A few had to be disqualified after one reading, primarily due to a limited acquaintance with modern poetic practice: reading some contemporary poems before spending good money on entry fees is sound advice.
But there weren't many of these. Most of the poems had at least something that would call you back for a second reading. That's when the judge starts making three piles -yes, no and maybe -and hoping that the number of yeses will make it unnecessary to revisit the maybes, always the most problematical pile. Often, maybes are poems that have a lot going for them, but also something working against that general good impression. It may be one or two weak lines, and in that case it can make a lot of difference where they are. It is easier to forgive a glitch in the middle of a poem than a weak ending, which stays in the mind as the poem's final word. Sometimes, though, a maybe is just a poem that needed to be read more often, perhaps one that makes its impact more subtly, and when you read it that one more time, it turns into a definite yes.
There were 35 poems I thought worthy of inclusion in this anthology. For a small competition the standard was high - far higher, certainly, than in the last big-money competition I judged. A lot of the poems felt very fresh and individual; though technically accomplished, they were not mere technical exercises. There was a musicality about some that particularly pleased me; I would mention in this context "New Age", with its rhythmical refrains, and "Vodka kicks and teardrops", a personal favourite of mine for reasons I'm not entirely sure of, but I think it's because it sounds not only like a song lyric but genuinely artless. Which means, of course, that it is no such thing; it takes great craft and effort to appear artless.
There was also a great variety of subject matter, and some of the most difficult, i.e. political and popular subject matter, actually came off. I thought the idea behind "Afghan Dream", a fantasy in which the undervalued women walk out of the country en masse, leaving the men to their own devices, was brilliant, though I think revision could probably improve the execution. It was delightful to see a poem celebrating football that actually worked ("The Winning Score") and a persona poem in the voice of the eponymous "Orang-utan".
In the end I narrowed it down to 5 poems, all impressive in very different ways. The unrhymed sonnet "Love" is extremely accomplished; at first its line breaks look odd, but they are designed, in a way more reminiscent of US than UK verse, to throw a great deal of stress on the first word of the next line. It strikes me as completely in control of its language and ideas; if I'd been asked to find a runner-up, this would be it.
"Owl-Night" is a poem of senses and observation so sharp, it sends shivers through an alert reader. "Razzamatazz", from an author who has, I think, achieved three poems in the anthology, is another with a great deal of musicality, and also joy, an emotion surprisingly difficult to convey convincingly in poetry. "Clear Night", set very convincingly at sea (both real and metaphorical) carries a heavy freight of emotion. It also has an unstated back-story, which gives it its haunting quality and is, I think, almost always a bonus in a poem. Our reader does not have to know everything that happened before he came in; we can often achieve a more powerful effect by making him create some of that story for himself out of the hints we have left him in the language and imagery.
This thought was at the back of my choice of winner. "Tundra" is not a poem that explains itself neatly. We can assume the woman is some kind of archetypal refugee; we can recognise the universality of the contrast in verse 3 between her anguish and the indifference of the cosmos:
how the sky though beautiful
had neither watched nor cared
formal in its corridors of silver
But whether that baby was real or an illusion, and what happened to it, is far more equivocal. What is certain is that it exists in our minds after reading the poem, as do the woman and her situation. The language and imagination of the poet were haunting enough to put them there and leave the reader's mind a little marked, altered from what it was. That is what, as poets, we are all trying to do.
Sheenagh Pugh
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