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Judgments Prose and Verse

The General Level Seemed to me Low particularly in the prose, but one or two good things in the verse section made the entries worth the reading. The poets had something to say and some of them had the technique with which to say it. The prose writers had little to say that mattered and the impression of gloom was only deepened by the regularity with which one encountered the Misrelated Participle, the Misspelling, and the Downright Bad Grammar which so annoy the academic mind. While the poets seemed to speak of their own emotions and their own reactions, the work of the prose-writers was disturbingly synthetic. I have seldom in the course of an evening's reading come across such a collection of bastards, whores and drunks, so many double sheets of foolscap terminated by Sudden Death. It may be that at the level of this competition prose is more difficult to write than verse, and the prose-writer, who in verse might make a good job with the excitement of his own emotions, must in prose resort to the excogitated drunk.

Prose. I suggest the prize be divided between G. W. Turner's Theory of Art, which was the cleanest piece of straightforward critical prose submitted, and D's The Metho-Maniac, which was the best of the human studies. D, it is true, in his two sketches had one drunk, one whore and one Sudden Death, but there are qualities in his writing that made him stand out from the other purveyors of these commodities. For commendation I select Saroya Beans, a witty pastiche on the man who is responsible for much of the format in this competition and (among the several factual articles) Understanding the Facts. The gilded raspberry goes to the sentence personifying Britain and the U.S.S.R. as "An evil-eyed neurotic and a fresh virgin."

Poetry. The most voluminous of the competitors was a. He submitted twenty-nine poems, but on closer inspection two of them turned out to be carbon copies, which made things easier. a won the competition two years ago, but to me there is insufficient experience in these very similar poems, too many "Moonlit gardens pale" and "Roses of Youth" and "Perfumed nights" and too little clarity of vision. But a has something of promise and I select one of his verses for commendation. K.N.M. is the most competent metrist of the group and her skill in the sonnet and other established forms is undoubted. Again I think she needs a bit more substance. I select her Two Rains, which has both technique and point.

The best poem of the group was undoubtedly Anton Vogt's War Poem, and not merely for its topicality. Here is emotion under linguistic control, indignation which does not (as with the prose writers of Spike) make language muddy and turbulent, some good lines and one which is really memorable. It is an exercise in critical acumen to see why his

The pohutukawa and the rose
is a valid use of symbolism and a's
Youth is a rose
is merely a weak repetition of a cliche.

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Second I would select K.J.H.'s Expedition, which is good in conception and has some excellent phrases, but which falls off technically now and again—particularly in the last thin line, too trivial after such a good poem.

Third position goes to R.L.M.'s Portrait, which is technically good and a nice piece of satire, but is somewhat too imitative to be placed higher in the ranking.

For commendation I would select a's Renunciation and K.N.M.'s The Fallen Shall Rise and The Two Rains.

I.A.G.