2005 winner and runners up
The winner of the 2005 competition is A C Clarke (left) from Glasgow. Her collection, Breathing Each Other In was launched at twin events: the Lit and Phil in Newcastle on 1 December (along with the 2005 anthology Piety and Plum Porridge), and secondly at The Scottish Poetry Library, Edinburgh, on Saturday, 28th January.
When told of her success, Anne, (who lives in Glasgow) said that she was greatly surprised, but obviously very delighted. Read more about the winner.
The runners up were:
Gill McEvoy from Cheshire
Kristina Close from Surrey
Pat Borthwick from North Yorkshire
Work for the anthology was selected from a field of around 400 entries (over 2,000 poems), received from as far afield as Australia, South Africa, America, Greece, France, and Spain, as well as the UK. A further 73 poets were commended and are included in the anthology.
The judge, WN Herbert, comments:
The standard of entries for this competition was commendably high, and it was with some relief I established a shortlist of four. It was the ability to sustain the highest standard across all five poems of an individual submission that helped me draw up that final list of four.
Once I'd reduced things to this tight group, however, my problems intensified. Here was a real variety of voices: one with an attractive combination of quirkiness and gravity, Pat Borthwick; another with an extravagant, distinctive lyricism, Kristina Close; yet another with an intriguing, eery focus on natural phenomena, Gill McEvoy; and another one with an unhealthy obsession with skulls and shopping, A C Clarke. In their different ways, each was exactly my cup of tea, coffee, herbal and chocolate. How on earth to choose?
Poetry is not an exact science, it is an exact experience: as the advert has it, you know when you've been tangoed. To read a poem is to be thrown into proximity with another sensibility in a manner as intimate and yet distant as the tango, and I always measure the quality of any given poem by the breadth and depth of its effect. Did it startle and delight not just verbally, intellectually and emotionally, but in the instincts, where music and imagery collide in ways that resonate long after the reading is done?
Although each of the others hit that level intermittently, only one did it consistently enough to win. The hulking image of AC Clarke's tragic Irish Giant, both as man and skeleton a 'Goliath outwitted', set the tone. The bones of 'God’s trenchermen', those well-fed monks 'wound in the shroud of their excess', sustained it. And the extraordinary depiction of an all night supermarket as a nightmarish 'garden of earthly delights' clinched it. Here was a sustained vision rooted in our appetites and our mortality, and yet finding the curious music of compassion winding throughout both. I look forward to reading much more of her work.
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Jeanne Macdonald adds: As in 2004, I have also chosen poems that will be included in this year's anthology, the poets are:
Colin Archer
Norman Bisset
Josephine Brogan
George Carle
Liz Cashdan
Derek Collins
Angela Cook
Rose Cook
Ann Constable
John Crick
Clare Crossman
Judith Dimond
Brian Docherty
David Duncombe
Margaret Eddershaw
Penny Feinstein
Beryl Fenton
Sylvia Forrest
Bert Freistadt
Alan Franks
Ann Gibson
A.J. Hansford
Chris Hardy
Pauline Hawksworth
R.D. Henderson
Doreen Hinchcliffe
Jackie Hinden
Mary Hodgson
Marianne Hellwigjohnn
Ursula Kierman
Wendy Klein
Bernard Landreth
Gill Learner
Margaret Lewis
Asit Maitra
Gol. McAdam
Jane McCarthy
Kathleen McKay
C.E.G. Manwell
Walter Nash
Shirley Percy
Michael Pooley
Diana Moen Pritchard
John Quicke
Rod Riesco
Andrew Murray Scott
Wendy Searle
Gordon Simms
K.V. Skene
Lesley Mary Smith
Geraldine M. Smith
Michael Swan
Elizabeth Tate
Maggie Tate
Ruth Terrington
Pam Thompson
Harriet Torr
James Turner
J.J.Vuglar
Joan Waddleton
Eddie Wainwright
Huw Watkins
Jean Watkins
Lyn White
Sheila Wild
Margaret Wilmot
Linda Wilson
Robin Lindsay Wilson
Janet Wiltshire
Jan Woodling
Sue Wood
William Woods
Hamish Whyte
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2005 Competition Report
The final total of entries received (2060 poems) is indicative of the support and future need of the Blinking Eye Poetry Competition. The pre-ordering of books at a discount price has proved a huge success; they will also be displayed for sale at the launch on 1st December at The Literary and Philosophical Society Newcastle upon Tyne.
The highlights of the year echoed 2004: attending the Manchester Poetry Festival, 5th October, to support last year's winner, Pat Winslow, reading from her collection, Skin & Dust. It was a wonderful success (the size of the audience so great we were given a larger room). Receiving your letters and e-mails of encouragement. Our website, which I believe is unique, offering visitors the very best of contemporary poetry, and the valued platform pieces written by the same established poets, sharing their thoughts with us.
The low moments: that by increasing the size (slightly) to the number of contributors in the 2005 anthology, there will still be good poems that will not be published by Blinking Eye. The task of elimination followed a steady path, and I humbly suggest to all unsuccessful entrants to note the following for any future competition they enter:
Be more rigorous when editing your work.
Be sure that all line ends have strength.
Is the last line of the poem needed?
Will the poem be stronger written in the 'second' person.
Will the poem benefit from a critique.
The Future: For our 2006 Poetry Competition I am delighted to announce that the Judge will be the acclaimed poet, Jo Shapcott.
Michael Pooley, one of our commended poets in Piety and Plum Porridge, has had his first collection of poems published by Black Kite.
Page last updated: 08.12.2006
