The poetry competition winner is…

Wednesday, May 2nd, 2007

I’d like to congratulate Sue Didier-Darroch. Well done! Sue’s winning poem is presented here in its entirety.

My Vogon Poetry

1 Asking for thirty lines,
2 seems a touch difficult at this time.
3 Still, I suppose one must jot,
4 what they can within the lot.
5 I’m trying to find my creative muse,
6 to see me through and not pop my fuse.
7 Like a teacher, “One-Thousand-Words Please!”,
8 I am doing my best to make an effective treatise.
9 Still, I must try to follow this rule,
10 that simply forces my creative side’s tools.
11 But Andy is a friend and I’m bound to obey,
12 after all it’s not like I’ve been writing poetry all day!
13 Surely to goodness I can type out a verse,
14 that can stay with the rules without being terse.
15 I wonder if possibly the poem should be naughty?
16 Perhaps it should be simple, no painless, no haughty!
17 No, that’s not right, I must try to behave,
18 and try to find good words with which to engrave,
19 my deepest thoughts and emotions for view,
20 possibly even a laugh or a tear… one or two…
21 A poem about my country, so vast and so wild,
22 perhaps about the busman, so sassy yet mild?
23 I could go on about my kids or perhaps my pet dogs?
24 Nah, the backlash would be rotten, “You run a mommy-blog!”
25 So what to write, what words should I use?
26 What topic to pick, dear goodness, I’m confused!
27 And this thirty-line thing, it’s just so upsetting,
28 it’s much like the concept of verbal blood-letting.
29 Resigned to my fate, I’ll do what I must,
30 and hope that when you see my poem your patience I can trust.
31 Well, what do you know… I’ve done something snappy,
32 I’m two lines over the limit so I hope you’re now happy!

A copy of my poetry collection will be winging its way across the water to Canada very soon, once Sue provides me with a postal address via email (spicyenquiries at spicycauldron dot com).

Coming to a decision on this one was really tough. I don’t want anyone who entered to think their poems were in some way ‘less than’. I enjoyed reading each and every poem, they all had specifics in their favour, and I hope everyone had fun taking part. Subjects ranged from the melancholic to the comedic, and there wasn’t a stinker in the batch. I was, I must admit, kind of grateful about that. Believe me, I’ve seen some really bad stuff in my time but not on this occasion. So I guess I want to say, please don’t be discouraged. Quite the opposite, in fact—keep on tapping into and cultivating the inner bard (because, for one thing, I am likely to run a competition again in the future!).

You may be wondering why Sue was the lucky winner if the competition was a close call, which it most definitely was. Well, I think she was clever without being too clever. She deliberately, wilfully, used rhymes at the end of every line, just two lines at a time. That would so not work under many a circumstance (it would become tedious very quickly) but the fun twist she introduced from the first line—the numbering—was quirky, unusual, and very knowing. The poem is like a book that knows its a book and at times talks directly to the reader.

I think there was a certain self-defence mechanism at work in referencing the Vogons. Sue set us up to read a truly awful poem with the title she chose, for those of us who know something of The Hitch-hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and its infamously painful wannabe poet monstrosities. The poem isn’t bad, that’s the problem with Sue’s choice of title. The poet thinks herself a bad poet, maybe? This is my criticism: the title betrays a lack of confidence, and needs to be changed. I would suggest a title that in some way really connects to the poem. It might be that a new title reflects the visible formula of the poem itself, the line numbering, or the focus.

Sue gets extra points for the cheek of setting ‘treatise’ alongside ‘please’. It might be down to regional pronunciations, but I had to tree-tease (to rhyme with please) whereas I would normally treat-is (which in no way rhymes or even half-rhymes with please). But wait! You may not know, but in the context of a poem such as this one, clearly intended to be funny, you can torture and stretch words as you like! It’s only if you were aiming, say, to write a love poem or meditation on death that you’d run into trouble with this approach. You really would be into Vogon poetry territory then.

Behave and engrave are exceptions to the rule Sue decides to follow with this poem, being half-rhymes only (the ave bit) compared to the likes of wild and mild or upsetting and blood-letting. I thought all the juxtapositions in the poem were very well-chosen, though. My favourites, and I’ve no idea why but they made me smile, were muse and fuse. It has no bearing on the poem, but the thought occurred to me in passing that news would rhyme with those two despite, of course, not having any similarity of spelling…

While just fine and dandy as it is, Sue might wish to develop this poem further. I always say none of my own poems are ever finished. They evolve over time. I can certainly see the form of Sue’s poem as being a series of couplets with just a little reworking—that is, two lines at a time with space between them. They’re kind of there already given the rhymes.

I look forward to Sue reviewing my own poems on her blog after receiving her prize of the signed collection in advance of publication. She will be able to give you all a sneak critique!

Again, commiserations to those who didn’t win (rest assured I love you all), and well done to Sue.

Vogon poetry it is not / but I liked it quite a lot….