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Mslexia
WOMEN'S POETRY COMPETITION 2004

Guest Judge SELIMA HILL introduces her selection of competition winners

READING is more difficult than writing. What I mean is that reading someone else’s work requires both more care and more imagination than writing one’s own. Here you are in someone else’s world. You’ve got to listen, and there are no notes. Borges refers to it as a ‘halting and rudimentary art’. If nothing else, I always hope new writers will get the message that if they don’t enjoy writing their poem, their readers certainly won’t enjoy reading it.

I don’t mean, by that, that the poem needs to feel safe and cosy. Far from it. I like to feel I’m going on a journey. As if the poet has abandoned herself with a great leap to the mercies of an unknown country (we’ll be meeting that word again) which she and her reader will navigate together. With, as I say, a bit of encouragement from the writer please.

The good poem is 1 per cent talent, 99 per cent obsession. Obsession, bloody-mindedness, perversity; I’m not sure what to call it.

I like the poem that says Now’s my chance. I refuse to be interrupted. Listen to this.

A bad poem? A dead horse. Give it up. (It won’t be wasted – after all, a successful poem would not be a successful poem if it wasn’t for all the failures that have preceded it).

Put it another way. The selection process is like stepping into a crowded room at a party. Who do I like best? Impossible! (Says the judge perversely). Poetry’s where we go, not to be best, but to be ourselves: unique. And you can’t be more unique than anyone else, can you? It’s not like the high jump. (More – to quote Rob Long, the screenwriter – more like shepherding. People may think it quaint, and they envy you, but they also know that the real money’s in polyfibres).

For the complete essay, and for all competition-winning poems, read issue 22 • Subscribe!

Read the winning poem:

Women
by Polly Clark

For more on SELIMA HILL, go to www.contemporarywriters.com