POETRY WINNERS
Clued up
Alison Chisholm celebrated the winners in WM’s poetry competition celebrating the Queen of Crime
To mark the centenary of Agatha Christie’s The Mysterious Affair at Styles, which was published in America in 1920, Writing Magazine poets took up the challenge to write about her life and works, and what her books have meant to the reading and viewing public. The response was magnificent. Entries ranged over all her detectives, clues and red herrings, weapons and poisons, marriages, famous disappearance, travels and interests. The enthusiasm, knowledge and research displayed within the poems demonstrate the respect writers have for the Queen of Crime.
This was one of those competitions in which the general standard of the poems submitted was so high that it was painful to have to pass over much quality writing. Poets had clearly thought hard about the area to cover in their work, and the angle of approach that would add something new to all the material that’s been written about Agatha Christie.
The single most popular subject was the period when she ‘dropped out’ for ten days at the end of 1926 at a time of crisis in her first marriage, and this was addressed in more than 10% of the entries, with every poem that covered this difficult period tackling it in a different and interesting way. Miss Marple’s village and Hercule Poirot’s appearance were also popular topics, and many poems introduced clever wordplay to bring titles and murder weapons into the text. Some included puzzles, which brought an additional and rewarding challenge into the adjudication.