Fame at last

I’ve been entering poetry competitions for a while, and relative to many I’ve been lucky - I can produce a list which makes me look quite successful. But I know that the price of those few successes is a much larger number of failures. Last year, for instance, I sent out thirty poems in January-May, and has no success with any of them.

So it’s great to record what may well be the peak of my poetic career. On Saturday, February 3rd, at the Dugdale Centre, Enfield, David Constantine presented me with the first prize in a competition he’d judged - out of 1000 entries. That’s good enough in itself, but what I’m even more impressed with is the quality of the judge.

I’d heard the name, but to my shame knew very little in detail - though I discovered a lot through frantic googling between being told on Monday night and travelling down on Saturday. He’s a celebrated poet, winner of the Queen’s Medal (and there’s only one of those each year) as well as being a world-class translator of poetry. He’s also a lovely, decent human being who’s brilliant at talking about poetry, how it works and why it matters. This surely is as good as it gets.