Australian Bush Laureate Awards 2011 ???????
Posted: Wed Feb 02, 2011 8:31 am
The Laureates this year were shared around widely. Murray Hartin's beatifully produced book took out book of the year, Jim Brown took out Recorded track of the year with a heartfelt Bushfire Poem and Jack Drake took out CD of the year with his CD of Classics over some wonderful opposition. Here in lies the big problem and why the Laureate Awards are slowly becoming a farce and the crowds have dropped to a third. Now, I refuse personally to enter anything in these awards for personal reasons and beliefs, only performed there once and was not paid even though the Musicians told me they were and am now receiving nothing but complaints from poets and audience.
Why? Well with no disrespect to my great mate Jack Drake, and his winning CD of Classic Poems, it leaves us wondering where Original Poetry stands in the eyes of the judges. With opposition such as Marco Gliori, Murray Hartin, John Best, Peter Mace and Brad Maclean, it can't be said that there is no quality there. So the better CD won, I hear many say. Well I don't dispute this, but I do dispute that these Max Ellis Marketing/Jim Haynes hosted awards are keeping to their own rules.
Here is one of the conditions from their own official entry form
3. Album of the Year – for the best body of Australian rhymed verse recorded on CD (not cassette), released during the eligibility period. Content may be original or re-release.
If Album of the Year does NOT qualify as original verse (minimum 75% original content), another award will be presented for Album of the Year Original Verse.
Hmm, this is most interesting at a time when an ex-policeman has been hired to investigate a stuff up at the Golden Guitars involving Album Of The Year. Now these awards once held a lot of creedence, dragged a full house to the Town Hall each Festival and had almost every Poet in Australia jostling for an entry form. So why has our craft and it's so called 'Official Awards' (That have absolutely no input from the ABPA - to the point our president doesn't even get recognised for being in attendance) fallen free of any official scrutiny on it's own rules. It's not a free show, almost $30 a head, and it's contents of poetry is under 50% although anybody entering must have at least 75% poetry on their CDs. All song and dance and 'other show' advertising as well as a lot of in-house croney backslapping.
I do believe it is time to have a good look at wether or not these so called awards are a true representation of where we as an association, and we as Bush Poets are currently at, or currently headed. Is there an alternative? Do we let the Laureates just die the death they are heading for and take a lot of our reputation with it?
I don't know the answer but i feel this really is a subject which needs to be looked at and debated. If our State and National Comps were run like this all hell would break loose!!!
Why? Well with no disrespect to my great mate Jack Drake, and his winning CD of Classic Poems, it leaves us wondering where Original Poetry stands in the eyes of the judges. With opposition such as Marco Gliori, Murray Hartin, John Best, Peter Mace and Brad Maclean, it can't be said that there is no quality there. So the better CD won, I hear many say. Well I don't dispute this, but I do dispute that these Max Ellis Marketing/Jim Haynes hosted awards are keeping to their own rules.
Here is one of the conditions from their own official entry form
3. Album of the Year – for the best body of Australian rhymed verse recorded on CD (not cassette), released during the eligibility period. Content may be original or re-release.
If Album of the Year does NOT qualify as original verse (minimum 75% original content), another award will be presented for Album of the Year Original Verse.
Hmm, this is most interesting at a time when an ex-policeman has been hired to investigate a stuff up at the Golden Guitars involving Album Of The Year. Now these awards once held a lot of creedence, dragged a full house to the Town Hall each Festival and had almost every Poet in Australia jostling for an entry form. So why has our craft and it's so called 'Official Awards' (That have absolutely no input from the ABPA - to the point our president doesn't even get recognised for being in attendance) fallen free of any official scrutiny on it's own rules. It's not a free show, almost $30 a head, and it's contents of poetry is under 50% although anybody entering must have at least 75% poetry on their CDs. All song and dance and 'other show' advertising as well as a lot of in-house croney backslapping.
I do believe it is time to have a good look at wether or not these so called awards are a true representation of where we as an association, and we as Bush Poets are currently at, or currently headed. Is there an alternative? Do we let the Laureates just die the death they are heading for and take a lot of our reputation with it?
I don't know the answer but i feel this really is a subject which needs to be looked at and debated. If our State and National Comps were run like this all hell would break loose!!!