Gooda’s Gold: competitions and what to avoid
I’ve been involved in judging a few writing competitons in recent weeks, and I’m currently in the process of longlisting for a poetry competition. It’s the first time I’ve had the privilege of doing this, and an unexpected by-product is a growing realisation of what not to do when entering a competition myself. I’ve probably been guilty of some of these in the past (though not the first one, as far as I can recall). What follows is mostly a note to self, but here are my top things to avoid:
Avoid doing anything weird to make an entry stand out from the others. It’s the words that should do the standing out, and I’ve been put off by entries which use different coloured or thicker paper, a bigger font for the title, include extraneous information next to the poem - anything to make them different. I remember years ago being told that all these things were good for a CV, to make yours stand out from the pile. I think that was misinformation. Anything that makes an entry stand out like this just feels as if it is trying too hard and ends up having the opposite effect. I’m put off rather than drawn to it.
Avoid entering a first draft. It seems to me that some poems, with plenty of potential, have been submitted too soon.They are raw and unfinished, full of repetition of image or idea, or unnecessary words - or Sybil Fawlty’s specialist subject, ‘stating the bleedin’ obvious’. They haven’t been allowed to settle and to be worked and reworked.
Don’t force a poem to fit the theme. Some poems seem to have been crowbarred in with an added line or idea to make them conform to the criteria. It’s the poetic equivalent of doing your homework on the bus on the way to school. It shows.
Avoid cliched description. Because one of the themes of the competiton was to do with the power of nature, there were a range of poems that depicted something natural: a mountain, coastline, a particular bird, a tree, in a way that presented some nice description - but not much more. They seemed to merge into one another without being distinctive. Do something interesting to make the reader sit up and take note. Some poems grabbed hold of me when I read them, and wouldn’t let me go, made me question or reconsider something. Others washed over me. There were over a hundred poems to read before longlisting. The ones that made it through did something original: perhaps looked at that natural wonder in a totally fresh way, or began from an unexpected angle.
I know it’s said frequently, but don’t ignore the competition rubric. There were clear guidelines about content, number of lines, and so on, for the particular competition I’m involved in, and a not insignificant number of entries have just ignored it. It’s not a good look. I’ve always thought it was really obvious that you need to read these things carefully and wondered why other competiton advice has felt the need to restate it. Now I know.
Don’t be too obscure. I’m all for showing not telling, but some poems were so obscure that they simply couldn’t be followed. Sometimes it was simply grammar that prevented understanding; sometimes a reference was too obscure for this reader. A poem has to communicate.
So, I’ll be heeding my own advice as I head off to enter the next competition.
Wish me luck.