I imagine most people reading the title of this post will be puzzled by the name, and wonder what corner of the poetry world he hails from. And the answer is: he doesn’t. He wasn’t a poet. But, after my grandmother, he is the person most responsible for me being a poet. And he died …
Kathleen Grattan Award 2013 announced
Big congratulations to Siobhan Harvey, who has won the 2013 Kathleen Grattan Award for the manuscript of her second collection, Nephology for Beginners! The judge this year was Jeffrey Paparoa Holman, who apparently had a field of ninety manuscripts to work his way through. The official announcement was once again made on The Arts on …
Veni, legim, placuit – I came, I read, I decided
Yep, that’s it – I’ve finally selected my winners for the 2013 Takahē Poetry competition. It feels like it’s taken me a very long time, but I’m satisfied with my choices. (I’d better be – I’ve submitted my report and sent the entries back to the competition secretary!)Picking the two runners-up was actually the hardest. …
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Dubito Ergo Iudicio – I doubt, therefore I judge
It’s strange, how the approach changes as you move through the stages of judging. The first read-through was all about being open and not especially critical. Looking for reasons to say ‘yes!’, and only dismissing things that really were pretty bad. Then you move into the critical phase (whittling down), where you start being über …
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Living with Poems – the second and third read-throughs
Well, after two more read-throughs of every poem, I managed to whittle things down to a longlist of fifty by bedtime last night. It made for some slightly weird dreams, but hey, I do it so that no-one else has to. (Plus I have weird dreams anyhow.) I began by sorting things into three piles …
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A Dark Feathered Art 