Introduction

This year I was one of the judges for the Canterbury Festival’s annual Poet of the Year competition. It was a rewarding experience and merits a description of what was involved.

Over the last two decades, the Festival Director has led something wonderful, a celebration of a panoply of arts, drawing from and enriching the hearts and minds of a huge range of people. This range was reflected in the submissions to this competition. Run by the Friends organisation, it helps fund the Festival.

This year, with over five hundred and forty poems, poets were willing to share their innermost feelings and demonstrate their skills. How can one select the best of these in the fairest and most objective way?

Objectivity

Judging is a selection process against criteria. These criteria may be informal, unwritten, or explicitly set out in a checklist. There is a degree of subjectivity in judging poems, but our process aims to minimise this as follows:

• Appointing three judges, bringing different viewpoints and experiences to bear;
• Using a written checklist, in our case, separate ones developed by each of the judges;
• Ensuring all entries were anonymous and only identified by a sequence number;
• All poems read at least once, usually twice;
• Holding a reconciliation meeting to consolidate the longlists and shortlists.

This is analogous to the recommendations endorsed by the Poetry Society for critical workshops.

The Process

The Festival has appointed a local poetry group called SaveAs Writers to run the competition. Their convenor has taken the role of lead judge for each year’s competition. The process of judging has several stages: an initial meeting, distribution of entries, reading, reconciliation meeting, presentation of results.

Initial Meeting of the Judging Panel

We held an initial face-to-face meeting to agree on the process and establish the rapport and mutual respect we would need later during negotiations. The convenor, one of the judges, set out the deadlines, for example, for submission of the judges’ own longlists.

Distribution of Entries

Following the closure of the poet’s submission window, the Friends organiser sent all of the poems out to the judges. Each was marked only with a sequence number, with no names.

Reading the Poems

As one of this year’s judges I can report that my method was to read the poems sequentially, setting a daily quota to ensure I completed all 540 by the deadline. Close reading of every entry one after the other, while remaining open and even-handed, was both emotionally draining and richly rewarding.

Judging was emotionally draining because it gave insights into so many author’s minds and experiences. Many were informed by very personal experience. For example, I might have had to read about someone feeling suicidal and then move on to read a work about the impact of cancer.

It was important to be fresh and receptive to new work, so each session had to be limited to two or three hours. I read every poem twice. Equally, I had to set a daily pace to get through all poems, so none at the end of each day’s session was rushed – each poem should have equal consideration.

I and my fellow judges scrutinised every entry independently and we came to our own conclusions on the relative merits of each poem. From our respective preferences, we drew up individual lists that we would then bring along to a later reconciliation meeting.

Reconciliation Meeting

Before the awards evening, we held a reconciliation meeting to consolidate longlists and shortlists. During this lengthy Zoom meeting, each judge would argue the merits of their selected poems, sometimes challenging each other’s selections, and the convenor would then create a consolidated list, upon which all could agree. These poets were then notified. Solo judges in other competitions may have a more difficult time in not having others to challenge their choices.

Presentation of Results

The Festival organised an awards evening, which was held on Zoom. This had been held previously in a lecture hall, but with many international entries it had been found better to run this virtually. The short-listed poets were given the chance to read out their work and each of the judges delivered a brief critique. Finally, the winner was announced and given the chance to read out their work again.

Continued next month in Part Two …