a week that lasts for years

Who Won Their Way to Swanwick 2006

(left to right) Katy Clarke (Swanwick Vice-Chairman); Sheila Corbishley (Short Story winner); Jan Davison (Writers News); Peter Anderson (Hayes Centre Manager); Marion Hough (Swanwick Chairman); Maggie Cobbett (Poetry winner); Lauren Roberts (Writers' News); Frances Gapper (Children's Story winner); Joyce Reid (Poetry competition runner up)

Congratulations to the winners and runners-up of the three 'Win your way to Swanwick' writing competitions, run in 2006 in conjunction with Writers News, the Writers' Summer School and the Hayes Conference Centre.

About the winners
Maggie Cobbett's prize-winning sonnet on the set theme of 'friendship' (sponsored by Writers' News) explored the relationship between two writers. Titled To My Writing Partner, it won judge Alison Chisolm's highest praise for both technical excellence and memorability. Said Alison: "Maggie's sonnet fixed itself firmly in the mind at a first reading and refused to go away."

Maggie, who lives in Ripon, North Yorkshire, was both delighted and surprised by her success. "I write more fiction than poetry, although I did come second in a previous Writers' News poetry competition. For me, the prize of a week at Swanwick was the incentive to enter. I've wanted to go for ages and this was, in many ways, a stab in the dark to help me achieve my dream." Formerly a teacher, Maggie is now a seasoned TV 'extra' on programmes such as Emmerdale, Heartbeat and Touch of Frost.

Sheila Corbishley's winning short story A Good Dying Day (sponsored by the Writers' Summer School) was described by judge Anne Graham as 'a little gem'. It tackles the poignant dilemma of two daughters tasked with breaking the news to their mother that their terminally ill father has died. The story deals with denial in the face of death within a normal loving family.

Married with six children and eight grandchildren, Sheila is a retired primary school teacher from Newcastle upon Tyne. She started writing 'seriously' on retirement (having spent years as a storyteller to her own children and those in her class). Sheila has been a winner/runner-up in a number of other short story competitions and has also completed two children's novels and is currently approaching publishers.

Frances Gapper's prize-winning opening chapter in the Children's Story competition (sponsored by the Hayes Conference Centre) started with the intriguing question: Why do people keep chucking shoes up on the telephone wires? The story is about 10-year old Sarah with psychic abilities who has first-hand experience of ghosts.

Despite interest from agents, Frances - who lives in Cumbria - became discouraged with the novel and was about to put it in a drawer when news arrived of her winning entry in the Swanwick competition. It was just the encouragement she needed.

First prize in each category was a free week at Swanwick worth £355 sponsored by Writers' News, The Writers' Summer School and the Hayes Conference Centre. The prizewinners also received a special trophy (held for a year) plus framed certificates, while the second and third place winners received £100 and £25 respectively, all provided by Writers' News.

PRIZEWINNING PLACES AND PLAUDITS – SWANWICK 2006

CHILDREN’S WRITING (first prize sponsored by the Hayes Conference Centre, Swanwick). Judged by Lynne Hackles

1st - Sigh Kick by Frances Gapper

2nd - Martin's War by Brian Lux

3rd - The Image of Jonathan Plum by Catherine Osborn

WINNING ENTRY CRITIQUE

Sigh Kick by Frances Gapper

The opening line of this asks a question. Why do people keep chucking shoes up on the telephone wires? Sarah reckons that shoes with nobody in them are a bit like ghosts, and she should know. She has first-hand experience of ghosts, beginning with the woman who is hiding in the garden and then disappears, and continuing with Bobo, Sarah’s baby brother who arrived as a soft golden blobby light and became a person. A person Mum can’t or won’t see.

This chapter is filled with humour and intrigue. The heroine can see things other people can’t see but even she doesn’t know who is real and who isn’t. That’s something she doesn’t want to think about too much when it comes to Bobo whose hugs are filled with energy and brightness.

By the end of the chapter I wanted to be Sarah’s friend, wanted to know if Bobo was or ever had been a real baby, and wanted to know where Sarah’s psychic abilities were going to take her.

SHORT STORY (first prize sponsored by the Writers’ Summer School. Judged by Anne Graham)

1st – A Good Dying Day by Sheila Corbishley

2nd - Romance of a Kind by Beverley Denise Thompson

3rd - Finbar Flood – Explorer by Katrina McEntegart

WINNING ENTRY CRITIQUE

This story is a little gem. Hooked immediately by its sense of loss and place, we meet Elaine and Patricia and then quickly discover that there’s one more person who will be even more affected ‘...how are we going to tell her?’ The story of denial in the face of the death of a loved one has many eloquent touches of poignancy and humour. Mum isn’t ready to be told and denies the knowledge that she can see in the undelivered freesias. Sheila shows us a picture of a normal loving family and I challenge anyone to read that last paragraph of defiant bravery without having to brush away a tear.

SWANWICK POETRY COMPETITION

First Prize Winner To My Writing Partner by Maggie Cobbett

Together since our urge to write grew strong,
You are the friend on whom I can rely
To read my work and tell me I’m not wrong.
One day it’s bound to catch an agent’s eye.
Then it’s my turn to do the same for you;
To soften your despair as you do mine
When bland rejection slips offer no clue
And pain is soothed with chocolates and wine.
Likewise we celebrate each small success.
Your slogan wins a year’s supply of tea.
My pithy letter in the local press
Earns praise from you; much sweeter than a fee.
Our friendship will endure through space and time,
Unless your novel’s published before mine.

Second Prize Winner Still Missing You by Joyce Reed

How can you set a value on such things?
Pooling resources with the homework due,
picking out market tat, old belts and rings,
yearning for boyfriends in the bus stop queue.
And soon comparing notes on motherhood,
we secret sisters laughed about our men,
and then when times were tougher, we withstood
the hardship, and we giggled once again.
Picked out to die in cancer’s lottery,
When you were buried I was miles away
by cruel geographic trickery,
but spent a quiet, slow, reflective day.
Relationships survive life’s twists and bends –
Death is the only way real friendship ends.

Third Prize Winner Take Friendship by Roger Dunn

Take friendship for example, let’s review
A life support which stops that downward slide.
Knows problems can be solved when someone who
Extends a helping hand is on your side.
For every day we face an inventory
Reminding us of things we have to do.
It’s usually closed successfully
Except that sometimes plans can go askew.
Not every problem’s easily resolved
Despite the time and effort we expend.
Still, don’t despair, get someone else involved,
Help’s just around the corner. Call a friend!
It should be all you need to close that list,
Producing the solution you had missed.

ADJUDICATION
by Alison Chisholm

This competition, with a free place at the Swanwick Writers’ Summer School as its first prize, offered a special challenge. Each entry had to be written on a specific theme - friendship - and had to take the form of a sonnet. The first requirement was easy. Almost every poem submitted talked, either directly or obliquely, of friendship. The second consideration presented rather more problems. Some highly accomplished sonnets were submitted, but sadly a large number of the entries did not keep to correct sonnet form.

Sonnets are not easy, but when the rhythm, metre, rhyming and verse form come together, they are powerful and thrilling poems. Most of the submissions had the required fourteen lines, but many ignored the pattern of rhyme set for Italian, Elizabethan or contemporary American sonnets.

Sometimes the rhyme pattern was correct, but syntax had been wrenched to place a rhyme at the end of a line; or the content was rhyme-led, so that the sense of the message was sacrificed for the selection of a rhyming word. One or two poems read logically and made sense, but lineation suffered where phrases were split and lines ended on weak, insignificant words.

The trickiest of this competition's demands was the correct and careful use of metre. The form demands iambic pentameters, those lines of five feet, each foot consisting of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one, which are the cornerstone of poetry in the English language. Although there are some standard acceptable variants, such as the substitution of a trochee as the first foot of a line, or the additional unstressed syllable of the feminine ending, the majority of entries flouted the metre's fundamental requirements, and so eliminated themselves from the competition.

Maggie Cobbett (from Ripon) won a place at the Writers' Summer School in the heart of Derbyshire for her clever and witty Elizabethan sonnet, To My Writing Partner. Within its fourteen lines, this sonnet describes and explores the relationship between two writers. Their philosophy of mutual support and help is a metaphor for the nurturing of the Summer School itself, and the twist of the final couplet strikes a witty note of friendly rivalry.

The voice of the poem, with its direct address to the second person, involves the reader; and anyone who writes will recognise the clear, concrete images. The exhortation to read my work and tell me I'm not wrong is one of those wonderful win-win moments. The idea of soothing the pain of rejection with chocolates and wine is universal. The winning of a year's supply of tea for writing a slogan will bring a wry smile to the face of many a People's Friend letters page correspondent.

The vocabulary of To My Writing Partner is conversational and direct. The meaning of the poem is never obscured by verbiage. Rhyme sits easily in the text, and there is no suggestion that the poet had to struggle to find rhymes. Rather, it seemed that the perfect word just happened to rhyme precisely as required... and it takes great skill and control of the language to create this effect.

Metre is equally unobtrusive. It is accurately and effortlessly applied, so that the reader is hardly aware of the work that goes into making it so. Words trip along to the iambic pentameter's music, and neither meaning nor pronunciation is compromised for the sake of metre.

An intangible indicator of the success of a poem is its memorability. To My Writing Partner fixed itself firmly in the mind at a first reading, and refused to go away.

The second prize goes to Joyce Reed (Marple, Stockport) for the beautifully observed Still Missing You. The poem encapsulates the whole life of one of its characters, and her relationship with the other, the narrator. This, too, is an Elizabethan sonnet. Again, metre and rhyme are correct and fluent. The writers' maxim Show, don't Tell is demonstrated admirably. Visual images show the two protagonists in a progression of scenes; and although the poem takes an appropriately leisurely pace, a lot of ground is covered. The final couplet is an ideal summing-up of the situation described in the first twelve lines, and carries a wider and deeper message about life.

Roger Dunn (Dartmouth) gains third prize for an acrostic sonnet which features the poem's title, Take Friendship. This, too, is pleasing in both content and technique, although the application of the same rhyming -oo sound in two of the quatrains is a little controversial. There is a pleasing sense of fun about this piece, in both its content and execution, and the conversational voice is just right.

Although the competition yielded some entries with a painful theme, the majority of poems submitted were warm and upbeat. This is much harder to achieve than a more harrowing approach, so special thanks are due to all the writers who revelled in the joys of friendship.

Shortlisted

Entries shortlisted to final judging stage in the Swanwick poetry competition were from: David Booker, Wigston Magna, Leicestershire; Ian Colley, Dunoon, Argyll & Bute; Rachel Green, Chesterfield; Bethany Layne, Selston, Nottinghamshire; Paul Pelowski, Colchester; Angela Pickering, Woodbridge, Suffolk; Diane Wilson, Bridlington..

Your chance to win a week at Swanwick 2007
You too could win a free week at the Swanwick Writers' Summer School in 2007
Details here.

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Swanwick 2008 August 09 to August 15
Diamond Jubilee Year