POETRY COMPETITION WINNERS
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Two haunting poems took the prizes in WM’s Free Verse Competition. Adjudicator Alison Chisholm explains how these two outstanding entries matched form to content.
Alison Chisholm
Writing a good free verse poem begins with a simple issue. What you write has to be a poem. That isn’t as obvious or as facetious as it sounds. Free verse relies on more subtle poetic factors than work written in set forms. Instead of metre providing a steady beat, there is rhythm and flow. Instead of rhyme presenting its chiming sounds, there are all the aspects of slant rhyme, assonance to harmonise the vowel sounds, alliteration and consonance to do the same for the consonants, and a range of other delicate similarities to hold the poem together.
Assuming that the rhythms and slant rhyme are in place, the poem has to leap all the other hurdles to prove its quality. It needs to have something to say, and an effective way of saying it. It needs well-selected vocabulary, evocative imagery, and figurative language. It needs to hold the interest of its reader. Poems that satisfy all these requirements are the prime contenders for a place, and the elements described are present in all the winning and shortlisted poems – and many others that just missed inclusion in the final list.
Unfortunately there were several entries that simply didn’t read as poems, but when spoken aloud sounded like essays or political speeches that had been written in lines rather than paragraphs. In each instance of this, the writing was preaching a cause, suggesting that poetry may not be the best medium for tub-thumping. This highlights a problem of free verse. You can have all the appropriate sound effects, and yet something about the wording indicates that the piece is a long way from being a poem. It’s difficult to make the distinction, but reading the work out and listening to it is a good indicator.