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Results 2009 - Poetry Competition |
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The winning entries to the City of Derby Writing Competition 2009 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 2009 - Short Story Competition] Poems 1st Prize (£500) M.C. Newton At a Lecture on Reincarnation
M.C.Newton now lives and scribbles in North Wales. She has published over ninety poems in anthologies and magazines (The Rialto, Poetry Nottingham, Envoi, Scintilla, Poetry Wales...), and been placed or commended in numerous reputable competitions, winning occasional unexpected prizes.
2nd Prize (£250) Denise McSheehy Ordinary Magic
Denise McSheehy’s first collection Salt was published by the Poetry Can in September 2008. In July 2009 she received an Author’s Foundation Grant towards her second collection. Her work has been widely published and broadcast on the BBC. She currently lives near Totnes.
3rd Prize (£150) M. Lee Alexander The Last Chained Book M. Lee Alexander’s work has appeared in a variety of journals and won prizes including Finalist Robert Frost Foundation Poetry Award 2005, 1st Honorable Mention Yeats Society Poetry Award, 2007, short-listed for Bridport Prize 2008, and winner of the Yeovil Literary Prize 2009. She’s performed her poetry sometimes with jazz accompaniment in DC and the mid-Atlantic region. Her chapbook Observatory was published by Finishing Line Press in 2007 and her second book Folly Bridge is in process. She teaches creative writing at William and Mary and resides in Williamsburg, Virginia, getting to England whenever she can as she’s an incorrigible anglophile. The following works are considered as Highly Commended poetry submissions to the competition:- Gwen Seabourne Waters of Life C.J. Allen A Pocket Guide to Thermodynamics Gaby Pritchard Late That Afternoon They Lifted the House David Duncombe Baggage Christine Lacey Notes on Retirement Phil Powley Unruly Subjects
The poems which made our poetry judge's 'longlist' were as follows:- Charles Corbett Distractions Mick Wood A Timeless Incident Anthony Cooper Fieldwork: The Box Player Denise McSheehy Now I Lay Me Alan Briggs The Mink and the Moorhen Bronwen Griffiths Hajars Peter Wyton Starlings at Dusk Gwen Seabourne That Short Swift Season Noel Williams Spoil Heap Roger Elkin Rambling the Peak District and Finding Ourselves in Bosnia Peter Wyton Perkin Warbeck Departs Tyburn
Judge's Report ‘Rivers invite bridges, tall buildings elevators, and an exciting and unexplained world invites poetry’
This is how the American writer Kenneth Koch neatly sums up what it is inspires us all to write poetry though what makes a ‘good’ poem is much more complex. I think all adjudicators would agree that the first sifting of competition poems fairly quickly leaves them with about the final 25% of the batch to concentrate on. Then it starts to get much more difficult. Poems that don’t make the first longlist usually have key elements missing from them that an experienced reader will notice straight away. I do know that if their creators had spent longer on them, exposed them to workshops or even read them out into the air to hear them for themselves then they could all have been improved and perhaps included in the longlist. I could recognise the passion and pulse in them all but it was other things let them down. Never ignore the power of a good title. They are really important and too many that didn’t make the first cut had what I would call ‘working titles’ – absolutely acceptable through the drafts but needing to be refreshed for the final poem. Beware of the big abstracts like ‘Autumn’ or ‘Grief’. These are a real turn off for any reader, editor or adjudicator. Mick Imlah wrote that ‘A poem never recovers from a bad title’. A weak title usually indicates that a weak poem will follow. Of course I didn’t reject a poem on its title alone but a weak title does flash up a pulsing red light. The weaker poems cannot communicate with clarity to anyone other than their creator. The weak poem doesn’t present anything in a fresh light. It has no musicality. It isn’t aware of its own shape and is usually too long. Weak poems often dress in fancy fonts, wear coloured or perfumed paper clothes, enclose a photo of a puppy. Believe me, it has happened although with none of these last three in this competition I’m pleased to say! A tick list I use myself after my first draft considers the three ‘S’s – sense, shape and sound. If these are well considered and balanced then I know poems and their poets really mean business and probably read a lot of poetry too. My longlist of 40 poems had to become 20 – a long shortlist. That’s a lot of reading and re-reading spread out over a few weeks. I was thankful to Rob Smallwood for giving me this time because time was an essential test of these poems. I had to know that poems which had caught my attention initially were going to survive several readings spread over time. I was looking for layers of meaning and depths which took me to new places. I was waiting for even more of these to emerge (which they did). I was listening for musicality and the sheer joy and confidence in the use of language. I was looking for imagination and originality. It took me a long time to separate out the final 20 poems because all these last 40 poems had many good things in them, sometimes the exceptional. And that strength became a problem when the writer was not able to susutain the level of excellence throughout the poem. When it came to choosing my final three poems I was looking at even finer details such as the overuse and repetition of ugly little words down the left hand margin. But it went beyond technical skills at this stage, I was seeking out the chief conjurors and magicians, those who could skillfully weave an ‘awe’ factor into their poems. My third prize went to The Last Chained Book by M. Lee Alexander from the USA. It had a really intriguing title which drew me in. I loved the imagination and ambition of this poem. In 20 lines the poet swoops from a 1682 book with a calfskin cover and vellum pages in an Oxford library through to the use of a mobile phone camera and the instant transfer of an image across to the other side of the world. It is clean and careful writing. Second prize goes to Ordinary Magic by Denise McSheehy from Harbetonford. This is an exquisite and subtle celebration of the ordinary. The poet catches the delicate shades of light just as Elizabeth Blackadder or Ben Nicholson would in their still lifes. The movement of light through this poem is as fluid and beautiful as any ballet. And finally, my first prize goes to At a Lecture on Reincarnation by M.C. Newton from Conwy. This poem is deceptively simple and beautifully economic. It is quietly loud. There are layers of meaning to be gleaned from each stanza, each containing a new and sometimes profound surprise. The poem sustains and builds through to the unexpected but deeply truthful last line. It has left me with goosebumps and hairs still standing on the back of my neck. I wish I had written it! The Irish poet, Michael Longley, once said to me ‘Pat, write short (long pause)and then shorter’. All three of these final poems have mastered that craft of compression and there are many other poets here whose work I expect to see succeeeding in future competitions and publications. It has indeed been a pleasant task to share my house with all of them.
Pat Borthwick October 2009 |
M.C.
Newton 
Denise
McSheehy