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Matthew Sweeney

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Bedford Open Poetry Competition 200-2001

I’m always struck, when judging poetry competitions, by the variety of work submitted, and never more so than this competition.  In fact, this is the first time the thought has occurred to me that a literate alien, wanting to find out what life on our planet was like, would get a good rounded picture from reading the final 300 or so poems entered in a poetry competition.  He/she would get slices of people’s autobiographies, memory pieces, elegies, verses sparked off by photographs or by travel, or zooming into moments of history, persona poems, ambitiously imaginative pieces - and plenty of poems that emerge straight from everyday life.  In short, it would be an education.  He/she might have to re-read many of the poems several times.  I certainly did - my normal judging process involves a series of smaller and smaller shortlists, until only a dozen or so are left, and then the really difficult bit begins.  At this stage, especially, taste comes strongly into play, and another judge might have opted for a different group of winners.  What I look for is surprise, the fresh angle, and this is present in all the winners - even if in one of them, the surprise is under our nose.  The poem I’ve given the first prize to is cheeky, with a great tone, and these are qualities I value highly.

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