Judging Poetry
By: Heather Burton
Tags: Poetry, Education, University, Writer, Writing

Judging poetry

means choosing

which

baby contest baby

gets

first

place.



It’s like

evicting

a soul

who’s still

settling in.

“Clarity and coherence”

are not easy standards,

staring into

private darkness

exorcising rot

miming genius

or

wordifying

to sound

like you’re the origin

of

human

experience

and all

commensurate

metaphors.

“Evocative imagery”

calls on poetic

licence for the writer.

Funny:

in contests,

readers

still steer.

What right do I have

to judge if your

details and diction

evoke

enough?

“Literary devices

and figurative language”

leave me longing for a poem

so subtly

armatured

that I can’t help but

hear ghosts,

feel angels,

and smell bones

as if I’ve never

sensed before.

And please, please,

young poet,

don’t obscure

what is already hidden

in the labyrinth.

Go ahead: expose;

make fresh

revelation

for initiated

overthought

stress-addled

hopefuls

like

me.

Background by Annie Spratt.

— Heather Burton ©2019

Addendum:

I’m a teacher of language arts. My students are 6 to 16. Included in my job mandate is this line: Students will listen, speak, read, write, view and represent to explore thoughts, ideas, feelings and experiences.

Judging poetry and other forms of creative expression, which is implicit in teaching the arts of language in a formal school setting and explicit in the evaluation of my teacherhood, is problematic at best and painful at its worst.

The on-switch for Judging Poetry was being invited to adjudicate a poetry contest for first-year university students. I was eager to accept — I could capture a sense of what my younger writers might create someday.

On my initial pass over the contest entries, I was dismayed. The mediocrity of the diction and the mundanity of the themes/topics/impressions left me wondering what to say. (Boyfriends still engender that much angst?)

Rightly, and as repeatedly happens with my own students’ work, I shook myself back to center: creative writing is an offering of self, and self is inherently sacred.

This is not to say sloppy verbiage gets praise or that I’ll find something personally meaningful in a text.

This is also not to say that flattery or good job stickers are the order of the day.

It is to say this:

Laying down words — poetic, prosaic or otherwise — for the purpose of expressing self is an act worthy of respect. If done with even a speck of sincerity (because we all remember the de/motivation of marks) it is also an act of courage.

From that footing, I could detect not just promise in the poems I judged, but craft on its way.

Sure, it took creative composing on my part to respond to each entry honestly. I think it matters to writers to know they are read and not to be lied to.

I hope to “meet” those young poets someday after they have taken my (and others’) questions and suggestions, juggled them a bit to test their utility and practised up their language arts.

The general bits of feedback I gave?

Keep steeping in artistic words.

Tell less, show more.

Make poetic choices (reading material, people-watching and other acts of high absorbability, listening intently, music, stillness, writing as therapy, relentless learning, meditation/prayer, etc.)

Paint with words. Try thinking cinematically.

Read your work aloud.

Be honest.

Hear your voice. Honor and develop it.

Above all, keep writing.

Thanks for reading,

Heather