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Sentinel Literary Quarterly Poetry Competition (July 2009)
Judges’ Report
Judging the sentinel competition was an exciting and
encouraging experience for us but also a difficult
task as the overall level of entries was so high and
so varied. After excluding entries that we felt
weren’t there yet, because they were either
rhyme-led or contained strained attempts to be
poetic in terms of diction or word order or just
hadn’t found a form that was fully appropriate for
the subject or didn’t invite the reader to share the
experience of the poem rather than be told about it,
we still had fifty poems to judge from. We then
separately went through a short-listing process – 32
poems, then 12 poems, where we had not both chosen a
poem it was excluded as a possible prize winner then
we had a final intense discussion about the final 7
or 8 poems. (Our shortlists were not at all
dissimilar).
We both agreed quickly on the first prize though, we
were both deeply impressed by the way “Coffee” makes
new a well visited theme that is sadly all too
contemporary, the control of its language, the
personalisation of the universal, its emotional
impact and the social punch that it packs as a poem.
Similarly we were able to pick out “Enemy Funeral”
next – its specific intensity of imagery, its
movement and precision of editing, the fact that it
has immediate relevance but maintains a sense of
timelessness – it would be recognisable to a
participant or observer of any modern war but it
still has the feeling of a lived moment. Third place
was a lot more difficult as the variety of the poems
was so great in terms of length and tone, in the end
we both agreed upon “The god of allotments” – again
the deciding factor was its capacity to be intensely
personal but to touch a universal chord with its
mixture of rhetorical examination of the love
affair, its restrained language that makes the sense
of mourning much more powerful and its judicious
inclusion and editing of specific concrete detail
with a well judged movement between mundanity and
deep pathos.
While we have reached agreement on three winners we
both feel that sense of regret for the other fine
poems we looked at and there were too many to
mention them all, the top agreed 32 will make a fine
anthology though. I will mention a few that made a
powerful impact on us that may on another day for
other judges have made a prize. “Undine” was a
beautiful sensuous poem that makes a swim into
stripping down of social identity, “The Frog
Population” was a dense and intense short poem that
impressed with its movement from observation to
expressive comment, “A House by the Sea” was a
longer deceptively strange and unsettling poem that
has stayed with both of us. “In Frome” was another
intensely visual short poem that manages to contain
a sense of lives lived and lost in impressive
brevity. “Summer 1990” captured an epiphanic moment
with great skill and precision, “Leaning in to the
Afternoon” was a beautiful, magical poem that pays
fitting tribute to Neruda.
There are many others that we could mention and
complement but it’s enough to say that as
experienced editors that a forthcoming anthology of
the best of the entries will contain a full set of
poems that are fully worthy of publishing and
contain great variety of subject matter, tone and
form. It seems clear from the overall spread of
entries that Sentinel is encouraging an eclectic
readership and it’s not an exaggeration to say that
there is a discernible movement towards a poetry
that is both modern and accessible, with a
multinational flavour in its influences and
delivery.
Andy Willoughby and Bob Beagrie.
Addendum
Just a quick note to say thank you Bob and Andy for
a job well done.
Now let’s put some names against the Winners and the
Special Mentions.
First Prize
Coffee – by Miles Cain
Second Prize
Enemy Funeral – by Miles Cain
Third Prize
The God of Allotments – by Mandy Pannett
Special Mentions
Undine – by Noel Williams
The Frog Population – by L S Mensah
A
House by the Sea – by Thomas Gayton
In Frome – by Graham Burchell
Summer 1990 – by Teodora Totorean
Leaning into the Afternoon – by Danny Bird
Thank you all and congratulations to the winners.
Nnorom Azuonye
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