ARE POETRY COMPETITIONS A GOOD THING?

'Poetry is not a competition'. I quote from the adjudicator's report by the Poet Laureate for the 2007 Plough Poetry competition. He goes on to remark that 'it's also fair to say poetry competitions are a Good Thing.' Good or not, they are certainly not new, dating back at least to the Greeks and Romans, if not before.

Nowadays it can seem as if every writers' group of any size, every poetry magazine with a cash problem, is running a poetry competition. The number certainly seems to have increased, but I think the real change is in the entrants. The competitor in the traditional poetry competition belonged to a recognised, if not an elite group. He (it was almost always a he) was a professional poet on the make.

The same group exists today, of course, and professional poets often do enter the more prestigious poetry competitions, but they are no longer the exclusive entrants. The decline, or supposed decline, in poetry reading among the general public is often lamented. The extraordinary growth in the number of non-professional writers of every sort, especially since the advent of creative writing courses, deserves equal acknowledgement. There has been a kind of democratisation in the writing of poetry which is reflected in the number of entrants for competitions, especially the ones offering prestige and big prize money. And that is another difference: in the main the traditional competitor was competing against only a handful of people. Now he or she (and it is very often a she) is competing against hundreds, if not thousands.

Moreover, unlike those in ancient times, and unlike poetry awards such as the Forward, and that other kind of poetry competition, the Poetry Slam, competitions are usually anonymous. This ought to be remembered when we are inclined to believe results have been rigged in some way. The poetry competition really does offer an opportunity for an unknown poet to gain recognition and sometimes publication. As one who has herself benefited from poetry competitions it would be churlish in me to claim that this is not a 'Good Thing'.

But there are some uncomfortable questions. Anyone who shares the outlook of the previous guest on this site, Richard Livermore, will rightly argue that this 'recognition' is likely to be by a member of the poetry establishment, using the criteria of that establishment. The maverick poet, the flawed but brilliant poet, the pioneer - is there a place for them in such competitions? In fact, looking at poems which have been selected for prizes in the National Poetry Competition suggests a wider range of taste among the judges than you might think, and to a degree a willingness to reward innovation, especially innovation in language and form. But only to a degree.

Certain kinds of poem (the discursive poem, the poem concerned with abstract ideas, the overtly humorous poem) and certain forms (the simple ballad form, the villanelle) seem unlikely to find favour with judges. The widely enforced forty-line rule precludes poems which develop an idea or narrative at length and tends to favour a certain kind of poem very popular with current arbiters of taste, which meditates intensely on a vividly realised event or scene. There is nothing wrong with such poems. The poems that win in any competition will be the ones which made most impression on the judges. They will be moving and skilled. But they may not reflect the huge range of equally effective and skilled poetry being written.

The rationale for poetry competitions has always been that they promote poetry. But once you start providing guidelines on 'how to win' - which increasingly seems to be happening - you are moving away from the raison d'être of poetry. Moreover the sort of guidance given: have an eye-catching title; don't write on a hackneyed theme; look for fresh, original angles, go for the 'wow' factor promotes, or seems to, one kind of poetry only. What of the quiet, reflective poem, exquisite in tone, which explores a well-worn theme with individual feeling, but no very startling imagery, which rings true to the reader's ear and heart but doesn't call attention to itself? Why is a title so important - e e cummings didn't use them, neither does Geoffrey Hill in the Mercian Hymns. Mightn't there be other ways of thinking about poetry? And mightn't there be a circularity in providing guidelines which must be fulfilled for the poem to attract the judge's attention, particularly if the judge is providing the guidelines?

There is a quite widespread perception that the competition has become the main route to publication. I think that this perception is mistaken. Undoubtedly winning something like the National is likely to get editors interested in your work, but that isn't true of most competitions, I'd say (apart of course from the ones that offer publication itself as the prize). If it really were the case, then, for the reasons cited above, it would in my view be a Bad Thing. But anyone familiar with the poetry world can probably name a dozen poets who came to notice first through their collections (and their collections came about through magazine publication of their poems) and have never won any major competition.

So where do I stand, who would never have had a full collection published without winning a competition, and have been a competition judge myself? A qualified assent to the question at the head of this piece. The poetry competition is one of the cheapest and most immediately effective ways of talent spotting, and the most democratic. But it should never be the only or the main way. Poetry competitions cost; they're therefore not available to everyone. They impose restrictions on length and perhaps unspoken restrictions on content and form. Not everyone writes the kind of poetry that will immediately catch the judge's eye. They don't give (as magazines can) an idea of the range of a poet's work, focusing as most of them do on a single poem. They do allow one to be effectively rejected without feeling it in the personal way that may come with a rejection letter (anecdotally, women are more likely to enter competitions than they are to send work to magazines and this may be a factor). They do encourage poets to aim high and to give careful consideration to their work.

My advice would be: by all means enter poetry competitions if you can afford it and have poems you think worth submitting. If you don't get anywhere, look at it as a way of subsidising poetry and the more successful poets (just as magazine subs are). By all means choose poems you think a particular judge might be drawn to. But don't fall into the trap of writing a poem to please a particular judge. Don't give up on submitting poems to magazines either. Above all, write the poems you want and need to write, not the ones that this or that passing fad dictates, and write them as well as you possibly can. In the end, the only really good reason for writing a poem is the poem itself.

Copyright © A C Clarke 2008