Joanna Preston: Tasmanaut Poet
There is in each of us a stream of tendency, whether you choose to call it philosophy or not, which gives coherence and direction to thought and action. Judges cannot escape that current any more than other mortals. ... We may try to see things as objectively as we please. None the less, we can …
Continue reading "Eyes and clean slates – a shortlist is born"
Judex damnatur cum nocens absolvitur. The judge is condemned when the guilty is acquitted. – Syrus, Maxims. After a short break while the earth moved, it's back to judging haiku. This is where I become the anal-retentive, über-picky, petty, finicky and super-hard-to-satisfy critic that people have always warned me I was becoming. (I believe that …
Continue reading "Acquittal and Condemnation – week two of the deliberations"
Times before number, condemned criminals had waited for their last dawn. Yet until the very end they could hope for a reprieve; human judges can show mercy. But against the laws of nature, there is no appeal. – Arthur C. Clarke, The Wind From the Sun: Stories of the Space Age (1972). Well it's been …
Continue reading "Dawn, reprieve, and mercy – the preliminary deliberations continue"
Judging is a lonely job in which a man is, as near as may be, an island entire. – Abe Fortas Today my sack of poems from the NZPS 2011 International Haiku Competition arrived. This is my first time judging for the NZPS, and I'm feeling a strange surge of pleasurable anticipation. I know from …
Continue reading "‘An island entire’ – judging the NZPS 2011 Haiku comp"
Well it's all done and dusted now. Results have been handed out, winners cheered and others given their "short, helpful comments" from the judge. Who were the winners? (Drumroll please) 1st: Elizabeth Robertson, "My father is never lonely", Runner-up: Shirley Eng, "A Bicycle sonnet", Commended: Janice Healey, "Water! Right!", and Mary Fitzgerald, "Post Spring Song". …
A Dark Feathered Art 