Our meeting on 25th June 2025 was the adjudication of the poetry competition by Alison Chisholm.

We welcomed a new potential member, Robyn who introduced herself.

Joan introduced Alison and handed over the meeting to Alison. Alison started by talking about competitions in general and the way she approached the adjudication of them. Then she discussed how the evening would be structured. about some of the issues with the entries where there was room for improvement. Then she would announce the winners and allow the authors to read out their entries. Then she would talk about her own life as a poet and end with a question and answer session. She talked about how she is aware that she has a great responsibility to the authors and appreciated the effort they have put into the writing of these poems. She said that all of the poems had merit. She then went through some minor layout problems best avoided when sending poems to an adjudicator and discussed the use of capital letters in poems. She advised rereading your poems before submitting them as tiny flaws can easily go unnoticed. Alison then talked about the importance of punctuation in poetry. Next she talked about free verse which has definite requirements for punctuation. The final negative point she then said was the importance of clear images in poetry.

Then she went through each of the poems entered. First was “Am I Really Green?” which had a lot of information in the content. Next was “A Slice of Sky” which was a fusion of the ordinary, way out, a twist ending without it feeling rushed. Next was “La Serenissima” which evoked Venice through a careful choice of words. Next was “The First Day of Summer” which evokes great imagery. Then was “Tit for Tat” which was joke that has been used previously but still excited the reader. It had a lovely sense of balance.

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Then she announced the results that the winner was John with “Tit for Tat.” and second was Denise with “A Slice of Sky”, which Denise read out. Then Peter read out John's poem “Tit for Tat”. Peter read his poem “Am I Really Green?” Peter then read Susanna's poem “The First Day of Summer.” Finally Joan read her poem “La Serenissima”

There was then a Q&A session with Alison.

Our next meeting on 9th July 2025 is Peter's talk “You want it darker?”

Details of our programme can be found online at https://harrogatewriterscircle.weebly.com. If you want to improve your writing then why don't you pop into the next meeting.