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Bridport Prize 2003
2003 Poetry Judge - U. A. Fanthorpe
A ferociously hot summer coincided with the arrival of the Bridport Poetry Competition entries. The postman began to look at us dubiously, as he delivered yet another box full of poems. As the pace hotted up, doors and windows were flung open (a mistake, since the stray breezes created havoc among the entries) and visitors weren't allowed into the sitting room, which was paved with stacks of papers bearing legends like YES, NO, MAYBE, RE-READ. The heavy responsibility of judging became part of the whole house: dreams, diet, the telephone, evenings off were all subject to the fascinating burden of other people's poems. Over five thousand of them.
It is discreditable to admit this, but in the early stages I
longed for poems for the NO pile. A good poem should be easily
recognized. As Fleur Adcock says in 'The Prize-winning Poem',
it
...will be typed, of course, and not all capitals; it will use
upper and lower case in the normal way; and where a space is
usual it will have a space.
It will probably be on white paper, or possibly blue, but almost
certainly not pink.
It will not be decorated with ornaments scroll-work in coloured
ink...
The Bridport poets were far too fly to make that sort of
faux-pas. And in general the work was of a high standard,
without any particular theme being dominant, not even the Gulf
War.
I like the Bridport method of adjudication; one person judges the whole lot. It makes for a very heavy work-load, but it avoids the kind of horse-trading I've met in three-judge competitions, which can result in the top prize going to a compromise candidate no one thinks is the best.
As the poems continued, and the pile marked YES increased, it became harder to choose, and also to shake off many of the poems, some of which pursued me in all I did. The best poems may leap off the page, or they may be deceptive, and clinch, or undercut, all that has gone before; they are written by people who have an ear for the incomparable cadences of our language; they read aloud well. Those written as a dramatic monologue will have chosen a particular, often a striking, voice. Most difficult of all, they will be consistent with themselves; no wobbly starts, no soft centres, no collapsed endings. this said, the poems create their own worlds, their own laws, and this may include deliberately subverting all the faults I've mentioned. There are no rules really, except that the poem must work. Most poems, in fact, went their own way. A clutch of sonnets, rhyming couplets, terza rima, a rubai, some villanelles and sestinas were all present, but the majority were in free verse. There were also some splendid comic poems. It is hard to prefer them to the more sombre poems about Alzheimer's, suicide and loss, but I tried to strike a fair balance. Sometimes serious subjects lie concealed under apparent simplicity; equally, serious subjects, through awkward handling, lose their impact.
One thing I do wish; that I'd had more prizes to play with. There were so many good poems that deserved a public place - I could have used an anthology for a hundred, not just a short list of thirteen. It was a sad thing to have to set so many fine poems aside.
What came to the top in the end were the poems that wouldn't leave me alone. I hope you will enjoy them as much as I did.
 | The Bridport Prize is a fundraiser for Bridport Arts Centre, charity no 1069780 |