Sheila introduced Carole Bromley from York, adjudicator of the 2018 Poetry Competition. Carole is a published poet who has won several competitions and been placed in more. An English teacher by background she has also been a Creative Writing tutor at York University’s centre for Lifelong Learning.
Carole began her adjudication by confirming and updating the information that Sheila had given about her in introducing her. She said that she had begun writing poetry while taking students to the Arvon Centre at Lumb Bank. Turning to the adjudication itself she said that her judgement was inevitably subjective and influenced by her personal taste. Although all the entries were of a good standard she had recognised the winner on sight. Whilst being flexible rather than judging by a hard set of rules she was looking for:
• Confidence of tone
• Skilful handling of form
• An awareness of contemporary poetry
• Appropriate use of language and spoken rhythms
• Effective imagery
• Interesting subject matter
• A good title
• A cracking ending
• A clear message economically put
• An absence of clichés, archaisms and word order twisted to suit the rhyming scheme.
She pointed out that modern poets tended not to follow the old convention of beginning each line with a capital letter.
After the general introduction Carole gave her individual comments on each of the entries before announcing the results. These were:
• Commended – ‘Through an Upstairs Window’ by Lindsay Trenholme and ‘The Shift of Time’ by Kate Swann
• Joint third place – ‘Not a Hope’ by Maggie Cobbett and ‘La Manche’ by Daphne Peters
• Second place – ‘The view from the Mat’ by Janet Barclay
• First Place – ‘Safe Keeping’ by Sheila Whitfield
There was time before the refreshment break for all the above six poems to be read, Sheila reading ‘The Shift of Time’ in Kate’s absence. As with most of the readings during the evening the authors present spoke briefly about the inspiration behind their poem.
After the break Carole presented the Poetry Competition trophy to Sheila and The President’s Cup for 2018 to Janet who had been absent when the result of the latter competition had been announced at the Christmas Event.
