The Swale Life International Poetry Competition series are organised to encourage creative output and excellence whilst raising funds to help our charity work at Diversity House and keep Swale Life magazine in publication and free to read. These competitions are administered on our behalf by Excel for Charity – a service operated by Eastern Light EPM International that raises money for charities through writing competitions.
COMPETITION RESULTS
Results of the Swale Life Poetry Competition (April 2011) judged by Claire Askew are now out as follows:
Winners:
1st Prize: “Blue-shirted” by Roanne O’Neil
2nd Prize: “Triangulation” by Frances Donovan
3rd Prize: “Rough Guide to the Lake District” by Christian Ward
Highly Commended:
“Eating Mackerel” by Wendy Pratt
“Garden of Remembrance” by Abegail Morley
The winning and Highly Commended Poems will be published in Issue #6 of Swale Life magazine on Saturday 28th of May.
Judge Claire Askew gives some very fair and frank advice and feedback in her judge’s report.
Abegail Morley 
I enjoyed the judge’s report. Very well written, thorough and packed full of useful information for readers and poets! And I like her use of “unheimlich”; I ended up reading this great article about the uncanny – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny
AND congratulations on placing in the competition! 🙂
Thanks
I found the judge’s report very interesting – thanks for the post. Having said that I’m hoping the rhyme referred to in ‘Garden of Remembrance’ is not accidental because, in my opinion it doesn’t detract at all from the poem. For me, it helped to give the poem a forward rhythm which made the images even stronger.
Thanks Deirdre – it was one of my clinic poems. I am not sure we were aware of the dare before… were we? I like what you said about forward rhythm.
A great poem Abi – and I remember it from the last clinic (-: Very deserving of being highly commended and personally I didn’t have a problem with the rhyme!