The fourth annual International Poetry Space Competition is opening for entries on Thursday November 1st. Ahead of this I asked our judge, poet Martyn Crucefix tell us a little about what he is hoping for from the competition entries.
To enter go to Poetry Space Competition
Preparing to be
changed: some thoughts on judging the Poetry Space competition 2013
In the 2003 comedy film Bruce Almighty, Jim Carey plays God and, along with more obviously
useful powers, he has to respond to the prayers of the world. But people are always
praying; he rapidly approaches a kind of madness as voices swim around him,
clamouring for attention. He takes to reading the prayers in the form of
e-mails. He tries to answer them individually but is receiving them faster than
he can respond. He sets his e-mail account to automatically answer
"yes" to all, assuming this will make everybody happy. Of course, it
does not.
A poetry competition judge comparing himself to a
character playing God may be justly criticised – but I have in the past found the
initial phases of judging rather like Jim Carey’s experience. There are so many
and such a variety of voices clamouring to be heard and every one of them is
heart-felt, recording significant moments in people’s lives. There is a similar
sense of responsibility too – the raw nature of much of the writing is
impossible to deny. I’d like to set my response mechanism to say yes to
everybody, but the judge’s task has to be how to distinguish submissions as poetry.
I am interested in how a poem uses its own shape – not
necessarily any regular or traditional form, but how its lines break, how the
rhythms are sustained. There are always poems submitted that attempt a formal
type of verse-making but this ought not to be allowed to tyrannise meaning with
the demands of a rhyme scheme. It’s always good to ponder Wordsworth’s
formulation – familiar though it may feel – that poetry is built from “emotion
recollected in tranquillity”. Poems made in the heat of the moment (and not
revised and reviewed) are seldom without their flaws. On the other hand, such
recollection can sometimes create an intellectualised distance that may do harm
to a good poem. But who said this art was an easy one?
Personally, I like poems that focus on small things and,
in effect, make arguments for the ways in which they communicate the bigger
issues that concern us all. I’m with Thomas Hardy in believing that “he used to
notice such things” is one of the greatest of compliments. Edward Thomas’ poem
about Spring, ‘But these things also’, likewise echoes this focus on what most
people tend to overlook:
The shell of a little snail
bleached
In the grass; chip of flint, and mite
Of chalk; and the small birds' dung
In splashes of purest white . . .
In the grass; chip of flint, and mite
Of chalk; and the small birds' dung
In splashes of purest white . . .
But having said all this, I can assure potential
competition entrants that anything resembling a rule is there to be broken: any
poem in any form can work its magic. It will haunt its reader for days; make me
change the way I think and feel; make me see the world differently. Ultimately,
a poem contributes to who the reader is becoming. That is an exciting prospect
for the writer. I assure you it is an even more exciting one for the judge who settles
down to read it.
Martyn Crucefix
October 2012
