Eileen Carney Hulme                           Wild Spirits

Judge's Report

I found the process of acting as ‘chief’ judge for the poetry submitted to the 2006 City of Derby Competition – ‘chief’ being a title, by the way, I feel I would very much like to retain – tremendously difficult, in the sense of what final decisions I had to make.  [Editor’s note -  the role was originally described as ‘chief’ judge as it was unknown whether or not in this initial year of the competition, additional judges or readers would be required!] In many ways being presented with anonymous poems is tremendously helpful as you have no preconceptions about the writer and can concentrate purely on the written word before you.  There were some very good poems submitted and although I found that my favourite ten or so quickly surfaced, it was particularly hard to choose the winners.  Any of the final three or indeed any of the highly commended poems could have come through at the end, but for me it came down to these final three works.  Each of them, I feel, is worthy of being a winner, but finally I had no option but to choose which ones appealed to me on the most personal level.  And so here are my three finalists.

 In third place I choose Linda Lamus’ poem Darker Than Black.  What is remarkable about this poem  is that within the constraints of 40 lines she covers a tremendous amount of ground, partly by splitting the poem into three sections and by including some amount of narrative material.  This is an incredibly ambitious piece of political invective, beautifully written with a precise choice of words, freshness of language, originality and use of imagination.

 In second place I chooseTrapeze by A.K.S. Shaw. From the beginning I wasn’t quite sure if this was a persona poem or not.  In fact it turns out to have a male author, although it is very convincingly written as though by a woman.  It is a poem put together in four-line stanzas with some rhyme and with a clear reference to rhythm and metre.  All the way through there is a quite dazzling and precise use of language.

 In first place I have chosen Farming by Emma Jones. This again is a quite remarkable poem.  Its theme is the farming of pearls, but there are many other intricate connections throughout.  At the very end of the poem there is a link made between the whole process of making such a thing of beauty as a pearl and the process of writing a poem.  This poem has, once again, many deserving features as with the third and second prize-winners, but what makes this distinctive, and what made it ‘float to the surface’ for me, was that it also had a sense of mystery.  A haunting quality, that made me realise that no matter how many times I read this poem, it would never be resolved.  It has a hidden, elusive depth which draws the reader to read it again and again.

Ian Parks July 2006