Joanna Preston: Tasmanaut Poet
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 …
Continue reading "Living with Poems – the second and third read-throughs"
The first words of Tolstoy’s novel, Anna Karenina, are much quoted: Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. The thing that has struck me most forcibly about the poems in the 2013 Takahe poetry competition is that this phrase (with an inversion and a few substitutions) could also serve …
Continue reading "The Karenina Aspect – reflections on the first read-through"
After a couple of weeks where the weather has been glorious and my garden has gone berserk, winter has paid us a return visit. Rain, sleet, wind, murk, yuck. Lousy for gardening: good for writing. Better still for judging the 2013 Takahe poetry competition. The bundle arrived this morning. 311 poems, to be whittled down …
Continue reading "A Suitable Occupation for a Wet Week – the 2013 Takahe poetry 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". …
Well I'm making my final choices in the SIWA sonnet competition. It's been quite interesting. Encouraging in some ways, discouraging in others. My worry when I first sat down with the packet of entries was that I would be confronted with entry after entry in stilted, forced rhyme. Or bad pastiches of Keats, or Donne. …
Continue reading "Sonnets for SIWA – part II: the deliberation"
A Dark Feathered Art 