African Prisons Project Short Story Competition 2013 Cancelled

We regret that after the extension of entry deadline and hundreds of email invitations to authors to enter the African Prisons Project Short Story Competition, we only managed to receive 14 entries to this competition. This poor response to the competition means that it hardly raised any money at all for the charity and we are not persuaded that there are enough entries to make the competition fierce enough. 

 

We have no option but to cancel this competition and will be refunding all the entrants their full entry fees. We will be in touch with all entrants within 7 days. Speed of contact will depend on whether they entered by e-mail or by post.

 

If you have any questions about this, please contact excelforcharity@easternlightepm.com

Judge’s Report & Results, African Prisons Project Poetry Competition 2013

We are pleased to announce the results of the first African Prisons Project Poetry competition judged by Bob Beagrie.

 

Judge’s Report 

 

It was both a pleasure and as always a challenge to act as a judge for the competition. The entries varied dramatically in subject matter, style, form and tone and upon first reading them all I felt somewhat overwhelmed at the task of narrowing them down to a handful of the best entries. However, after several careful rereads  I had shortlisted twenty of the poems that particularly stood out to me, showing originality, flair, a control of form, a clarity of language, which seemed to work on a number of different levels, which played with ambiguity while having something to say, and which also represented a distinctive and compelling voice.

 

The five poems I finally settled on as the winning three and the two highly commended all continued to surprise and intrigue me, even after multiple readings, all show an awareness of the dynamics and tensions between form and content and play with contrasting discourses, each held something of the common-place experience but transformed it through lyrical compression, striking language, suggestion and implication so that it resonates, gains weight and seems to blossom in the mind into unexpected significances and feelings you recognise but had never before quite manage to name.

 

To me good poetry opens your eyes, reveals something new, but it is not just the eyes that look out upon the world it opens but the eye that is trained inwards at the ways in which we respond to the world and its circumstances. The five poems all in some way succeeded in this, but I’d like to make a few observations about the three winning pieces:

 

‘Another Story’s precise ordinary detail of objects and actions is deftly turned by startling touches of abstraction into fairy tale tropes that give it an archetypal bearing, without losing its footing in an identifiable world while we are, before we know it, swept away into the uncanny.

 

The mix of abrupt conversational, even accusational, address, sharp imagistic detail and the shifts to a more intimate, confessional tone in ‘A letter to the outside’ gives this poem an unsettling and powerful dynamic. The gentleman in the long white coat, the mulberry bruises, the sudden introduction of the image of dirty eggs, their association to eyes, the slack mouth all conjure an uneasy atmosphere we must enter tentatively with suspended faith in the reliability of the language given.

 

The fine control of form while employing a clear voice in non-standard English in ‘Mumbue Sonnet ‘ creates an exciting defamiliarising effect that brings the reader up sharp and tells us to take note, this is not what we might first assume it to be, and few things ever are.  It is full of striking phrases ‘I’m walking in my feet to Mumbue’ ‘ I’m crackling like a chicken’  and the emotions of happiness and sorrow  mentioned are all part of the trek.

 

Bob Beagrie

 

Results

 

Ist Prize – Another Story – Julie Mellor (UK)

2^nd Price – A letter to the outside – Katelin Farnsworth (Australia)

3^rd Prize - Mumbue Sonnet – John Gallas (UK)

Highly Commended

Not a third world country – Katelin Farnsworth

Where The Chicken Pecked – Mary Oliver (UK)

 

The winning and highly commended poems will be published in the Excel for Charity News Blog on Friday 7^th of June, 2013.

 

Congratulations to the prizewinners.

 

Excel for Charity Competitions update

Current Competitions

 

There are now just 12 days left to enter the African Prisons Project Poetry and Short Story Competitions judged by Bob Beagrie and Alison Lock respectively.  These competitions will close on the 20^th of March in aid of this national charity helping to procure justice, dignity, education and rehabilitation to prisoners across Africa.

 

Why should you be bothered about prisoners in Africa?

-          Many inmates in African prisons today have been detained for several years without being charged with any crime, without having been tried or convicted, and many of them don’t even know why they are there. African Prisons Project helps get justice and freedom for such people.

-          Many convicted inmates in African prisons did not receive a fair trial and did not even have access to a lawyer. African Prisons Project helps get some of these cases reviewed and convictions overturned if found to be unsafe.

-          There are children born in prison to convicted mothers. These children end up becoming prisoners from birth as they often have nowhere else to go. African Prisons Project provides education and skills to these young people as their passports out of jail.

-          There are some prisoners who actually committed the crimes for which they have been convicted. Many of these crimes were committed on the back of extreme poverty and lack of direction. No excuse but that is true. They come out of prison and reoffend if they have nothing going for them. By rehabilitating these prisoners, giving them education and skills to get gainfully employed when they leave prison, African Prisons Project is helping reduce crime.

 

Your poem or short story could help somebody live a safer, fuller life today.  Visit http://easternlightepm.com/excelforcharity/current-competitions/

 

Past Competitions

 

Results of the Swale Life Poetry Competition, January 2013

 

THE RESULTS

 

First Prize

Al McClimens - Puppy Love

Second Prize

 

Madeline Parsons - Deep Beneath the Waves

 

Third Prize

 

Jim Sitch – Nailbow

 

Highly Commended

 

Judith Neale – Ties that Bind

Keith Shaw – The Swans

 

Judge’s report available here: http://excelforcharity.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/swale-life-poetry-competition-january.html

 

Results of The Tryangle Project Poetry Competition 2013

 

the two Highly Commended poems are:

MANDY PANNETT - Intruders and Thieves

CAROLINE MALDONADO - The Lost Library of Jesi

Third Prize

CAROLINE PRICE - To Iken and back

Second Prize

A.C. CLARKE - My Private Collection

First prize

CAROLINE MALDONADO - Kite-surfer

Judge’s report available here: http://excelforcharity.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/judges-report-and-results-tryangle.html

 

 

Swale Life Poetry Competition January 2013, Judge’s Report and Results

Judges Report by Derek Adams.

 

It is a daunting task being faced with a massive pile of poems knowing that you have to pick a few winning poems out of them. In the end of course they pick you.

After reading through all the poems the first time there is a small percentage that can be easily discarded because the poets have not proofread the copy that was sent off, typos, uncorrected spelling mistakes or worse perhaps incorrect ‘spell-check’ corrections that have slipped in! A second read-through weeds those that look like someone’s first attempt at poetry, heartfelt but not a poem. Then there are the poems written by someone who has not read any poems written since the 19^th Century, who write lines in Yoda speak ‘to make rhymes at the end of the line sit’.

By now you have 50% to 70% left of competent, crafted, creative writing. I read these with an increasingly critical eye, looking for: clichés, unneeded adjectives, obvious or over-explained endings, nice poem but so what? It doesn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know. Eventually I ended up with a baker’s dozen of good poems, crafted, honed, not a word wasted, all separated from each other by less than a cigarette paper’s width. Then personal bias starts slipping in, here is a good poem and I like it and here is another good poem and I like it, but for some reason you can’t quite put your finger on, one sings to you in a way the other doesn’t.

When I got down to the top five, it is a bit like trying to say which of my children I prefer! But as a judge it was my job to choose, so here is my final choice and why.

 

First prize: Puppy Love, this is a dark poem, it starts dark and builds. You can’t call it a slow burn because it is pretty black all the way through, but nothing prepared me for the last two chilling lines. I have now read this poem perhaps twenty or more times and it still makes the goosebumps rise. Apart from that the lines are perfectly judged (note to self, I must make my line endings as tight as this). Each stanza does its job in creating its own little vignette and still moving the whole poem on.

 

Second prize: Deep Beneath the Waves, is a dream of a dream poem, with pin sharp surreal images. Domesticity is distant and dreaming, but close are dangerous metaphors that rise from the ocean of the subconscious.

 

Third prize: Nailbow, a poem in the shape of a bow, was a bit of a creeper. I liked it on first reading but it felt a bit odd. The more times I read the poem the more it stood out and I realised that what I had at first found odd was part of its charm. The poem has a good rhyme scheme which is kept consistent without feeling forced. A wealth of intricate detail about the bow’s construction makes everything sound plausible and allows you to accept the fantastic elements.

 

Highly Commended

Ties That Bind, is the sad story of a mother who attempted suicide four times and is re-reading her suicide notes in her old age, looking back at ‘…yesterday’s sorrow/ like it’s a mouse turd/ found under the sink.’ This poem is spare with not a wasted word and brutally touching.

 

The Swans, a novel twist on an idea from a familiar fairy tale, engaging and beautifully told.

 

THE RESULTS

 

First Prize

Al McClimens - Puppy Love

Second Prize

 

Madeline Parsons - Deep Beneath the Waves

 

Third Prize

 

Jim Sitch – Nailbow

 

Highly Commended

 

Judith Neale – Ties that Bind

Keith Shaw – The Swans