Hi everyone, just wanted to let you know about my positive competition experience! My poem 'The Bed' came third in the Poetry Life competition, which I entered after seeing it advertised in the Jobs Ops section. Perhaps I'll use my £250 winnings to track down the relatives of Derek Lomas and let them know what the good people of Telford are doing in his name!

Well done Emilia, that's brilliant!

Emilia, fantastic- nice to see persistence paying off, and a positive experience this time. Well done.

Bella figlia Emilia, Brava!

Love & Mercy,

Mike

Thanks everyone. It has certainly inspired me to write some more poems!

Do you know the names of the other winners and where to read their entries? I also entered, but not having heard, well I know what that means.

I've been keeping an eye on the Poetry Life website, and today it's disappeared. (Maybe to put up the results.)

But back to the plot: well done!!!

Steve

Wow! Well done, Emilia! Is the poem here at WW still?

Yay!!!

Brilliant news, Emilia.

Dee

Sorry - I forgot about my forum post and hadn't checked the box to hear about replies. The 1st place went to Samantha Wynne-Rhydderch, 2nd Sean Joyce, 3rd Me! There were 20 highly commended poets. Shall I list them all?

<Added>

FAO R-Poet, by the way!

I'd appreciate knowing the 20 others, please.

Thanks!

here you go...

Michael Swan
Chris Preddle
Pauline Barbieri
Elizabeth Nazer
Shirley McClure
Chloe Kimber
Ellis Lloyd
John Halliday
Roger Elkin
Brian Young
Georgina Klemencic
David Swann
Peter Wyton
Saba Zai
Alan Franks
Ben Morgan
Paddy Ricard
Valerie Adams
Tracey Martin
Kathy Miles

Phew! Just as well I can touch type!

Congratulations Emilia!

I got listed among the honourable mentions in the same competition two(?) years ago when I was living in Leeds. Placing is a greater achievement again.

If you'd like to check out some of my work (and I hope this isn't too much of an intrusion to mention it), you can visit my personal webpage at:

http://www.markcallanan.com

The site includes sample poems from my first collection, Scarecrow (Killick Press, 2003, St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada), poems from a new collection I'm working on, book reviews I've written for my column in The Sunday Independent (a local paper here in St. John's) and a number of arts and literary links.

Hope you enjoy it. And congratulations again!

Mark Callanan

http://www.markcallanan.com
http://www.poets.ca/linktext/direct/callanan.htm


<Added>

two corrections: I should have written "Special Commendations", not "Honourable Mentions" and... it was the 20th competition, judged by Andrew Motion.

Hi Mark,

I read the three poems you have on your site. Do you have anything up on the writewords site?

I particularly enjoyed Divination and Magpies. As a fan of very poetic prose, I thought Divination could almost be prose - part of a novel written in this lovely rich form. I am very short of time just now so didn't have a chance to look at your site properly - I just dipped in and read the poems - are you writing prose too?

You have a very strong style and I really enjoyed your work Mark - images leapt off the page (or the screen to be specific!). I really enjoyed the mocking Magpie turning round and saying Zirconium! Brilliant.

Put some stuff up here so we can all get to enjoy you work.

Best wishes,

Emilia

Emilia,

I've only posted one poem so far ("At the Butcher's Shop", from my website) as I am only on a one-month trial membership. I'll have to decide after that whether to join as a full member or not. 35 pounds is quite a bit when converted into Canadian dollars. We'll see.

As for more poems though, there's two more sets on my site, one at:

http://www.markcallanan.com/Hunting_Poems_Export.html

This is a new collection I'm working on that centres around the Newfoundland Wolf. On my island, there were wolves until about 1930, a unique subspecies that has become a bit of a cultural symbol for me. I'm trying to blend the mythology of the wolf and the mythology of the place I come from.

The second set is a series of three connected poems that was commissioned by the CBC (basically, the Canadian, poor cousin of the BBC) for performance. They were written on the theme of 'belonging' and deal a lot with my family. They can be found at (just follow the "Next" link to get to the other two):

http://www.markcallanan.com/Genealogy1_Export.htm

Thanks so much for your kind words. I've never written prose (aside from book reviews)... mostly because I seem to work best with the density and marriage of narrative and image that only poetry can achieve.

Thanks again,

Mark

I shall check out the others Mark when I have some time. I hope you do decide to become a full member because I think writewords members would enjoy the opportunity to read your work and comment on it.

Best of luck,

Emilia