Faced with fourteen entries for the competition, Dr Roger Kendall certainly earned his adjudicator’s fee. Themes varied from the arrival of spring to the first solo flight of a baby dragon and styles included rhyming couplets, blank verse, free verse and even a prose poem.
Roger requested that each poem be read out in turn by its author or, in the case of an absent member, a proxy, and then gave individual critiques. The standard, he remarked, was very high overall.
First place went to Lindsay Trenholme for Sorry we can’t be with you, inspired by finding a discarded 50th birthday card in the tissue bin of a ladies’ lavatory.
In second place was The Maiden’s Blush by Phil Cook, the maiden in question being Switzerland’s famous Jungfrau.
In third place was Dawn Flight, Elizabeth Spearman’s closely observed description of a skein of wild geese.
Roger was thanked for his hard work and asked to read some of his own recent work. We look forward to hearing more of it at our next ‘Literary Allsorts’ evening on 9th July.