The Sentinelle

The Sentinel Newsletter, May 2012 (#1)

2012-05-09T03:17:00.001-07:00

Welcome to the Sentinel Newsletter May 2012 (#1)

The Sentinel Newsletter will henceforth be sent out twice a month on the second and last Wednesdays of every month. If there are any important notices that our subscribers need to have in between these scheduled days we will send them out as Special Notices.

In this first May 2012 newsletter we have the following items:

· The SLQ Poetry and Short Story Competitions (April 2012) results for the benefit of those who have not seen them.

· Adjudication reports of the SLQ Poetry & Short Story Competitions (April 2012) for the benefit of those who have not seen them.

· Call for submissions: Sentinel Annual Literature Anthology 2012

· Call for submissions: Sentinel Literary Quarterly (July to September 2012)

· Current Sentinel & Excel for Charity writing Competitions.

· Support Sentinel Poetry Movement

SLQ Poetry & Short Story Competitions (April 2012) Results

We are pleased to announce the results of the Sentinel Literary Quarterly Poetry and Short Story Competitions for April 2012 judged by Miles Cain (poetry) and Kate Horsley (stories).

POETRY

The 9 commended poems in no particular order are:

‘Justin’ – Christian Ward

‘Fleet’ – Simon Jackson

‘Mousetraps’ – Rosemary Kirk

‘Beneath the Bridge’ – Oz Hardwick

‘Queen’ – Terry Jones

‘Dictionaries’ – Terry Jones

‘Safe Journey’ – Eilidh Thomas

‘Hot Night’ – Diana Mason

‘Migrants’ – Mingjuan Tan

The 3 highly commended poems in no particular order are:

‘Feeling the Wood of Father’s Bequeated Desk’ – E.K. Wall

‘Lamplight’ – David Jones

‘Snapshot’ – Valley Girl

Third Prize

‘Rembrandt’s Self-Portrait aged 63’ – Lynn Roberts

Second Prize

‘The Secret of Small Strawberries’ – Claire Cox

First Prize

‘Vinyl Junkie’ – Oz Hardwick

Sentinel Champions Subscription Giveaway

The poet that receives 1 year’s free subscription to Sentinel Champions magazine is David Pollard

SHORT STORIES

The 3 highly commended short stories are in no particular order:

‘Nature or Nurture’ – Charles Johnson

‘The Split Second’ – Fiona Barr

‘Guilt Sweets’ – Julia Lacey Brooke

Third Prize

‘Sand’ – Brindley Hallam Dennis

Second Prize

‘The Naked Fisherman’ – Leo Madigan

First Prize

‘Duopoly’ – Sarah Evans

Sentinel Champions Subscription Giveaway

The short story writer that receives 1 year’s free subscription to Sentinel Champions magazine is Christina Fulford

All the winning and commended poems and short stories above will be published in Sentinel Champions in November 2012.

Congratulations to all the winners.

Adjudication Report, SLQ Short Story Competition (April 2012) by Kate Horsley

The standard of entries for the Sentinel Literary Quarterly Short Story Competition April 2012 was high. I was particularly impressed by the quality of the writing. The stories were engaging and comical, dramatic and heart-rending by turns and evoked a variety of different cultural settings. With such a good standard of writing, it was hard to choose winners! Those I’ve chosen all made bold choices about their subject matter as well as the perspective from which the story was narrated.

The First Prize Winner, ‘Duopoly’, is narrated in the second person – a daring choice followed through with conviction. A story of bereavement, ‘Duopoly’ begins with brief, punchy sentences used to depict the monotonous existence of a character who appears to be emotionally frozen. The author’s stylish prose propels the reader to an unexpected conclusion in which the reason for the main character’s trauma is revealed. In contrast to the apparent cynicism and economy of the story’s style, the ending is startlingly poignant.

The Second Prize-winner, ‘The Naked Fisherman’, tells of a young photographer’s formative experience in Lima. Simply and directly written, this story also builds emotional effects by means of contrast. In this case, the matter-of-fact tone of the first-person narrator is juxtaposed with a shocking turn of events towards the end of the story. Intentions are lost in translation and events spin out of control, but the day is ultimately saved by a special moment of understanding between photographer and fisherman.

The Third Prize goes to a beautifully written story about an elderly couple on holiday in their caravan. ‘Sand’ is lush and melancholy in style and has a dreamlike feel as the couple ponder their current relationship and remember the past. The seaside landscape is delicately evoked as the faded love between husband and wife drifts over the dunes and shore like endless white sand.

The three Highly Commended stories, ‘Nature or Nurture’, ‘That Split Second’ and ‘Guilt Sweets’ are all very well-written stories that use bold characterization. ‘Nature or Nurture’ evokes the lives of children growing up on a farm in the 1940s. ‘Guilt Sweets’ explores the various excesses of a jaded marital relationship to darkly comic effect and ‘That Split Second’ tells the story of an isolated elderly couple provoked into extremity after an unexpected accident occurs.

The non-winning entries were often interesting and well-written, but tended to spell the meaning of the story out too much, especially at the beginning. Some stories were richly wrought in terms of description – perhaps too much so – but unfortunately the very complexity of the description overwhelmed the narrative and made it difficult to read. A few writers neglected to check spelling and grammar or made peculiar word choices that detracted from their story’s appeal. In order to improve these (often very good!) entries to make them into winning stories, writers should make sure to double check their presentation before submission and should focus some energy on creating an arresting and unexpected first paragraph that doesn’t give too much away.

First Prize

‘Duopoly’

Second Prize

‘The Naked Fisherman’

Third Prize

‘Sand’

Highly Commended

‘Nature or Nurture’, ‘That Split Second’ and ‘Guilt Sweets’

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Adjudication Report, SLQ Poetry Competition (April 2012) by Miles Cain

Why do we write poetry? There are lots of reasons: self-expression probably tops the list for most of us, followed by a desire to grow as people: writing is a form of exploration, of working out what is important to us. Poets are intent on the big themes: we dwell on birth, growth, love, and (very often), life’s shadow side – the themes of pain, loss, grief and the awareness of our own mortality feature in poetry frequently. Poetry is a form of consolation, but it can be witty, funny and sexy too. Every facet of human life is explored through poetry.

How we express these things, however, requires great care. The old adage ‘the devil is in the detail’ is especially true of writing. Writers who take care over every line and sentence are more likely to create strong work than those who don’t. In this competition, there were a number of entries that hadn’t looked closely enough at their own work. Some poems were poorly punctuated, with apostrophes used incorrectly, or contained spelling errors. Some sentences were long but had no commas. Correct use of commas and full stops is a basic requirement of decent writing.

Another common fault is cliché. Writers must learn to get rid of any elements of their work that may seem to be lazy. In the poems I read, there were several phrases which lacked originality, or came close to laziness. It sounds so obvious, but it’s important to think about the work. It’s when we stop thinking that we are more likely to include worn out expressions. Ezra Pound urged writers to ‘make it new’. This is not easy, but the rewards will be great lines that are fresh and enriching for the reader. In the entries I read, there were phrases such as ‘…you just ache to hold your loved one…’; ‘…sweep it under the carpet…’; ‘…the patience of a saint…’; ‘…struck dumb…’; ‘…derring-do…’; ‘…a godforsaken place…’; ‘…a heavy price to pay…’; ‘…enemy ground…’; ‘…life hangs by a tiny thread…’; ‘…swaying in the breeze…’; ‘…the stillness of the night…’ (etc). Such phrases come easily because we are so used to them, but good writing ignores worn out lines and replaces them with something fresh. I ruled out any poems with clichés in.

Another common fault, especially for less experienced writers, is to over-write a poem. Writers think they’re being smart by cramming in words of phrases that are redundant. Here’s a phrase from one of the poems in this competition: ‘…a sun blanched shaft of light gold edged warms us…’ Writing like this is confusing for the reader. Take out anything that clogs up the poem. Less is more. An example is William Carlos Williams’ great poem This is just to say – it’s simple and touching. In many of the poems I read, stricter self-editing would have helped. It’s like enjoying a good meal. A dish with four items on the plate is more enjoyable than a dish with twenty.

One way to improve, and to kill off the cliché, is to read widely. It’s important to investigate all the great writers of the last 50 years to get a feel for how poetry works. I can’t provide a universal list here, but names such as Ted Hughes, Seamus Heaney, Philip Larkin, Carol Ann Duffy, Simon Armitage, Jean Sprackland, Clare Pollard and Matthew Sweeney spring to mind. If you’re a bit skint, pester your local library – they often have access to a range of poetry. Or get hold of an anthology of modern poetry. (I recommend Emergency Kit, edited by Matthew Sweeney and Jo Shapcott. It’s a fabulous collection).

There were recurring themes, including the passage of time, ageing, mortality and the changes of the seasons. Several poems focused on tragic accidents or untimely deaths. A number were inspired by paintings. Several writers expressed concerns about ecology and man-made pollution. While I was sympathetic to these concerns, I could hear the famous quote from John Keats ringing in my ears: ‘We hate poetry that has a palpable design on us…’

Many of the poems used the rhyming form, which is very hard to get right. Sophie Hannah and Wendy Cope are great poets who use rhyme, but I felt some of the poems I read fell into the trap of letting the rhyme lead the intention or meaning of the poem, something that often happens with rhyming poems.

A number of poems had ambition and intention but I felt they were one dimensional. I was looking for something with subtlety. Mystery and surprise are key elements of good poetry, and to overlook these is to halve the power of the form. Philip Larkin’s The Whitsun Weddings is a wonderful example – the end of the poem becomes something mysterious and elegiac.

I was asked to choose nine commended entries. These were as follows:

Commended Poems:

Hot Night – simple and effective, I wished more poems in the competition shared the elegant simplicity of this poem.

Safe Journey – this was one of the few rhyming poems that worked well. The funny punchline made me smile.

Dictionaries – this poem is already strong, but with some careful editing could be something very special. The image of burning dictionaries and burning language is a powerful one.

Justin – this is a poem that avoids cliché and uses language in a fresh and powerful way.

Fleet – one of several poems that dealt with tragic circumstances. The power of this poem lies in what is not expressed.

Mousetraps – another poem that is simple and elegant. The poem expresses the anxiety of its female character very well.

Beneath The Bridge – an intriguing poem, perhaps inspired by the three Billy Goats Gruff? I liked the air of menace present in this piece.

Queen – This monologue from the perspective of a mummified woman has a great line that shows the horror of her situation: ‘my hooked womb and brain flung in a bucket’. Wow!

Migrants – a good poem about migrating birds. A lack of sentimentality gives this poem added muscle.

Highly Commended Poems:

Feeling the wood of Father’s bequeathed desk.

A powerful poem focusing on the importance of intimacy, love and physical contact. (I agree with this writer. Talk to each other. Hug each other. Life is short.) However, it wasn’t only the sentiment that struck a chord with me. The details here work well: ‘my freckled hand’ and ‘the smell of your starched shirt’ lend an authority to the author’s writing.

Lamplight

This poem has some excellent images. I liked the way the gutter becomes ‘a argoyle, incontinent’ – a clever image that avoids cliché and gains the reader’s attention. This poem is full of atmosphere.

Snapshot

A strong poem about family and time passing. The image of Grandma’s hands ‘gritty like sandpaper’ is very effective.

First Prize Winner

Vinyl Junkie

I re-read this poem several times. Each time, its qualities appealed a little more. Its precision is terrific, and the way it uses the senses (the ‘thumbnail-slit cellophane’, ‘180 grams, black and pure’) is excellent. Unlike many of the other poems, it never mentions ‘I’, ‘You’ etc, but confidently shares the experience of devotion to records. This is well constructed writing and precisely expressed.

Second Prize Winner

The Secret Of Small Strawberries

This is a moving poem, focusing, as good poems often do, on a small moment with a subtle expression of emotion. Its poignancy comes from the fact that the writer has obviously experienced this moment (the same goes for the first prize winner) and, again, the details are great, especially the eyes of the woman ‘glazed cataract blue’. I loved the compassion and tenderness in this poem.

Third Prize Winner

Rembrandt’s Self-Portrait aged 63

This was one of the best of several strong poems in the competition. The sentence beginning ‘But he was doing…’ could do with some editing, as it is ten lines long, and should be split into smaller sentences. However, there’s no denying the power of the final lines, examining Rembrandt’s ‘bone-black suffering eyes and padlocked mouth’.

SALA 2012: CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

Following the successful publication of the Sentinel Annual Literature Anthology in November 2011, We are now accepting submissions of previously unpublished poems, short stories and short plays for publication in the Sentinel Annual Literature Anthology 2012.

Subject: Work submitted may be on any subject, and approached in any style, but the editors will be looking for materials that creatively engage some of the burning issues in the world today from health and economy, through terrorism, war, domestic violence to children’s welfare, ethnic and religious issues. Nothing is out of bounds.

Lengths: Send no more than 6 poems up to 65 lines long, short stories must not be more than 3000 words long, and short plays up to 6,000 words long including title page and dramatis personae.

Submission: Send your work as Word or RTF attachment (NO PDFs PLEASE), together with your current biographical information up to 100 words to sala@sentinelpoetry.org.uk

Closing date for submissions: 30^th June, 2012

Proposed date of publication: 1^st November, 2012

Payment: There is no financial payment for authors. Every author published will receive 1 contributor’s copy. Authors published who have their own websites are welcome to sell the book from their sites and remit only 75% of the cover price to us. We will fulfil all orders. We can provide websites for authors who don’t currently have their own websites. Conditions apply. Request information on websites.

Sentinel Annual Literature Anthology 2012

ISBN: 978-0-9568101-3-7

Editors: Nnorom Azuonye (Plays), Unoma Azuah (Poems), Amanda Sington-Williams (Short Stories).

Call for Submissions, Sentinel Literary Quarterly, July – September, 2012.

Publishing Cycle & General Information

Sentinel Literary Quarterly is currently published online only on 31^st January, 30^th April, 31^st July, and 31^st October. The magazine appears in print and online. Due to space constraints, some items accepted for publication may only appear in the online version, while some may appear both online and in print. There will be some that will appear in print only. What appears where is at the discretion of the editors and publisher. Therefore bear these options in mind while submitting to SLQ.

General Submissions Guidelines

Deadlines: December 31^st for January 31^st publication, March 31^st for April 30^th publication, June 30^th for July 31 publication, and September 30^th for October 31^st Publication.

Poems: Submit up to 6 poems on any subject of 60 lines or less, or a long poem up to 200 lines plus 2 shorter poems.

Fiction: Submit Short Stories, or Excerpts from Novels on any subject or theme up to 5,000 words long.

Essays: May be up to 10,000 words long.

Plays: Short plays or excerpts from longer plays no longer than 6,000 words.

Reviews and Interviews: These may be up to 3000 words long.

All materials submitted must be in English Language. We encourage poems written in other languages as long as they are sent together with appropriate translations.

The name of the author as he/she would like to be credited must appear on the materials.

Please send a photograph of yourself in Jpeg format to go on your page.

Copyright: Once we accept materials for Sentinel Literary Quarterly, we acquire the copyright until they have been published. 90 days after publication, the copyright reverts to the authors.

Simultaneous Submissions: We discourage simultaneous submissions. The turnaround time is 8 weeks. Hopefully that is not too long for you.

Previously Published Work:

Generally we discourage submissions of previously published work. If we feel strongly about a previously published work we may solicit it. If your work has been published elsewhere and you feel it has not been given the exposure it deserves, and you feel strongly about it, by all means submit it, but please mention where and when it was first published.

Payment: Sentinel Literary Quarterly does not currently pay authors any money for work accepted and published. Every author published in print will receive a complimentary contributor’s copy.

Important: Please submit only materials that are your original work. Please bear in mind that Sentinel Literary Quarterly is a magazine and not a blog or discussion forum. Therefore the form and content of any work published in the magazine is final and any aspect of the work, or its authorship, may not be modified after publication. We may alter the content of your work if requested only if the work has been published online. Requests for modification of content, authorship or deletion will not be entertained. Copyright reverts to all authors 90 days after publication.

Featured Country

Every issue of Sentinel Literary Quarterly from July 2012 will have a section called Featured Country in which we will present a supplement on that country. If you would like to submit your work specifically for the Featured Country Supplement, please indicate that in your submission. For instance if you are submitting to the issue that will have Italy as a featured country, in your submission subject, type: ‘Poetry Submission (Italy Supplement)’ To be included in the Supplement, your poem, essay, short story, or interview will have relevance to the featured country.

The Featured Country for July – September issue is ITALY.

Submissions by e-mail only

Send all Poems (Standard or Country Supplement) to Chris Stewart poetryeditor@sentinelquarterly.com

Send all Short Stories, and excerpts from novels (Standard or Country Supplement) to Ngozi Chuma-Udeh fictioneditor@sentinelquarterly.com

Send all book reviews, essays, plays, and interviews to (Standard or Country Supplement) Nnorom Azuonye editor@sentinelquarterly.com

Current Sentinel Poetry Movement and Excel for Charity Writing Competitions

THE PSYCHIATRY RESEARCH TRUST POETRY COMPETITION 2012

Judge: Derek Adams
Closing Date: 31^st May 2012
Prizes: £150, £75, £40, £10 x 2 plus publication in Excel for Charity News Blog and The Psychiatry Research Trust Newsletter.

Entry Fees: £4/1, £7.50/2, £10.50/3, £12.50/4, £14/5 (Enter as many poems as you wish)

Enter online or by post here >>

SENTINEL LITERARY QUARTERLY SHORT STORY COMPETITION

Judge: Rosemary Dun
Closing Date: 20^th June 2012
Prizes: £150, £75, £50, £10 x 3 plus publication in Sentinel Champions magazine.
Entry Fees: £4/1, £8/2, £10/3, £12/4 (Enter as many stories as you wish)
Enter Online or by Post here >>

SENTINEL LITERARY QUARTERLY POETRY COMPETITION

Judge: Will Daunt
Closing Date: 20^th June 2012
Prizes: £150, £75, £50, £10 x 3 plus publication in Sentinel Champions magazine.
Entry Fees: £3/1, £6/2, £9/3, £12/5 (Enter as many poems as you wish)
Enter Online or by Post here >>

BUILD AFRICA POETRY COMPETITION 2012

Judge: Afam Akeh

Closing Date: 15^th July 2012
Prizes: £150, £75, £40, £10 x 2 plus publication in Excel for Charity News Blog

Entry Fees: £4/1, £7.50/2, £10.50/3, £12.50/4, £14/5 (Enter as many poems as you wish)

Enter online or by post here >>

SENTINEL ANNUAL POETRY COMPETITION 2012

Judge: Roger Elkin

Closing Date: 30^th November 2012
Prizes: £500, £250, £125, £25 x 5 plus publication in Sentinel Champions magazine.
Entry Fees: £5/per poem for the first 2 poems, £3.50 per poem thereafter (Enter as many poems as you wish)
Enter Online or by Post here >>

SENTINEL ANNUAL SHORT STORY COMPETITION 2012

Judge: David Caddy

Closing Date: 30^th November 2012
Prizes: £500, £250, £125, £25 x 5 plus publication in Sentinel Champions magazine.
Entry Fees: £5/per story for the first 2 stories, £3.50 per story thereafter (Enter as many stories as you wish)
Enter Online or by Post here >>

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Support Sentinel Poetry Movement

Since December 2002, Sentinel Poetry Movement has been serving the literary community with our publications and events. We have provided and continue to provide publishing platforms for writers from all over the world.

Sentinel Poetry Movement is self-funding and has never applied for or received any grants from any organisation. We have continued to function by the little margins we make from the sale of our books and magazines, from the little left after writing competitions entry fees have been paid, and through small revenue streams from advertising served on our our websites by Google and other affiliate programmes.

You could support us in a variety of ways.

1. Buy and or subscribe to Sentinel publications. Have you bought a copy of the Sentinel Annual Literature Anthology (http://www.sentinelpoetry.org.uk/sala) , Sentinel Literary Quarterly (www.sentinelquarterly.com) or Sentinel Champions (www.sentinelpoetry.org.uk/champions) ?

2. Enter our quarterly and annual poetry and short story competitions (www.sentinelpoetry.org.uk/competitions)

3. Advertise your book, publishing business, or any other business that would interest writers on our site and magazines. For advertising enquiries e-mail sentinel@sentinelpoetry.org.uk

Sentinel Poetry Movement

The International Community of Writers & Artists…since December 1, 2002

Part of the Sentinel Poets, Artists and Writers Network (SPAWN).

Administrator

Nnorom Azuonye

nnorom.azuonye@sentinelpoetry.org.uk

Skype: nnoromazuonye

Tel: +44 7812 755 751

The Shipwright's Love Song by Jo Bell

2012-05-05T04:03:00.001-07:00

A new poetry recording from Jo Bell. The Shipwright's Love Song.

Judge’s Report, SLQ Short Story Competition (April 2012)

2012-05-01T03:33:00.001-07:00

Adjudication report

Kate Horsley

First Prize

‘Duopoly’

Second Prize

‘The Naked Fisherman’

Third Prize

‘Sand’

Highly Commended

‘Nature or Nurture’, ‘That Split Second’ and ‘Guilt Sweets’

Sentinel Literary Quarterly Short Story Competition (July 2012). Closing Date: 20 June, 2012. Judge: Rosemary Dun. Enter here.

Sentinel Annual Short Story Competition 2012. Closing Date: 30 November 2012. Judge: David Caddy. Enter here.

Judge’s Report, SLQ Poetry Competition (April 2012)

2012-05-01T02:28:00.001-07:00

Sentinel Literary Quarterly Poetry Competition (April 2012)

An adjudication report

Miles Cain

I was asked to choose nine commended entries. These were as follows:

Commended Poems:

Hot Night – simple and effective, I wished more poems in the competition shared the elegant simplicity of this poem.

Safe Journey – this was one of the few rhyming poems that worked well. The funny punchline made me smile.

Dictionaries – this poem is already strong, but with some careful editing could be something very special. The image of burning dictionaries and burning language is a powerful one.

Justin - this is a poem that avoids cliché and uses language in a fresh and powerful way.

Fleet – one of several poems that dealt with tragic circumstances. The power of this poem lies in what is not expressed.

Mousetraps – another poem that is simple and elegant. The poem expresses the anxiety of its female character very well.

Beneath The Bridge – an intriguing poem, perhaps inspired by the three Billy Goats Gruff? I liked the air of menace present in this piece.

Queen – This monologue from the perspective of a mummified woman has a great line that shows the horror of her situation: ‘my hooked womb and brain flung in a bucket’. Wow!

Migrants – a good poem about migrating birds. A lack of sentimentality gives this poem added muscle.

Highly Commended Poems:

Feeling the wood of Father’s bequeathed desk.

Lamplight

This poem has some excellent images. I liked the way the gutter becomes ‘a gorgoyle, incontinent’ – a clever image that avoids cliché and gains the reader’s attention. This poem is full of atmosphere.

Snapshot

A strong poem about family and time passing. The image of Grandma’s hands ‘gritty like sandpaper’ is very effective.

First Prize Winner

Vinyl Junkie

Second Prize Winner

The Secret Of Small Strawberries

Third Prize Winner

Rembrandt’s Self-Portrait aged 63

Miles Cain

The Border by Miles Cain is available from amazon.co.uk

Sentinel Literary Quarterly Poetry Competition (July 2012). Closing Date: 20 June, 2012. Judge: Will Daunt. Enter here.

Sentinel Annual Poetry Competition 2012. Closing Date: 30 November 2012. Judge: Roger Elkin. Enter here.

SLQ Poetry and Short Story Competitions April 2012 Results

2012-04-30T12:19:00.001-07:00

April 2012 Results

We are pleased to announce the results of the Sentinel Literary Quarterly Poetry and Short Story Competitions for April 2012 judged by Miles Cain (poetry) and Kate Horsley (stories).

POETRY

The 9 commended poems in no particular order are:

'Justin' - Christian Ward

'Fleet' - Simon Jackson

'Mousetraps' - Rosemary Kirk

'Beneath the Bridge' - Oz Hardwick

'Queen' - Terry Jones

'Dictionaries' - Terry Jones

'Safe Journey' - Eilidh Thomas

'Hot Night' - Diana Mason

The 3 highly commended poems in no particular order are:

'Feeling the Wood of Father's Bequeated Desk' - E.K. Wall

'Lamplight' - David Jones

'Snapshot' - Valley Girl

Third Prize

'Rembrandt's Self-Portrait aged 63' - Lynn Roberts

Second Prize

'The Secret of Small Strawberries' - Claire Cox

First Prize

'Vinyl Junkie' - Oz Hardwick

Sentinel Champions Subscription Giveaway

The poet that receives 1 year's free subscription to Sentinel Champions magazine is David Pollard

SHORT STORIES

The 3 highly commended short stories are in no particular order:

'Nature or Nurture' - Charles Johnson

'The Split Second' - Fiona Barr

'Guilt Sweets' - Julia Lacey Brooke

Third Prize

'Sand' - Brindley Hallam Dennis

Second Prize

'The Naked Fisherman' - Leo Madigan

First Prize

'Duopoly' - Sarah Evans

Sentinel Champions Subscription Giveaway

The short story writer that receives 1 year's free subscription to Sentinel Champions magazine is Christina Fulford

All the winning and commended poems and short stories above will be published in Sentinel Champions in November 2012.

Congratulations to all the winners.

THE PSYCHIATRY RESEARCH TRUST POETRY COMPETITION 2012

2012-04-26T22:08:00.001-07:00

CLOSING DATE: 31-May-2012
You are invited to enter The Psychiatry Research Trust Poetry Competition 2012 - an Excel for Charity competition organised by Eastern Light EPM International to raise funds for charity. Your poem could help fight mental illness and its effects on the society. This competition is for previously unpublished poems in English Language, on any subject, in any style up to 50 lines long (excluding title).
PRIZES: £150 (1st), £75 (2nd), £40 (3rd) and £10 x 2 (High Commendation). The winning and commended poems will be published in the Excel for Charity News Blog and in the Psychiatry Research Trust Newsletter (print).
FEES: £4 for 1 poem, £7.50 for 2 poems, £10.50 for 3 poems, £12.50 for 4 poems and £14 for 5 poems. (A third of net entry fees goes to the charity. This is for a good cause. Please enter generously.)
JUDGE: Derek Adams
HOW TO ENTER: You may enter online and pay securely by PayPal or print out an Entry Form and enter by post at http://www.easternlightepm.com/excelforcharity/psychtrust-poetry-competition/ Send your poems with Entry Form or Cover Note and applicable fees to address: Excel for Charity, Eastern Light EPM International, Unit 136, 113-115 George Lane, South Woodford, London E18 1AB, United Kingdom. Cheques/Postal Orders payable to EASTERN LIGHT EPM INTERNATIONAL

Face Me, I Book You: Writing Africa’s Agency in the Age of the Netizen

2012-04-23T08:25:00.001-07:00

Pius Adesanmi

(Keynote lecture delivered at the African Literature Association Dallas, April 2012. Sponsored by the Graduate Students’ Caucus of the ALA)

I owe the title of this lecture partly to the Nigerian poet, Amatoritsero Ede, who recently “booked” a fellow Nigerian writer for “facing” him in a Facebook spat and, partly, to my favorite palm wine tapper in Isanlu, my hometown in Nigeria. Although Ede coined the brilliant expression, “Face Me, I Book You”, I think the greater debt is owed to my tapper. I call him my tapper extremely cautiously because he also tapped wine for my father for decades, becoming my tapper only after Dad passed on in 2007.

My palm wine tapper needs no introduction to you. You know him. He is an eponymous subject, still very much part of whatever is left of the bucolic Africa “of proud warriors in ancestral savannahs” which fired the imagination of David Diop, Léopold Sédar Senghor, and others in the Négritude camp but irritated Wole Soyinka, Es’kia Mpahlele, and other opponents of Négritude’s “poupées noires” version of Africa to no end. You know him.

You know him because his craft is ageless and has defied the frenzied and chaotic wind of postmodernity blowing over Africa. Baba Elemu – that’s what we call a palm wine tapper in Yoruba - is still alive and kicking in towns and villages all over West Africa. Firoze Manji of Pambazuka once busted my West African monopolist bubble by telling me that they also know the palm wine tapper in East Africa. You know him.

You know him because the fruit of his labour episodically irrigates your tongue whenever summer research takes you to those parts of Africa where he still plies his trade. His black and rusty Raleigh bicycle, the ageless gourds and tired plastic containers attached to the rear end of the bicycle (carrier in Nigeria), all bubbling and foaming in the mouth, and the dark brown belt of reeds that has gathered mileage by taking his ilk up and down the trunk of palm trees since Obatala got drunk in the mythic process of creation, are all iconicities of a certain version of Africa that will just not go away. You know him.

In addition to this generic portrait, my own palmwine tapper is always a vital source of reconnection with my roots during summer vacations in my hometown. Connoisseurs of the matter at hand know only too well that nothing beats the early morning harvest, especially if it comes undiluted with water. That is why the palmwine tapper has to beat even the most auroral farmer to the belly of the bush. The palm tree knows how to reward the tapper who sets forth at dawn.

Whenever I’m home, the pact between my palmwine tapper and me ensures that he wakes me up around 6 am on his way back from the bush with my own reserved portion of “the usual”. I suspect that one of his kegs was named for me or I was named for it as Achebe was named for Victoria, Queen of England. He filled it faithfully every morning and his “akowe, mo ti gbe de o” (Book man, I’ve brought your wine) was my muezzin’s call to prayer. My mum would grumble that I now wake up to the call of palm wine. Whatever happened to the Pius she raised to wake up to the Angelus and morning mass?

I did not hear my tapper’s call to prayer on this particular day in the summer of 2008. The jarring clang of TuFace Idibia’s “African Queen” – I’m sure you all know that song – was what woke me up. One of my nieces in the village had been kind enough to set the said song as my ringtone. Ladies and gentlemen, please sing with me: “You are my African queen/the girl of my dreams/you take me where I’ve never been”. That was Idibia crooning in my cell phone. Who could be calling that early in the morning? I concluded that it must be some silly friend back in Canada or the US who’d forgotten the time difference between Nigeria and North America. I hissed and fumbled for my phone in the greyish darkness of the early morning and the voice that came from the other end made me jump up in bed.

“Akowe!”

That was my palmwine tapper phoning me – wait for this – from the bush! As I later found out when he returned from that morning’s sortie, he was calling me from the neck of one of his trees. He wanted to let me know that delivery would be delayed that morning and I may not get my regular quantity of “the usual”. Funny things had happened to his gourds. I understood. In the village, strange spirits disguised as villagers sometimes climbed trees to help themselves to the fruit of another man’s labour. It was all part of the territory. I told him not to worry. I would accept whatever he was able to supply.

Then it hit me like a thunderbolt! The familiar and the strange. The uncanny. Try to imagine an elderly palm wine tapper atop a palm tree in the village, reaching for his pocket to fish out his blackberry in order to discuss the laws of supply and demand with a customer whose father he had also served decades earlier under a totally different economy of meanings and you will understand why that event, in the summer of 2008, marked a turning point in my attempts to fashion new ways of listening to so many new things Africa seems to be saying about her historical quest for agency – a quest that has lasted the better part of the last five centuries .

I also began to think seriously about how the new economies of agency emanating from Africa pose serious challenges to the work of the imagination in the postmodern age of social media and immediate communication. In thinking along these lines, I haven’t been too far away from the epistemological challenges which confronted another thinker, another place, another time. I am talking of Walter Benjamin’s attempt to grapple with the rise of the image – film and photography – and its impact on the work of art in his famous essay, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”.

The Age of Mechanical Reproduction? That’s so dinosaur now! Perhaps you will agree with me that until a blackberry joined the arsenal of tools and implements that my palm wine tapper took atop his trees every morning in Isanlu, he belonged in a habitus of tradition governed by those mytho-ritualisms of existence which has led to tensions in the arena of historical discourses and counter-discourses about Africa’s agency. My palm wine tapper sans his blackberry comes from the world we have come to associate with Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart - especially the world as the people of Umuofia knew it before Obierika’s famous metaphor of the rope and the knife - or Birago Diop’s Breath – where we must “listen to things more often than beings” in order to hear the voice of fire, water, wind, and bush.

This is the world of cosmic equilibrium to which the poet persona in Abioseh Nicol’s poem, “The Meaning of Africa”, returns after ironically escaping the world of the cold northern sun which gave my palm wine tapper his blackberry. You will recall that after loving the sophistication of Dakar, Accra, Cotonou, Lagos, Bathurst, Bissau, Freetown, and Libreville, Abioseh Nicol’s poet persona was advised to:

Go up-country, so they said,

To see the real Africa.

For whomsoever you may be,

That is where you come from,

Go for bush, inside the bush,

You will find your hidden heart,

Your mute ancestral spirit.

The story of agency as it relates historically to Africa is easy to narrate from this point. Europe encountered this Africa of “mute ancestral spirits” and “hidden hearts”, called her horrible Conradianly dark names, and proceeded to deny her agency through a series of historical violations and epistemic violence, which bear no rehashing here. As disparate and contested as they have been, Africa’s and her diaspora’s epistemological responses to these violations have been fundamentally about the recovery of agency.

We named these responses Négritude, pan-Africanism, cultural nationalism, decolonization, just to mention those. In the process of articulating these robust responses, Wole Soyinka and Eskia Mpahlele may have gone after Senghor; Ali Mazrui and the Bolekaja troika may have gone after Wole Soyinka who, in turn, went after some of them as neo-Tarzanists; Mongo Beti may have gone after Camara Laye for publication of work not sufficiently anti-colonialist; and Obi Wali may have gone after English-language dead-enders, opening the door for Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s decades-long crusade against Europhonists, I don’t think that anybody would quarrel with my submission that these tensions and disagreements are more or less what the Yoruba would call the multiple roads leading to the same market. That market is the recovery of the self, recovery of agency.

In the stretch of essays and books from “Dimensions of African Discourse” to The African Imagination and, lately, The Négritude Moment, Abiola Irele has done remarkable work mapping the evolution of and the tensions inherent in Africa’s counterdiscourses of self-recovery. Writing from a different philosophical perspective in the essay, “African Modes of Self Writing”, Achille Mbembe takes a somewhat dismissive tack absent from Irele’s work but nonetheless identifies three historical events – slavery, colonization, apartheid – as fundamental to the two currents of discourses and processes of self-recovery that he identifies as central to the question of agency: Afro-radicalism and nativism.

What is interesting for me – and I believe for numerous readers, critics, and followers of Mbembe – are the weaknesses he ascribes to both traditions of discourse in his attempts to problematize them. To Afro-radicalism, he ascribes a “baggage of instrumentalism and political opportunism” and to nativism he ascribes a “burden of the metaphysics of difference”. I wonder what my brother, Adeleke Adeeko, thinks of that particular critique nativism but I digress.

My reading of Mbembe’s essay has shifted over the years from a fundamental disagreement with his characterization and insufficient contextualization of Afro-radicalism and nativism to what I am beginning to think are gaps and silences in his critique of the African imagination. These gaps and silences pertain to the very nature of Africa’s agency even within the ideological politics and the economies of self-recovery in the African text. For we must ask: what sort of agency does Africa really acquire in Négritude and cultural nationalism? I am talking about the version of Africa which Chinua Achebe, Senghor, Birago Diop, Mongo Beti, Ferdinand Oyono, and Abioseh Nicol rescued from Europe’s post-Enlightenment philosophers and colonialist writers. Which agency does Africa acquire in the texts of these shons of the shoil?

Which agency does my palm wine tapper acquire as he moved from Conrad to Achebe? I think his transition is a move from being silent and unspeaking in one textual world to being rescued but spoken for in another textual world. One world gives him to us in body parts, capable only of dialects or incomprehensive babble, tapping a horrible alcoholic brew consumed by lazy natives in irrational quantities, an activity he gets to perform only if he escapes poisonous snakes, lions, and hyenas. Another textual approach restores the cosmic harmony of his world, the ancestral dignity of his work, and treats his product, palm wine, as worthy of the elevated cultural registers and aesthetic apprehension that Africa’s violators would normally reserve for merlot, cabernet sauvignon, or pinot noir.

The flora, fauna, and seasons of his world, especially the palm tree, also become subjects of elevated aesthetic treatment. If, as Adam Gopnik, the Canadian essayist for The New Yorker, assures us in his Massey lectures, the Romantic imagination elevated winter and ice to art and aesthetics, Achebe and his contemporaries would do much more for the world of the palm wine tapper in their attempt to fully restore his agency. Don’t forget that harmattan and even the white froth and foam of palm wine became worthy elements of metaphorical constructions.

But the tapper is still spoken for in and by these texts. In at least one instance, he is upbraided for killing trees in his youthful exuberance. I am thinking here of a different version of the problematic that Linda Alcoff evinces in her well-known essay, “The Problem of Speaking for Others”. Race and gender are weighty dimensions in Alcoff’s treatise on the pitfalls of speaking for the native, the oppressed, or the gendered subject. What happens if Africa is the subject that is spoken for or represented, albeit in the ideological resistance mode of Afro-radicalism and nativism, by the privileged African intellectual, especially the writer?

African feminism’s critique of Négritude’s treatment of African woman and African womanhood provides part of the answer. We must all remember that Mariama Ba and her contempories, writers and critics alike, got tired of Négritude’s constant conflation of Mother Africa and the mothers of Africa. Yet, in the beautiful and memorable lines such as “Négresse, ma chaude rumeur de l’Afrique” and “Femme noire, femme nue”, the Négritude poet actually believed that he was conferring agency on his subject.

In his earlier cited essay, Mbembe approaches this part of the agency question in a manner which allows me to offer possible windows into the dilemmas of representing Africa’s agency by writers in my generation. “Over the past two centuries,” writes Mbembe, “intellectual currents have emerged whose goal has been to confer authority on certain symbolic elements integrated into the African collective imaginary.”

I think my problem as an intellectual arose that morning in Isanlu when a momentary cognitive scission occurred and denied me the ability to “confer authority” on the intrusion of a symbolic element such as a blackberry into the imaginary of palmwine as I used to know it. It was immediately obvious to me that what was happening was beyond what could be explained by the usual recourse to the tradition-modernity binary, with the attendant intimations of how Africa negotiates modernity by gradually appropriating, domesticating, or integrating it within her own orders of experience.

From the top of his palm tree, my palmwine tapper was articulating his own agency and self-representing in ways that are miles ahead of the imaginaries which underwrite my work as a writer and critic. That, I posit, is the problem of African art in the current age of social media and MAC, my acronym for mutually assured communication. The fact that he phoned me from the top of a tree in the bush rattled and unsettled me. What if, God forbid, my Baba Elemu had also recorded videos of himself at work and posted it on youtube as these new possibilities of agency now afford him? What if he tweets his conversation with me from the top of that tree? What if he makes a photo of himself at work the cover of a Facebook page dedicated to tapping? What if… questions, questions, questions.

In a way, I think the writers of Négritude and cultural nationalism, escaped these dilemmas not because they shared coevality – or restored it where it was denied – with the palm wine tapper but because they operated as artists in the age of mechanical reproduction which, as revolutionary as it was, still allowed the possibility of a certain “inert” version of Africa that could be “rescued”, “re-represented”, and “spoken for” in their texts. My second submission is that this inert version of Africa, on behalf of whom Afro-radical and nativist discourses and praxes were articulated, now speaks for itself in ways that perpetually confound art and the imagination. Coping with an Africa which no longer needs your powers of metaphorical mediation to articulate novel forms of agency which have the added power of immediate global circulation is one of the most formidable dilemmas facing the generation of African writers, artists, and intellectuals to which I belong.

Chris Dunton and I have edited some special issues of journals in which we described these new writers, in the case of Nigeria, as the third generation. That description of convenience has been vigorously challenged. My good friend, Abdourahman Ali Waberi, also a keynote speaker in this conference, has famously described that generation of writers as “les enfants de la postcolonie” in the case of our Francophone counterparts. Jacques Chevrier at some point was moving the idea of “migritude writers” but I haven’t followed the critical fortunes of that concept. Thanks mostly to the Nigerian members of this generation who have been winning bucket loads of international literary prizes – I am almost blushing with nationalistic pride here – the work produced by the children of the postcolony is now globally known and is the subject of numerous panels in conferences such as the ALA.

I am thinking of Helon Habila, EC Osondu, and my maternal cousin, Segun Afolabi, who have all won the Caine Prize. There is Chimamanda Adichie and, also, Tricia Adaobi Nwaubani, who did well in the Commowealth competitions. There is Teju Cole, who recently won the Hemingway Prize here in the US. Oprah made the fame of Uwem Akpan and hefty manuscript cheque confirmed Helen Oyeyemi’s arrival on the global literary scene. To these we must add other bright representations of new African writing, especially the novel, such as Binyavanga Wainaina, Monica Arac de Nyeko, Petina Gappah, Leonora Miano, Alain Mabanckou, Abdourahman Waberi, Dinaw Mengestu, Hisham Matar, and Ellen Banda-Aaku, my co-winner of the Penguin Prize for African Writing.

So, we have a cast of writers and a new writing that now whets critical appetites in international conferences. My concern is whether we are paying sufficient attention to the extraordinary dilemmas that these writers face in their attempts to write a continent which now possesses the ability to self-write, self-inscribe, and self-globalize even before the first sentence of your novel, poem, or short story takes shape in your head. How do you write a continent which no longer lies inert to be rescued from misrepresentation? I saw hundreds of responses and counter-discourses from the African street to the Kony 2012 video before Teju Cole and Mahmoud Mamdani offered their famous responses. In Twitter and Facebook years, the writer and the scholar were light years behind the African street. To bring this dilemma back to my point of departure, how should this generation write my blackberry-wielding, self-inscribing palmwine tapper? Reduce palmwine and blackberries to conflicting metaphors and inscribe that conflict in flowery prose? That would be too simplistic.

Besides, there is a second problem. Those who wrote Africa’s agency in the age of mechanical reproduction never really had to deal with new forms of art that competed with and challenged the ontology of their respective mediums of expression. The novel, the short story, the poem, the play, and the painting didn’t have to worry too much about other forms of generic expression emerging at once as evidence of Africa’s new ability to self-represent and also as contending and competing forms of art. This lack of competition, if you ask me, partly accounts for why the scribal form of the African imagination, enjoyed an imperializing prestige over oral forms much to the consternation of colleagues like Karin Barber and Thomas Hale.

Tricia Nwaubani’s excellent novel, I do not Come to you by Chance, sadly, does not enjoy the luxury of not worrying about competition for its ontology as a form of art which seeks to represent a particular reality of post-SAP Nigeria in terms of its local and international dimensions. What do you do if you are writing a novel about what, for want of a better description, we must call Nigeria’s 419 letters and the imaginaries that have now come to be associated with it, only to discover that those letters themselves are now being discoursed and critiqued as art forms on their own terms? Where the 419 letter now stakes a vigorous claim to an ontological identity as art, does a novel which ventures into its territory even merit the description of simulacrum? Which is the art representing what? It is almost now possible to claim that the 419 letter waiting in your mailbox as you listen to my lecture here is art representing the reality that is Nwaubani’s novel. If your head is not spinning yet, please remember that some actors in Africanist scholarship here in North America have been very active in making a case for 419 emails as an art form worthy of critical reflection. I have received at least one solicitation in the past to help evaluate submissions to a planned special issue of a scholarly journal on 419 letters as a literary genre.

As I speak, the same argument is being made for the literary quality and generic integrity of tweets. In Canada, where I am based, the literary establishment seems to have made up its mind that the tweet is a literary work. Now, that’s tricky because it makes every tweeter a potential writer just as a collection of somebody’s Facebook status updates or 419 letters could give us a Nobel Prize for Literature down the road. If you look at the website of Canada Writes where the CBC organizes the prestigious CBC Literary Prizes, you’ll be able to assess the considerable energy devoted to tweets and tweet challenges. Tweet is literature as far as Canada Writes is concerned.

The Nigerian writer, fiery critic, columnist, and cultural commentator, Ikhide Ikheloa, has been screaming himself hoarse about the need for African writing to face these new realities. Like Obi Wali, decades ago, Mr Ikheloa has been making very weighty pronouncements on the future of African writing. And he is arguing, among many pro-social media arguments, that tweets, Facebook updates, and the associated genres of the social media age, would leave African writers behind if we don’t come up with imaginative ways to engage the forms of continental agency which they throw up. The way he sees it, social media is a significant part of the future of African writing and he has been warning that writers in my generation, especially those who remain social media stone agers, are in danger of extinction.

I take Mr. Ikhide’s work extremely seriously and follow him religiously online. You should google him, follow him on twitter, and add his blog to your daily reading. When he is not upbraiding African writers in the new generation for not taking the full measure of the possibilities of the social media revolution for our work, he is making very valid points in terms of the contributions of social media to even our own agency as writers.

Let me explain my understanding of Ikhide’s position. Errors of interpretation would be mine. I think the debate about which audience the African writer ultimately writes for is further complicated for my generation by the mediators who stand between our work and our audiences. A measure of that is how much of Africa we still literally translate or italicize in the actual process of writing. Go to any Nigerian novel and see what happens with registers and diction depicting the actualities of youth experience, counterculture, and postmodern citiness for instance.

Paraga, mugu, maga, yahoozee, aristo, shepe, etc, all capture experiences which the Nigerian writer in my generation italicizes to mark their strangeness and otherness. Yet, Western writers using other Englishes in Britain, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and the United States, don’t always feel compelled to capture local experiences in italics. Just last month, Elizabeth Renzetti, a Canadian columnist writing for the Globe and Mail, had this to say about the extensive registers of drunkenness in England:

"The English have more words for drunk than the Inuit have for snow, perhaps because it is as much part of the landscape. On a given night, you might be bladdered, legless, paralytic or rotten with drink...I thought I'd heard them all until British Home Secretary Theresa May used the phrase "preloaded" on Friday to announce her government's war on binge drinking. Preloading refers to the act of getting hammered before you go out to get hammered - that is stocking up on cheap booze from the grocery store in order to be good and wobbly by the time you hit the bars." - Elizabeth Renzetti

“Bladdered, legless, preloaded – all registers of English drunkenness. Would a British writer in my generation Italicize these experiences specific to his own people in a creative work? You guess is as good as mine. “Stop Italicizing Africa!” Ikhide screams at writers in my generation all the time on Facebook. “Stop writing Africa for your literary agents, publishers, editors, marketers, and Western liberals”, Ikhide screams. Perhaps Ikhide already suspects that there is a reason why Salman Rushdie and Paulo Coelho – more international writers are following their example – have quietly migrated a great deal of their art, celebrity, and mystique to Facebook. “If your handlers insist on an Italicized Africa, take your agency to social media and engage the world freely”, Ikhide screams at African writers.

I hope I am not the only one who takes Ikhide extremely seriously.

I thank you for your time.

Your poem could help the fight against mental illness

2012-04-16T03:01:00.001-07:00

YOUR POEM COULD HELP THE FIGHT AGAINST MENTAL ILLNESS. In 2009, we successfully ran a poetry competition in aid of The Psychiatry Research Trust. The 2012 competition is now open. A third of net entry fees will go to the Trust. You could win one of 5 cash prizes: £150 ($238), £75 ($119), £40 ($63), and 2 x £10($16). This competition is administered by Eastern Light EPM International, organisers of the Excel for Charity International Writing Competition Series. | Fees: £4($6.50)/1, £7.50($12)/2, £10.50 ($17)/3, £12.50 ($20)/4 and £14 ($22.50)/5 poems. Pay securely by PayPal either in GB£ or US$ or enter by post. | Derek Adams judges. | CLOSING DATE: 31st MAY 2012 | http://www.easternlightepm.com/excelforcharity/psychtrust-poetry-competition/

Miles Cain to perform at Cheltenham Poetry Festival

2012-04-14T13:31:00.001-07:00

Here is a message from Miles Cain: I will be performing at Cheltenham Poetry Festival this week. Do come by if at all possible, it would be great to see you. I'll be reading from The Border, playing a couple of tunes and trying out some new poems.

It's a great festival with lots happening. The line-up includes Owen Sheers, Penelope Shuttle, Ash Dickinson, Helen Mort, Helen Ivory, Alison Brackenbury and lots more. The event is on Wednesday April 18th starting at 9.30p.m. and is at The Everyman Other Space Studio, Regent Street, Cheltenham, GL50 1HQ

You can find out more at:

http://www.cheltenhampoetryfest.co.uk and the event is on Facebook here: http://www.facebook.com/events/237142836380354/?ref=ts

The Border can be purchased from Valley Press website: http://www.valleypressuk.com/books/ and some reviews of the book on the Amazon page here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Border-Miles-Cain/dp/095689044X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1334430566&sr=1-1

There's lots of gigs coming up between now and September, some of which are still to be confirmed. Let me know if you'd like me to come and read at your event / festival / reading group / wedding etc. Email: milesinyork@hotmail.com

Here are a few dates coming up. At most, I'll be mixing music and poetry...

Cheltenham Poetry Festival - Wednesday April 18th at 9.30p.m.
Taylor's Cafe and Bookshop, Scarborough - Saturday April 28th at 8.00p.m. FREE.
Leeds Combined Arts, HEART, Headingley - Wednesday May 16th at 7.30p.m.

Teeside University Creative Arts Week - Wednesday May 23rd at 7.30p.m.
Bridlington Poetry Festival, Saturday June 9th - (time TBC - Valley Press event)
York Poetry Society - Friday July 6th - 7.30p.m.

York City Screen Basement Bar - Wednesday July 11th (TBC)

The Family Centre, South Cave - Friday September 28th at 8pm

The Sentinel Newsletter

2012-03-20T09:19:00.001-07:00

Inside this newsletter:

- Let's make a great success of the Sentinel Literary Quarterly Short Story Competition (April 2012)

- Miles Cain judges the Sentinel Literary Quarterly Poetry Competition (April 2012)

- Foreword, Sentinel Champions #9

Let's make a great success of the Sentinel Literary Quarterly Short Story Competition (April 2012)

Our short story competition series began in January 2010 and has been run every quarter since then. These competitions have continued to delight and challenge, yielding many stories that have been described as good, innovative, and excellent. All of the winning stories have also been published in our competitions magazine, Sentinel Champions.

The level of entries have increased with every competition since they were introduced, but we are yet to attain the 150-story target we have set for this competition. We reduced the entry fees for the short stories from £5 to £4, and those who enter 3 stories only pay £10 and 4-story entrants pay just £12.00. We have kept the cash prizes at £150 (first), £75 (second), £50 (third) and 3 x £10 for high commendation. All winning and commended stories also receive first publication in Sentinel Champions magazine, and the authors receive free contributor copies.

We would like to make the April competition a great success and hopefully, with your support, we will smash the 150-story target. This quarter's judge is Kate Horsley, a prize-winning short story writer herself and creative writing lecturer at Lancaster University. Don't forget, every entrant to this short story competition will be entered into a prize draw to win a year's subscription to Sentinel Champions magazine.

To enter online now, visit: http://sentinelquarterly.com/competitions/short-stories-0412/

If you would like to enter by post, send your short stories to:

Sentinel Poetry Movement

Unit 136

113-115 George Lane

South Woodford

London

E18 1AB

Print off ENTRY FORM here.

Miles Cain judges the Sentinel Literary Quarterly Poetry Competition (April 2012)

Our quarterly poetry competition was introduced in July 2009, and has been running with great success since

then. Our last competition poetry competition held in January 2012 judged by Derek Adams attracted 252

poems. Incidentally, the first ever Sentinel Literary Quarterly Poetry Competition was won by Miles Cain. It is

a great honour that he is now judging one of these competitions himself. Miles is a very exciting poet with a

fresh voice. He does know his poetry and has won some great awards for his writing and his new poetry

collection The Border from Valley Press is doing very very well. He also teaches Creating Writing at Leeds

Trinity University College.

Entry fees are still £3 per poem, £11 for 4, £12 for 5, £16 for 7 and £22 for 10. The prizes remain the same at £150 (first), £75 (second), £50 (third) and 3 x £10 for high commendation. All winning and commended stories also receive first publication in Sentinel Champions magazine and the authors receive free contributor copies.

Remember, every entrant to this poetry competition will be entered into a prize draw to win a year's subscription to Sentinel Champions magazine.

To enter online now, visit: http://sentinelquarterly.com/competitions/poetry-0412/

If you would like to enter by post, send your poems to:

Sentinel Poetry Movement

Unit 136

113-115 George Lane

South Woodford

London

E18 1AB

Print off ENTRY FORM here.

Sentinel Champions #9 | February 2012

Foreword

This issue Sentinel Champions is different from others because it features work from not

just the Sentinel Literary Quarterly Poetry and Short Story Competitions July 2011, but also

the winning and highly commended poems from the Sentinel Annual Poetry Competition

2011 (SAPC-11).

Let’s begin the delicious journey with ‘The Maitre d’’ – the first prized short story by Leo

Madigan from our July 2011 quarterly competition. It is a charming tale about Jimmy, a

waiter who wants to make good, live the good life and give Suzie, his girlfriend the time of

her life. Madigan so brings to life the insecurities of the poor stepping into the world of the

rich and famous that we can taste them. But at the end of this story, Jimmy gets to realise

that things are not always what they seem and that he is not alone in the world of

make-believe. A well-accomplished tale with believable characters.

We move straight on to ‘The Causation of the Virgin Mother in a Tipperary Barn’ - the multi-layered poem by Terry Jones, winner of our annual poetry competition £500 first prize. My Catholic-born wife was not at all very pleased with the poem simply on the account of the title. She never read it, but wondered why a poem about sex with the Virgin Mother (thinking Virgin Mary here) in a barn should be so honoured. Having not read the poem myself at the time, I had said, “first of all I don’t think causation means having sex, and in any case, I don’t believe that Virgin Mary ever was at a barn in the Munster area of the Republic of Ireland.” After five readings and I am certain to read this poem some more, I can attest that this poem is a masterfully-crafted, somewhat mischievous brain teaser that ransacks the back garden of physical and spiritual relationships to show how egos in relationships respond to each other’s actions and feelings. There is intimacy here and the beautiful girl in it could be any special one on any given day and it is all highly subject to interpretation. This is how The Causation begins:

O but she was a lovely girl, the shadow in her hair,

and her eye like a glint of water, light on her face,

way she stood with a bend of the hip like a tree

and her head tilted. Pure as a well the leg and lift of her;

light as a blossom on a meadow’s wind,

Then there is Jen Campbell’s ‘The Chicken, The Egg and My Sister’ – third prize winner in the same annual competition. This poems reminds me of the ‘horror’ I feel sometimes that living in England, my son may never feel comfortable slaughtering chicken for Christmas or other festivities as we do in Nigeria. In this poem however, it is all somewhat disturbing and numbingly graphic:

My sister didn't mind killing chickens; it was the killing

of cows that bothered her most.

…

She'd stand on the power-washed patio stones

bleeding the hen’s neck into a milk pail./

…

On Sundays she'd stalk supermarkets,

buy all the beef she could find and re-assemble it.

It is quite possible to think the poetic narrator’s sister in this piece needs a shrink of sorts. A delightfully uncomfortable read.

‘Honesty in Winter’ by Linda Burnett won the annual’s £250 second prize and is a soaring portrait of the vicissitudes of faith and failings and seeking alternative anchors. Clever use of the lunaria – those herbs of Europe also known as Honesty to depict this intangible state of being and believing. Roger Elkin in his adjudication report points to the poem’s study of the tensions between Christianity and Moon worship, and it does appear the moon wins:

Those Coins of Judas tempted us to play, dissect

then carelessly discard their wealth, before

rushing home for tea; our broken faith

essential to reactivate the growth

and resurrect the moon.

The five Highly Commended poems from SAPC-11 also delight, being ‘Turner: Rain, steam and speed’ by Lynn Roberts, ‘From on High’ by Paul Groves, Geraldine Paine’s ‘Her Riley’, Harry Batty’s ‘Goose Green’ and Stephen Dempsey’s ‘On Balance.’

At this point, I invite you to savour the beauty of ‘Children of the Rubble’ – the second prized short story in the July 2011 SLQ competition. This wonderful and highly symbolic piece celebrates emancipation from paranoia and mental incarceration. Here, the children of a drug-whipped former movie star shielded from government goons who would reprogramme their minds as part of a crime prevention experiment, in a rodent-infested home, finally come of age.

You will also smile through ‘Table for Two?’ – Warren Paul Glover’s SLQ July 2011 third prize winning short story, and a chuckle is not going to be out of place here when this story is put side by side with Madigan’s ‘The Maitre d’’. This is a story about infidelity in marriage, in which Peter does his best to give his mistress Fiona, a memorable birthday in the city of love, and fibs to his wife that he would be at a work-related event in Leeds. But Paris holds a nasty surprise for him, where he realises that his sinned-against wife Carol is no angel afterall. The birthday dinner and weekend in Paris goes terribly wrong. Table for Two? will get many cheated women on their feet screaming ‘yes, yes, yes.’ Glover’s story is sparse, very economical and engaging. It leaves the reader at the end writing the next scenes. Some people may have issues with the severally alternating points of view in ‘Table for Two?’ but I can’t shake this feeling that, Glover, being an accomplished playwright has adapted this story from a short play and has kept the scenes as they were.

Were space no object in this magazine, I would certainly have something to say about every winning or commended work published herein. Just quickly, I’d like to say what a great joy it has been to read Jenny Donnison’s beautiful ‘Starlings’ - winner of the SLQ poetry competition (July 2011), about a couple whose relationship is choking on textured silences who take an evening out to see a flock of Starlings showing off against the backdrop of Brighton Beach’s sky. You will find this poem fascinating, from the visual form of it – a rectangular block in the middle of the page, the minimal punctuation and lines running into each other that punches the air out of your lungs. Starlings is a worthy champion poem in the great company of her own other poem ‘Aestivation’ and Richard Halperin’s ‘The River 8’ – the respective third and second prize winners in that competition.

I am particular grateful to our great July 2011 quarterly competition judges; Kachi A. Ozumba (short stories), Bob Beagrie (poetry) and Roger Elkin, judge of the annual poetry competition for the job of finding the winners and commended work that have fed this quarter’s Sentinel Champions magazine. But more, my gratitude goes out to the hundreds of writers who continue to support the Sentinel writing competitions.

This year, we shall be introducing the Sentinel Annual Short Story Competition to be judged by Tears in the Fence editor David Caddy. As usual, we shall be counting on your continued support and participation.

Enjoy SC#9

Nnorom Azuonye

Publisher & Editor

Buy Sentinel Champions #9

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THE SENTINEL NEWSLETTER | PUBLICATIONS | COMPETITIONS | NEWS

2012-03-20T09:15:00.001-07:00

THE SENTINEL NEWSLETTER | PUBLICATIONS | COMPETITIONS | NEWS

Winners in SALA Promotion Emerge

2012-03-13T17:10:00.001-07:00

We have just drawn the lot on the Sentinel Annual Literature Anthology (SALA) and have three winners:

ADURA OJO, ALISON LOCK and KHALID IMAM

Congratulations to the winners. The books will be sent out within 48 hours.

Learn more about SALA at

www.sentinelpoetry.org.uk/sala/

WritersReign 5th Annual Short Story Competition Opens

2012-03-13T13:05:00.001-07:00

'One Moment In Time' is the theme of the fifth Annual Short Story
Competition hosted by WritersReign.co.uk.
Just weave your story around a moment, an incident, a revelation, in your
character's life that dramatically changes things. Whether for good or ill,
it doesn't matter, but remember, as with all our competitions, your story
should leave the reader with that feel-good factor in the end.
The closing date is 30th June 2012, and prizes on offer are: 1st - £100.00;
2nd - £50.00; 3rd - £25.00 plus 3 Highly Commended prizes of £10.00 each.
All winning entries will also be published on the WritersReign web site.
Entry fee: £3.50 for 1 story, £6.00 for two. Payment by PayPal link on site
or by UK sterling cheque or P.O.
Stories should be between 1,000 and 1,500 words. No gratuitous sex or
violence, please.
Entry forms can be downloaded from the web site or received via email.
Email: compentry@writersreign.co.uk
Alternatively send an SAE to WritersReign Competition, 1 Delta Road,
Brentwood Essex CM13 1NG.
Web site: www.writersreign.co.uk/WritersReign-Competition-2012.html

SENTINEL CHAMPIONS #9 NOW SHIPPING

2012-03-12T12:24:00.001-07:00

Winners and commended poems and short stories from the Sentinel Annual Poetry Competition 2011 judged by Roger Elkin, Sentinel Literary Quarterly Poetry Competition (July 2011) judged by Bob Beagrie and Sentinel Literary Quarterly Short Story Competition (July 2011) judged by Kachi A. Ozumba.

Short Stories

LEO MADIGAN - The Maitre d'

JULIA BOHANNA - Children of the Rubble

WARREN PAUL GLOVER - Table for Two?

JOHN PALGREN - Once Upon a Time

BARBARA MAINES BERG - And I Smiled for My Daddy

ANYA CATES - The Pancake Maker's Apprentice

Poems

TERRY JONES - The Causation of the Virgin Mother in a Tipperary Barn

LINDA BURNETT - Honesty in Winter

JEN CAMPBELL - The Chicken, The Egg and My Sister

HARRY BATTY - Goose Green

LYNN ROBERTS - Turner: Rain, Steam, and Speed

PAUL GROVES - From on High

STEPHEN DEMPSEY - On Balance

GERALDINE PAINE - Her Riley

JENNY DONNISON - Starlings

- Aestivation

RICHARD HALPERIN - The River 8

- From the Shore

ANDREAS MARIA AXEL - Black Cat (Tvi-Tvi-Tvi)

ADURA OJO - Four Corners

JV BIRCH - The Cut

GLYN ROBERTS - Fall-Out

- Free Embroidery

TRACEY WARD - Over

JAMIL DHANJI - Full Circle

ELIZABETH HUGHES - Nap Time with My Daughter

MANDY PANNETT - Ambience: A Variation

IRENA POSTLOVA - In-betweeners

ROBIN DAGLISH - Scotland

Judges' Reports

On the SLQ Poetry Competition by Bob Beagrie

On the SLQ Short Story Competition by Kachi A. Ozumba

On the Sentinel Annual Poetry Competition by Roger Elkin

Edited by Nnorom Azuonye

Price: £4.95 (UK), £5.95 (Overseas) Inc P&P

Contributors to this magazine get 1 contributor's copy each but may wish to purchase additional copies @ £3.95 (UK), or £4.95 (Overseas) Inc P&P

Buy now

Sentinel, your partner in the development of literature and visual arts

2012-03-05T02:04:00.001-08:00

Sentinel Poetry Movement aims to build successful partnerships with poets, artists and writers from across the world to create and develop literature and visual arts through publications, fairs and exhibitions, festivals, and film.

Publish your poems, short stories, plays, essays, book reviews, interviews, artworks, and photography in Sentinel Literary Quarterly (Online & Print), Sentinel Nigeria (Online), and Sentinel Champions (Print and eBook, please note poems and short stories in Champions are sourced only through our competitions)
Access our Critique Services – let our consultants work with you to make your work publishing and award/contest-fit.
Win cash prizes in our on-going quarterly and annual poetry and short story competitions. Total prize money in 2012 across our competitions is £4,440.00. www.sentinelquarterly.com/competitions
Buy or subscribe to our magazines; Sentinel Literary Quarterly www.sentinelquarterly.com and Sentinel Champions www.sentinelpoetry.org.uk/champions .
Buy the Sentinel Annual Literature Anthology of poems, short stories and plays edited by Unoma N. Azuah, Amanda Sington-Williams and Nnorom Azuonye. www.sentinelpoetry.org.uk/sala
Join the over 6,000 members of our list. It is our 10th Anniversary year in 2012. We have a few surprises for our list members this year. Join free at www.sentinelpoetry.org.uk/list.html

SENTINEL POETRY MOVEMENT

part of Sentinel Poets, Artists and Writers Network (S.P.A.W.N.)

- The International community of writers and artists…since December 2002.

NEW SENTINEL LITERARY QUARTERLY COMPETITIONS - POETRY & SHORT STORIES

2012-03-01T00:19:00.000-08:00

Closing Date: 5-April-2012. £610 in cash prizes plus publication. Judges: Miles Cain and Kate Horsley. Enter now.

NEW SENTINEL LITERARY QUARTERLY COMPETITIONS - POETRY & SHORT STORIES

SENTINEL LITERARY QUARTERLY POETRY AND SHORT STORY COMPETITIONS (APRIL 2012) NOW OPEN FOR ENTRIES.

2012-02-24T02:14:00.001-08:00

The Short Story Competition for this quarter is judged by Dr Kate Horsley, an award-winning author and Creative Writing lecturer at Lancaster University. Total prize fund of £305.00 plus publishing opportunity. Click here to enter competition now.

The Poetry Competition for this quarter is judged by Miles Cain, an award-winning author The Border and a visiting Creative Writing lecturer at Leeds Trinity University College. Total prize fund of £305.00 plus publishing opportunity.

Click here to enter competition now.

Sentinel Literary Quarterly Short Story Competition (January 2012)–Judge’s Report

2012-02-20T11:06:00.001-08:00

My critical criteria for evaluating the short stories submitted to the Competition consisted of assessing whether there was a grasp of the form and an attempt to say something. I was looking for structure, a clear developmental arc with its attendant desire to test a character and move the reader through literary effects. I was looking for a narrative voice that filtered relevant information and used detail to carry the narrative texture forward and made the reader see and feel beyond. I hoped for an implied story rather than a blob of writing without purpose.

Whilst the overall standard of writing was good, many pieces submitted had no story and were seriously under-developed. This is consistent with the current national state of short story writing. There are many people who do not have a clue what they are doing. There was a lot of structureless prose that could have been made more reader-friendly with some basic story telling craft. A lot of the writing was interesting without challenging the reader. The stories that were aware of the form shone through and held my attention. Other stories seemed random and ill-considered by comparison. A number of stories were unrealized in terms of length as well as structure. They sought to tell and had no story, no action, simply disorganized writing.

The best stories showed the reader and held attention through their narrative force and the gradual filtering of information leading to some form of resolution that forced the reader back to the beginning. The best stories drew the reader into the world and engaged with the reader. They made their world matter and have significance.

I selected Small Town Fever for the First Prize. This first person narrative is completely immersed in the experience of Marcie, who is on the run from her dangerous boyfriend, Jason. The unpredictable narrative moves back and forward and withholds information so that the reader wants to discover more. It is a volatile page-turner. The use of detail is strong throughout and reinforces the edgy, implied and unknown danger. The reader is taken on a journey and the underlying threat is beautifully sustained and understated. It is all implied rather than told and has a great ending.

The Second Prize story, The Difference, is a third person narrative concerning a 61 year-old Lecturer who becomes infatuated with a twenty three year old student. She is full of inner turmoil and becomes disorientated. She talks to herself and when hearing Berlioz, recalls the memory of her first affair with her Professor. She is a serial adulterer that has chosen a lifestyle without a family. Her past life and age catch up with her as it is revealed that the student is not interested in her. However, she is able to put the negatives to good use and writes a poem about being ‘over the hill’ and her unknown desire. A potential crisis is averted and the inner turmoil is put to good use. The story has a classic narrative structure and forces the reader back to the beginning.

The Third Prize went to The Lift, a third person narrative, about a young woman’s attraction for an older man. Angela has difficulty in judging men and the story explores her gut instincts. She is given a lift to Sunday Mass by Eion, who has a hint of danger and an implied past with women. They arrive at the Church, chat and drive back to his farmhouse. Her physical attraction to Eion is implied through the use of detail. The reader is drawn into their physical world of fingers, hands, legs and between the legs. The thrill for Angela of finding an independent and sexually attractive man is sustained through a rapid series of epiphanies that propel the action forward. It is all implied and evoked rather than stated and has a strong ending that allows the reader to see why Angela went in the direction that she did.

The Highly Commended stories included The first time, another adulteress woman story that has a strong developmental arc. Here the woman doubts her behaviour and recalls the loss of her virginity to a married man. She is caught in the repetition of her behavior and desires. The story reveals the physical side of wanting two men and the moral courage, despite worries of betrayal, to make a difficult choice. The story ends with her having both men on the same day. Again all the detail is physical and the reader has a strong sense that this is not a frivolous betrayal but a considered and clear choice. Living in Bleaney’s Room, a first person narrative, reads splendidly when read aloud and would work well on the radio. The narrator’s mutability is thoroughly caught in the voice and its cadences. The story resonates through its rich texture, use of detail and draws the reader into its distinct Welshness. It requires rereading as the texture is rich and sometimes covers the under-developed arc of the story, despite being well under the word limit. Pews For Thought impressed with its narrator’s characterization and the exposition of his contradictions.

Other notable stories are Luck Has Got Nothing To Do With It, a third person narrative, attempts to explore the notion of a luck in a socially dived school world, and Present Clarity, works well with its mostly implied desire of a young woman to become upwardly mobile through transgression. I also admired the innovative approach of Paul in Pictures. Anniversary, A Kind Of Heaven, A Small Cool Evening, The Lighthouse, My Loss and Perfect were all commendable efforts. Congratulations to all the writers.

David Caddy

Tears in the Fence | David Caddy’s Blog

The winning and highly commended stories from this competition will be published in Sentinel Champions magazine #11, August 2012. Subscribe to Sentinel Champions magazine.

Sentinel Literary Quarterly Poetry and Short Story Competitions Results

Results of the Sentinel Literary Quarterly Poetry & Short Story Competitions (January 2012)

2012-02-20T06:51:00.001-08:00

We are pleased to announce the results of the Sentinel Literary Quarterly Poetry and Short Story Competitions for January 2012 judged by Derek Adams (poetry) and David Caddy (short stories)

POETRY

The 3 highly commended poems in no particular order are:

'Still Life' - Simon Jackson

'Passing Over' - Oz Hardwick

'Why Can't You?' - Annette Volfing

Third Prize

'Sugar' - Andy Humphrey

Second Prize

'Captain Nemo's Dinner' - Terry Jones

First Prize

'When a Sound Pretends to Kick a Bucket' - Bob Beagrie

Sentinel Champions Subscription Giveaway

The poet that receives 1 year's free subscription to Sentinel Champions magazine is Tony Sainsbury

SHORT STORIES

The 3 highly commended short stories in no particular order are:

'The First Time' - Sarah Evans

'Living in Bleaney's Room' - Debbie Jay

'Pews for Thought' - Janet Eugenia Lynch

Third Prize

'The Lift' - Shauna Gilligan

Second Prize

'The Difference' - Caroline Clark

First Prize

'Small Town Fever' - Vedrana Mamula

Sentinel Champions Subscription Giveaway

The short story writer that receives 1 year's free subscription to Sentinel Champions magazine is David Frankel

Congratulations to all the winners.

SALA Online Launch: 20-Jan–20-Apr, 2012

2012-01-21T07:03:00.001-08:00

Sentinel Annual Literature Anthology (SALA) is a yearly publication of new poetry, short fiction and plays by SPM Publications - the publishing division of Sentinel Poetry Movement.

SALA 2011

The first book in the SALA series published in November 2011 was edited by Unoma Azuah, author of Sky-High Flames, and Edible Bones (Poems), Amanda Sington-Williams, author of The Eloquence of Desire (Short Stories), and Nnorom Azuonye, author of Letter to God & Other Poems and The Bridge Selection (Plays). The book also features additional poems chosen by Roger Elkin, author of Fixing Things and Blood Brothers, from the Sentinel Annual Poetry Competition (2010) of which he was judge.

Works featured in SALA have been contributed by authors from Hong Kong, Nigeria, the USA, Australia and the United Kingdom among other countries. Here we have an exciting mix of voices dealing with issues from everyday to the unusual.

Authors featured include: Nicholas Y.B. Wong, Byron Beynon, Hajo Isa, Rusyan Sopian, Nsuhoridem Okon, Abigail George, Katie McDermott, Zino Asalor, Nike Adesuyi, Unoma Azuah, Angel Propps, Amanda Sington-Williams, Mel Ross-Macdonald, Jill Richter, Tendai Tshakisani Makavani, Michael Spring, Catherine Smith, Callum Patrick Hughes, Angela Amalonye Nwosu, Nnorom Azuonye, Hannah Lowe, Gary Smillie, Derek Sellen, W.F. Lantry, Christian Ward, Wally Smith, Jane Moreton, Carolyn King, Jonathan Davidson, and Paul Groves.

What's inside? The contents of SALA 2011 and some excerpts are available here >

Launch Promotion!

Win a copy of SALA, and review it for Sentinel Literary Quarterly.

Go to promotion >

January Competitions now closed.

2012-01-21T06:09:00.001-08:00

The Sentinel Literary Quarterly Poetry and Short Story Competitions (January 2012) have now closed. Excellent response once again by writers from across the world.

We are grateful to the channels who regularly help us out with publicity, notably: The Poetry Library, The Poetry Kit, Editors-Writers, Writers Reign, Prize Magic, London Comedy Writers, The Poetry Society of New Zealand, The Poetry Competition Insider, Kudos for Writers, Orbis, JBWB Writing Competitions, First Writer, Just a Contest and Writing Competitions Digest.

The results will be announced on 20th February 2012 at www.sentinelquarterly.com

We would like to thank you all for your continued support of our competitions.

If you took part in this competition and would like to receive the results and judge’s report by e-mail, please join our Mailing List (if you have not already done so) at www.sentinelpoetry.org.uk/list.html

Any queries should be directed to the Competitions Secretary, Sandra Felix competitions@sentinelpoetry.org.uk or the Administrator, Nnorom Azuonye nnorom.azuonye@sentinelpoetry.org.uk

Swale Life Poetry Competition (January 2012)

2012-01-12T14:19:00.001-08:00

Closing Date: 31 January 2012

Details: #5 in the quarterly poetry competition in aid of Diversity House, a charity based in Sittingbourne, Kent, publishers of Swale Life magazine. This competition is for previously unpublished poems in English Language, on any subject, in any style, up to 50 lines long (excluding title). Poems entered must not have been posted to any website or blog, and must not be under consideration for publication, or accepted for publication elsewhere.

First Prize: £100.00, Second Prize: £50.00, Third Prize: £30.00, High Commendation Prizes: 2 x £10.00

First Publication: All prize winners will receive first publication in Swale Life Magazine at www.swalelife.com on 28th February 2012, and will be included in the second Swale Life Anthology to be published in January 2013.

Entry Fees: £3 per poem, £12 for 5 poems. £16 for 7 poems and £22 for 10 poems.

Donations to Charity: A third of net entry fees and all profits from the sale of the anthology will go to Diversity House.

The Judge: Mandy Pannett - author of Frost Hollow.

Competition Administration: Eastern Light EPM International -organisers of Excel for Charity writing competitions series.

Enter online and pay securely by PayPal or print off Entry Form at http://easternlightepm.com/excelforcharity/swale-life-poetry-competition/jan-12/

Cheques/Postal Orders in GB£ payable to:

EASTERN LIGHT EPM INTERNATIONAL

Unit 136, 113 -115 George Lane, South Woodford, London E18 1AB

Sentinel Literary Quarterly Competitions

2012-01-12T14:17:00.001-08:00

SENTINEL LITERARY QUARTERLY POETRY COMPETITION (JANUARY 2012) | CLOSING DATE: 20-JANUARY-2012
For previously unpublished poems in English Language on any subject, in any style, up to 50 lines long (excluding title). Poems submitted must not have been accepted, or currently be under consideration for publication elsewhere and must not be simultaneously entered into another competition. Judge: Derek Adams.
PRIZES: £150 (First), £75 (Second), £50 (Third), £10 x 3 (High Commendation). All winning and commended poems will receive first publication in Sentinel Champions magazine. The authors will each receive 1 free contributor's copy. All entrants to this competition will also be automatically entered into a draw to win 1 year's subscription to Sentinel Champions. 1 poet and 1 short story writer must win the subscription this quarter.
Results will be announced at www.sentinelquarterly.com on 20-Feb-2012
ENTRY FEES: £3/1 poem, £6/2 poems, £9/3 poems, £11/4 poems, £12/5 poems. Cheques/Postal Orders in GB£ to SENTINEL POETRY MOVEMENT, Unit 136, 113-115 George Lane, South Woodford, London E18 1AB
Enter online and pay securely by PayPal or print off Entry Form from website at http://sentinelquarterly.com/competitions/poetry-0112/

SENTINEL LITERARY QUARTERLY SHORT STORY COMPETITION (JANUARY 2012) | CLOSING DATE: 20-JANUARY-2012
For previously unpublished short stories in English Language on any subject, in any style, up to 1,500 words long (excluding title). Stories submitted must not have been accepted, or currently be under consideration for publication elsewhere and must not be simultaneously entered into another competition. Judge: David Caddy.
PRIZES: £150 (First), £75 (Second), £50 (Third), £10 x 3 (High Commendation). All winning and commended stories will receive first publication in Sentinel Champions magazine. The authors will each receive 1 free contributor's copy. All entrants to this competition will also be automatically entered into a draw to win 1 year's subscription to Sentinel Champions. 1 poet and 1 short story writer must win the subscription this quarter.
Results will be announced at www.sentinelquarterly.com on 20-Feb-2012
ENTRY FEES: £4/1 story, £8/2 stories, £10/3 stories, £12/4 stories. Cheques/Postal Orders in GB£ to SENTINEL POETRY MOVEMENT, Unit 136, 113-115 George Lane, South Woodford, London E18 1AB
Enter online and pay securely by PayPal or print off Entry Form from website at http://www.sentinelquarterly.com/competitions/short-stories-0112/

Results of the Sentinel Literary Quarterly Poetry & Short Story Competitions (October 2011)

2011-10-31T15:59:00.000-07:00

October 2011 Results

We are pleased to announce the results of the Sentinel Literary Quarterly Poetry and Short Story Competitions for October 2011 judged by Todd Swift and Adnan Mahmutovic respectively.

POETRY

The 9 commended poems in no particular order are:

'Nearer my God to Thee' - Charlotte Trevella

'Van Eyk's Arnofilni Portrait' - Lynn Roberts

'The Abbot of Bingen' - Brian Nisbet

'Mitigating Things' - Richard W.Halperin

'Silent Days' - Eilidh Thomas

'Atlantis' - Nick Taylor

'An Honourable Outlaw' - Steve Layzell

'Angels of Galway Harbour' Terry Jones

'Losing the Termagant' - GB Clarkson

The 3 highly commended poems in no particular order are:

'Post' - Sharlene Teo

'Nature Walk' - David Paul Jones

'When I Lived in Buenos Aires' - Al McClimens

Third Prize

'Valentine Gift' - David Paul Jones

Second Prize

'Dorothy' - Richard W. Halperin

First Prize

'Madame de Pompadour Considers...' - Lynn Roberts

SHORT STORIES

The 3 highly commended stories in no particular order are:

'Maggie Kelly's Gift' - Nancy Cook

'Going Quietly' - Jane Moreton

'Cztery miesiące / Four months' - Martin Cathcart Frödén

Third Prize

'Third Time Lucky' - Andrew Campbell-Kearsey

Second Prize

'Where the Blue Line Fades' - Alison Lock

FIRST PRIZE

'Swarm' - ALISON LOCK

The winning and commended works listed above will be published in Sentinel Champions #10 in May 2012.

Congratulations to all the winners.

SENTINEL ANNUAL POETRY COMPETITION 2011

Closes 15-November 2011

Judge: Roger Elkin

First Prize: £500

Second Prize: £250

Third Prize: £125

High Commendation Prizes: 5 x £25

Entry fee: £5 per poem. Enter as many poems as you wish.

All winning & commended poems will be published in Sentinel Champions #9 in February 2012.

Results due: 15 December 2011

Enter online and pay securely by PayPal or download entry form at http://www.sentinelpoetry.org.uk/competitions/sapc-2011/

Postal Entries: Please send cheques/postal orders in GB£ only payable to SENTINEL POETRY MOVEMENT together with your poems, entry form or cover note to:

Sentinel Poetry Movement

Unit 136

113-115 George Lane

South Woodford

London

E18 1AB

United Kingdom

_____________________________________________________________________

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Sentinel Literary Quarterly Poetry & Short Story Competitions Results Page

2011-10-31T09:49:00.000-07:00

Lynn Roberts and Alison Lock win the Sentinel Literary Quarterly Poetry & Short Story Competitions (October 2011)
Sentinel Literary Quarterly Poetry & Short Story Competitions Results Page