Wednesday 23 May 2007

In brief

I don't enter many competitions, but I did have a go at BBC Wildlife Magazine's Poet Of The Year competition yesterday, because (a) I had a suitable poem sitting around doing nothing; and (b) It was free.
Actually, I say suitable, but in fact I haven't got very high hopes for it. It's not that I don't think it's any good (I'd have liked a bit more time to work on it, but I was pretty happy with what I managed), it's just that it consists of ten rather short lines. I'm not sure, but I always get the impression that judges are reluctant to give prizes to very brief poems, or at least when they're neck and neck with meatier fare. I'm not really sure why this should be so, but I suspect I'd be the same. Fortunately, when I was one of the Plough Prize judges last year, I was choosing the winners in the Short section, in which nothing was over ten lines.
I won't say anything about the poem I entered for now, except that it wasn't about birds.

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