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The McLellan Award for Poetry is now in its fifth year. It began as a local competition on the Isle of Arran under the umbrella of the Robert McLellan Festival. The festival celebrated the work of playwright, poet and short story writer Robert McLellan who spent most of his working life on Arran writing exclusively in Scots, the living language of the communities he grew up in. The McLellan Award for Poetry invites entries in all varieties of Scots and in English. All the poems will be judged in one category, with no distinction being made on the basis of the language used. Poems may be on any subject and will be judged anonymously. First prize £1000, Second Prize £350, Third Prize £150 for 2009 |
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The Judge,. Robert Crawford was born in Lanarkshire in 1959 and grew up there His first collection of poems, A Scottish Assembly, was published in 1990; his most recent collection, 'Full Volume', came from Cape in 2008 and was shortlisted for the T S Eliot Prize. His 'Selected Poems' were published by Cape in 2005. Most of his poems are in English, but some are in Scots. With the late Mick Imlah he edited 'The Penguin Book of Scottish Verse' (Penguin Classics, 2006). His prose books include the widely praised 'Scotland's Books' (Penguin, 2007) and 'The Bard' (Cape, 2009), a biography of Robert Burns. Robert Crawford is Professor of Modern Scottish Literature at the University of St Andrews. |
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Robert Crawford’s report : There was a substantial and varied entry to this year's competition. Many poems had good moments, but were very uneven, so there were several clear front runners. I'm very sorry not to be able to come and meet the winners in person, so I'll have to speak to only what I know of them: their poems, all of which were anonymous when I read them. The winning poem combines clarity and precision. Its lineation is alert, and, like a photograph, it selects succinct details while allowing them to resonate tellingly. Its very plainness -- its ability to say enough but not too much -- made it stand out. I've never seen the actual photograph on which it is based, but feel the photograph has helped the poet hone the poem: not something that always happens in poems based on the visual arts. Second placed 'The Anatomists' has some very fine yet immediately accurate phrasing: I especially liked 'they'd ease a kidney/ free of its moorings'. This was a poet with an imaginative sense of language. In third place 'Lunch at the Talbot' was very finely observed -- 'nervously prised segments/ of grapefruit' -- so that the concrete images were quietly effective. This poem never promised more than it delivered; it had humour, lightness, a sharp eye. As for the commended poems, the musicality of 'These cattle' attracted me: all the play of internal and external rhymes and repetitions. It just sounded good: maybe a tad overwound, but impressive in its rolling of words. That's a useful skill to have. The 'Charles Lartigue' poem owed something to other poets' tone, but was confident in its movement and inventive in in its skips across lexis. It had vivacity as well as intelligence. 'When I lived alone' was another poem with a good sense of sonority, and a sonority well integrated into the argument. The last lines clinched things and showed how a poem with an argument could leave an image to do the summing up. Generally, the standard among the Scots poems was not very high, but 'Glamourask Gloss', for all it might be too dictionaried for some tastes did have a lyric life to it, drawing on the intensity of Bonnefoy's French original which it loosely translates. This was an enterprising and sometimes surprising piece: demanding, but with good sounds in its adventurous word-course. McLellan Poetry Award 2009 - Prize Winners First: Garry MacKenzie ‘Humphrey Spender: Newcastle United Football Club Changing Rooms, Tyneside, 1938 Second: A.C. Clarke for ‘The Anatomists’ Third: Daphne Schiller for ‘Lunch At The Talbot’ Scots Language Centre Prize for Best Poem in Scots: Allan Harkness ‘Glamourask Gloss’ Commended Poems Chris Preddle for ‘These Cattle’ Lynn Roberts for ‘Charles Lartigue and the Invention of the Algerian-Listowel Monorail’ Polly Atkin for ‘When I lived alone’ To see Poems click here. |
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