Monday, 10 May 2010

Winners Announced – Poetry-next-the-Sea Open Poetry Competition


Tony Holmes (89) and Alasdair Monney (13) are the winners of the 2010 Poetry-next-the-Sea Open Poetry Competition supported by Norfolk Community Foundation. More than 100 poems were entered into the competition.

Tony Holmes from Great Ryburgh won the adult category with Sheringham Beach. Mr Holmes a former Regional Manager for Midland Bank in Norwich last entered a poetry competition 60 years ago, when he won a recital event in Leicester with Dover Beach by Matthew Arnold.

“I have written poetry all my life for my own amusement,” explained Tony Holmes. “I had a particularly productive winter due to the bad weather and decided to enter Sheringham Beach. I am really pleased to have won the competition 60 years on from my first triumph!”

Alasdair Monney from Alderman Peel High School in Wells won the student category (11-16) with his poem The Berries. “Our teacher Mr Youngman encouraged us to enter the competition. It is great to have won. I will definitely write more poetry.”

Mike Bannister, Chair of Café Poets Halesworth and president of the Suffolk Poetry Society was the judge for the second year running.

Mike Bannister said: “The house of poetry has many windows. Reading these 115 poems posted by 47 Norfolk poets, it becomes clear, in terms of sheer variety of theme and ingenuity, that the Muse herself is alive and well and living in Norfolk.”

Commenting on Tony Holmes’ Sheringham Beach, Mike Bannister said: “This well-modulated English or Shakespearean sonnet achieves, in its open simplicity, a sense of the enduring tranquillity of the Norfolk landscape. The poet uses colloquial phrases in order to anchor the scene in day-to-day reality, and then proceeds to heighten this effect with such lovely phrases as ‘the moonstruck tide’ and ‘grey-green acquatints’. It is a poem that earns its place as ‘Poetry-next-the-Sea’.

Discussing Alasdair Monney’s The Berries, Mike Bannister said: “This haunting poem demonstrates the writer’s capacity for intense concentration on his subject. Keen observation was the basis for Alasdair’s flight of fancy, as he developed a portentous sense of the turning seasons. I liked the poet’s ‘ear’ for words, his internal rhyming and the sense of rhythm. A fine young poem.”


Photograph left to right – Alasdair Monney, Mike Bannister and Tony Holmes.

http://www.poetry-next-the-sea.com

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