ABPA - Australian Bush Poets Association

I have just read the Bushman’s last farewell by Catherine Clark the Blacken Billy award.
Fredricksons works maybe greater but to me Catherine’s work has far greater personal feeling to me as it depicts the very truth and feelings of many a stock mans life the beauty the loneliness the peace and the heart aches that they endure

Thank you Bill Williams

To Vic Jefferies It would come across to me that you would have to be an intelectual twit and your brains and feelings must be in the rear end of your backside for many many reader a poems for the likes of these are what they wish to read. Poems stories that are full of feelings and meaning, not what might be absolutly perfect in educated interlectual circles. We need the public but the public does not need us so what about WE try and woo the public

Bill Williams

Ease up Boys! Yeah the poem won, personally not my cup of tea, a bit of a dime a dozen poem, but it won and that's the end of proceedings. As I said earlier, a lot of our best writers in the past are now in demand to judge. Many of them, though, wish to keep entering the comps. So just where do we get qualified judges from? To discredit a winning poem is certainly not on and sounds sour grapes. As I have said previously, each to their own, but not when judging.

The public response, for example, to my poems, which break every rule in the book, is very positive and that is why I work so much, but it gives me the chance to take the knowledge I do have of creative writing to both Adults and Children around Australia as well as taking Australian Poetry as an entertainment form to the uninitiated. Yes I have won several written awards including the Blackened Billy, but was my poem the best? I don't know, but the judge that year deemed it so. Was I going to seek a second opinion? Of course not and I am sure that all response to me winning would not have been positive, but that is how it goes.

Remember, what is the use of structuring a poem to perfection if it has no emotion or story to tell?

keats

The response by Vic and Bill simply shows that we all have different tastes - be it in poetry, fashion or cars! It doesn't mean one is right and everyone else is wrong. Catherine won two other awards in the Blackened Billy so the judges on the day liked her work. Placed in another comp, she may not have done as well - that's the way it goes. It's not the end of the world.

Write for yourself. If you win something it's a bonus. I have just won something at Boyup but the poem I thought might have done something didn't win anything - but reading that poem has been known to bring people to tears and to me that means much more than winning any competition.

Heather

Shake hands and make up Bill! Pretty please.

and how often have we heard our members say just what Heather did - that the piece they felt was their best didn't rate a mention whilst their second or third stringer took out an award. I know Zondrae has mentioned that before and also recall Leonie saying much the same.

Personally I liked it I felt it had heart and feeling and as Bill said the audience are the ultimate judge - long after we are dead and gone, will people remember a piece because it was technically perfect in every way and won awards or will they remember a piece for the emotion it stirred within their hearts? I guess one of the reasons that Banjo, Henry, Dorothea etc etc are still being recited and read today are because of the emotive issues of their work, and there are many pieces here on site that do that - though they may never have put into a comp - they are heart touching and as such we remember them - not word perfect and sometimes maybe not even the title - but we remember reading a beaut poem about .....and it was just a great piece of poetry, and we share that experience and tell our families and friends about it, or maybe post it onto Twitter and Facebook or send it to friends via email so that we can share with others what the poem meant to us, how it touched us and when the people who read it are perhaps not of a poetic bent so to speak, to have somebody do that is better than any prize. IMO.

Cheers

Maureen

Sweet understanding Heather. Yes I understand and I apologize if I am wrong which often I am, but I will never say sorry to some one who it would seem has sour grapes.
Anyone who rubbishes another writer who is trying to do their best definitely has a problem. Judges are only human and can only give their opinion as they see it with in the bounds of judging rules

Bill the old Battler

Already posted a reply but it seems to have gone missing. The first one went something like: I am sorry Bill if I have upset you or anyone else with my comments regarding this discussion and I can assure you that I am not an intellectual twit (a twit maybe) and that I am the product of the School of Hard Knocks in fact I have a Phd in Battling.
There are no sour grapes prompting my comments as I rarely enter competitions and I certainly was not a competitor in that particular contest, neither do I know the author.
You and many more may like the poem because of what it conveys to you personally however, I struggle to understand how it could be judged the winning poem in what is considered one of the major bush poetry competitions in this country. What the win means is the judge is saying this is the very best poem in one of the very best bush poetry competitions in Australia.
Marty I agree, probably more than you could know, with your point of view in relation to perhaps a lessening of technical requirements in written poetry. Absolutely technically correct writing does not always produce good enjoyable poetry and very often because of its restrictions produces stilted, contorted grammatically incorrect verse that has had any semblance of poetry strangled within it. However, when it comes to competitions the rules must apply or we simply wont have a benchmark to judge by.
Keats as a bit of an old stager now, I fully understand that it is bad form to criticise a winning poem but where are we headed if we just continue to mumble in our beards when we see judges making poor decisions? My comments came about as a result of being directed to the poem and it was impossible to avoid referring to the poem in the subsequent discussion.
I feel if we continue to accept poor judging our art will decline.

A BUSH POME

Although I'm rather shy
and wooden hurt a fly,
yet still I raise my timid voice
proclaim to passers by;

Iamb, iamb, iamb,
I amb a real bush poet,
I've practiced hard the rhythmic rhyme
and now I think I know it.

So if you read my pome,
just gis a little smile.
That's all that I can think of now,
be back in jist a while.

Kiwi accent Neville? Jist thought I'd ask

..can I say,
Looking back: The entries I sent to the Blackened Billy this year were not my best poems (in my opinion).I didn't expect to do well. 2009 I had two HCs in that comp. I didn't expect to do well. I don't know who the judge/s were (nor do I wish to) or even if there are a different judges each year or the same judge/s every year. Entries have to be in so far in advance I'm lucky I keep a record.

More comps are requesting multiple copies of poems entered. I presume this means they are using more than one judge and deciding winners by adding points. (good idea)

I am often disappointed by the decisions but take them as they come. (only because I might have thought a particular poem had merit.) I had one judge, who was at an event where I recited a poem that the judge had seen in a comp, come up to me and say, "I judged 'such and such' a comp where that poem went well. I thought it was a very powerful poem. Keep at it." I was not aware that the person was a judge til then. I have also had a judge phone me for permission to 'do' one of my poems. This encouragement is enough to make me try even harder to get it right. (Now if someone can tell me how to learn to spell proper, I might do a bit better).

Vic Jefferies I accept your apologies as I hope you will accept mine
Disagree we may but that is life mate
As my I am of the same school as yours VIC the school of hard knocks our teachers may have been the same.
Life is strange as we all know. What one accepts and one does not accept varies from person to person year to year but unless there are rules that are made by a machine that has no and I repeat no human intervention as to rules the judging of stories or poems then human interpretation shall always play a very important part of judging.
Be it the judging of live stock as one of our judges was well aware of.
Mental endeavours as to the skill in the use of words will always be up for interpretation by everybody no matter what the outcome is.
A judge’s job is mongrel job only the winner is the happiest person involved. I was thrilled when I won mine.
Some would say it is only won by a lowly novice which I undoubtedly am
But mine was the best according to the rules that the judge INTERPRETED
If anyone wishes to be a judge I for one would welcome them with open arms if they could prove that they were TOTALLY impartial to what is being written which is totally impossible as people being what we are, are different and individuals. If there are any errors in both grammar or spelling it is by spell check as that is their interpretation of it

Bill Williams The old Battler and so now I get of my Butter box Case dismissed