The Sentinelle

SLQ POETRY & SHORT STORY COMPETITIONS, MARCH 2013 – RESULTS

2013-04-30T06:47:00.001-07:00

Results of the Sentinel Literary Quarterly Poetry & Short Story Competitions (March 2013) were both scheduled for announcement today, April 30th, however the short story results are not yet in. The judge, Kate Horsley, needs a further week to complete the adjudication process. Therefore the short story results will be announced on Thursday, 9th May. Find below the results of the Poetry Competition judged by Oz Hardwick.

SENTINEL LITERARY QUARTERLY POETRY COMPETITION (MARCH 2013) – RESULTS

COMMENDED POEMS

Rebecca Bilkau - A Blue Dancer Speaks

Nick Pemberton - Cage Wrestling for Dummies

Roger Elkin - Elemental

Andy Fawthrop - Hare

Eileen Carney Hulme - Impossible Now

Gill McEvoy -Revival Meeting, North Carolina

Mark Totterdell - Sidwell Street

David William Clemson -Theorists in Context

Simon Jackson –Unborn

HIGHLY COMMENDED

Rebecca Bilkau - At Sea

Julie Mellor - House of Thorns

Simon Collings - Four more ways of looking at a blackbird

WINNERS

3rd Prize: RICHARD ORMROD - Letter to the Grim Reaper

2^nd Prize: BILL LYTHGOE - I Remember

1^st Prize: JIM BENNETT - in the car park of the Ponderosa Café

JUDGE’S REPORT, SENTINEL LITERARY QUARTERLY POETRY COMPETITION (MARCH 2013)

By OZ HARDWICK

Judging a competition is always an education, revealing a unique cross-section of what is popular and what isn’t amongst poets. Perhaps it’s the omnipresence of Brian Cox on our television screens, but astronomy supplied by far the most popular source of metaphors amongst entries: there were galaxies and constellations everywhere, some of which spiralled into the final fifteen. On the other hand, if there’s one thing that seems to be losing popularity, it’s punctuation. I confess to being more than a little concerned about this. Whilst the winning poem manages to defy the page’s gravity and balance words perfectly on the page without the use of comma, full stop or safety net, so many entries seemed to be the product of either not understanding what punctuation does or simply not bothering. If words are the scaffolding upon which we support meaning, punctuation is the nuts and bolts, and it takes a very deft engineer to keep the scaffolding aloft without them. Too many of the entries collapsed into heaps of words and images, their relationships to each other poorly delineated.

Rhyming verse is apparently still out of favour, and few of the rhymed entries were confident or adventurous. This said, the subtle rhythms of free verse was often a joy to experience. Unlike a song lyric, a poem has to contain its own music, and there was much to enjoy, not only in the short-list, but in a number of poems which didn’t quite make the final cut. And there were a number of strong poems which didn’t end up amongst the commendation – the long-list took a couple of weeks of jostling in the pack before the leaders started to separate themselves and pull ahead.

So, what about those final six? ‘Four more ways of looking at a blackbird’ appeals because it engages with ‘the canon’ in a way that is witty and personal, particularly in the third stanza (although on my copy I have compulsively added a comma after the first line). A fresh exercise that punches slightly above its weight.

First lines are important, and ‘House of Thorns’ had me from its opening phrase. Throughout, the prosaic scratches against the folkloric to create an uncomfortable thrill until it closes with that wonderful ‘sound like knuckles cracking’. Would I change anything? Well, the arrows are not as strong a simile as the sharks’ teeth, but it’s only a slight dip in this tight, spiky poem.

‘At sea’ is another tactile delight. Read it aloud and enjoy the taste of the words: ‘it ebbs from the quick, sharp sand while rock pools // spume with caught stars.’ In a poem that provides an object lesson in where to break lines, I particularly liked this extended breath between stanzas.

In third place, ‘Letter to the Grim Reaper’ is another deceptively simple poem which is nonetheless beautifully controlled. This is one of those poems that at first glance seems like a prose passage chopped into neat lengths, but then the rhythms kick in, the long, stretching sentence pulling against the short line structure, while the rhymes bob to the surface, steer the sense onward, before it all comes to that flat, colloquial – and hopeless – utterance.

‘I Remember…’ is an altogether different poem of endings. The subject could be mawkish, but the first-person address and lack of pleading – even in that cold closing statement – render this intensely moving. The way thoughts lose their moorings, elide with reminiscences and asides, is utterly convincing. Yet, as with the third-place poem, the effect of plain speech is the result of carefully controlled rhythms, balanced lines and, in this case, quite disturbing patterns of repetition.

To hark back to my opening remarks, ‘in the car park of the Ponderosa Café’ is a poem that doesn’t need punctuation, each word pinned with precision to the white field. It gives us just enough. There is nothing fussy, from the opening catalogue of hikers’ equipment to the ‘few trees’ of the final stanza, yet the action is all happening between these concrete details. The inevitability of abandonment makes us return immediately to the start of the poem to look for clues, and to sketch in our own details. It was, I admit, a close call, but this is the poem that has haunted me when I’ve turned my mind to other things, and for that reason it gets the first prize.

- Oz Hardwick

Congratulations to the winners and commended poets. We shall be contacting all winners within 7 business days with their notifications of achievement and for publication permissions. If you are a winner or commended author in this competition and for any reason you have not received mail from us within 7 business days of this announcement kindly get in touch by writing to competitions@sentinelpoetry.org.uk

SLQ Poetry & Short Story Competitions, March 2013 update

2013-04-04T21:51:00.001-07:00

The Sentinel Literary Quarterly Poetry and Short Story Competitions, March 2013 judged by Oz Hardwick and Kate Horsley respectively are now in the adjudication stage. Results will be announced on the 30th of April in The Sentinel and also on the results page of the Sentinel Literary Quarterly Competitions site.

Sentinel Literary Quarterly Poetry Competition (December 2012), Judges Report & Results

2013-02-28T19:17:00.001-08:00

Judge’s Report by Noel Williams

I thought it was going to be easy. One poem jumped out at me early on, clearly making a claim as a winner. It stayed close to the top of the pile pretty much throughout the exercise. “Just two more like that”, I thought, “and my job here is done.”

No such luck.

The problem with judging poetry is that you’re comparing apples with chairs. On the one hand here is a heartfelt, confessional lyric which the poet has clearly agonised over writing but paid little attention to the music of language. On the other here is a deftly crafted villanelle, perfectly formed, exquisitely structured but pretty much lacking any real emotion. Then there’s a witty piece of absurdism that makes me smile each time I read it, though no-one’s going to claim it has any serious purpose. Whereas this delicate lyric drawn straight from natural observation is accurate, intense, particular, yet entirely descriptive.

Some things make better poetry, some worse. A surprising number of entries have small weaknesses. Let’s remove those that have clear defects: forced rhymes, unnecessary syllables introduced to pad rhythms, archaic vocabulary, clichéd expressions or ideas, images so extreme they’re merely intended to shock, even errors of grammar, punctuation, spelling - I’m quite surprised by the lack of proofreading in some cases, though I know mistakes can happen (I once submitted a poem about oranges that had the word “peal” instead of “peel” in three different lines. It didn’t win.)

By being brutally unfair to some poems I pare the total down to around 60. Each of these has something in it that works for me, something I’m attracted by. Now let me simply focus on the poems I especially like. Why do I like them? What is the particular attraction? Do they sustain it completely from beginning to end? This one starts well, but loses its way. That one has some wonderful imagery then stumbles with a vague ending. This one over here has some lovely lines within it, but the poem doesn’t seem to have any overall direction. Here’s one of the most powerful images I’ve seen in a long time, but does the rest of the poem really offer much more?

This is not easy at all. But, eventually, after nearly two weeks of going round in circles, finding different virtues, putting poems aside then reconsidering them, I’m finally, down to fifteen contenders.

Of these, the poems I’d like to commend are these:

“Night Waves” creates a soft pattern of gentle images and gentle sounds. I like the way the poem breaks a relatively conventional rhythm with unusual, even awkward, line breaks (on “the” and “at”, for example) which, for me, creates an echo of the arrhythmia of the sea.

In “The Window” we’ve a relationship very frequently found in poetry, that of patient and carer. Usually the poet’s voice is that of the carer observing the decline of their loved one. In this poem, this is inverted, with the voice of a patient contemplating her or his exit, in a voice that is tentative, barely heard and almost entirely dependent on the kindness of others.

“Singing” seems at first like another sad carer and patient poem, as it begins that way, but it makes a clever sideways move a third of the way in, using the idea of reading an alternative lifeline in the patient’s palm to imagine a happier life, with rather different seminal moments: “this time you open/the letter he sent after the argument”. I enjoy the way this poem simultaneously is upbeat, in the imagined life it relates, and yet full of regret, because that positive tale concerns the life that got away.

“Lumber Room at the Twilight Hotel” uses the sustained imagery of old furniture for people in their latter days. The sustained imagery is wonderful in its concreteness and detail, though the parallels perhaps could be more fully drawn out.

“Grandmothers in the Garden” focuses on an unusual vision of “dark-clothed grandmothers/performing tai chi” in a Beijing street. We get glimpses of a lively, happy, city, where the idea of dance seems to permeate the air. I particularly liked here “The grandmothers look up and wave/and I want wings” because of the ambiguity of “want”. It simultaneously seems to mean both “I lack” and “I desire”, at one and the same time both setting the observer apart and offering them an aspiration.

“An Exercise for a Writing Group” seems a perfectly ordinary poem - in fact, it is almost prosaic - until an unexpected ending leaps out of nowhere: “tendrils/rise from cloud/south of the A66/and I dream/I can see the kraken.” I couldn’t shake that surprising image, so had to have this poem in my list.

“Rise and Fall” attracted me with its opening: “We listen to Debussy all afternoon/and to the yawn of saws in the shop downstairs”. The setup of a mini-story in these two lines is succinct, and the combination of Debussy’s music and the interference of the saw-noise, conveyed through the musicality of the lines themselves, was one of those openings that stayed in my mind through all the readings. The poem conveys a particular Sunday afternoon very well, and manages also to suggest something deeper in its account of balloons which eventually “drift away from each other”. I think this poem might have been even higher in my estimation if it hadn’t opted for a rough and ready rhyme scheme which seems rather oddly applied.

“Things you should be able to talk about without politics intruding” is arguably not even a poem. Can a simple list be a poem? (Poets do like to debate the most peculiar things). I like it because it is simply wonderfully absurd and, along the way, the oddity of the collisions of the items in its list prompts the occasional equally surprising thought, as in “Peanuts: dry roasted versus salted/Grief, gallstones”. Here triviality and profundity rub shoulders. One thing that poetry can do which few other art forms can match is to jostle ideas together in a way which prompts thoughts you might never otherwise have had (or perhaps wanted!)

“Pay Attention” is also a strange little poem, a quirky love poem, I think. I’m not sure that I quite understand it, but that’s actually one of the things I like about it. A poem which somehow works on you without you quite knowing why can be something of a find. Clearly at its heart is a series of wonderfully odd and tender images: “I will set loose my memories of you/on the wind. No one will hear them pass.”

Of the Highly Commended poems, “This need of foxes” is starkly pessimistic in the way it combines closely observed fox imagery with the more apocalyptic ideas the fox-cry brings to mind: “a need, a moaning desire”, seemingly animal and human in “this need of foxes coming together”. This poem is peppered with excellent effects, such as the dynamic movement of the creatures reflected in the shifts of language and sometimes wonderful phonic effects, as in “their terracotta pelt with welted black/ on their backs”. This might have been a prizewinner, except for my feeling that it somewhat overeggs the pudding in the very last line.

“Journeys” is evocative, clever, lyrical, very well crafted, witty, with each word precisely selected for its purpose but slightly spoiled in my mind by the need for a footnote. I’d rather poems stood on their own two feet, and this one could have, I think.

“The Rescue” offers images of struggle and survival, getting through “the month/of the hunger”. This poem is particularly good at choosing images which in themselves are ordinary but have been transformed to express struggle. For example, “ice in huddled puddles” (I enjoyed the internal rhyme here, too) or “The veins are obvious on everything”, where “veins” are at once a symbol of life, of blood, of healthy leaves, and yet, in being so “obvious” are unnaturally prominent, pronounced, as if tense, tight, fighting.

I found the hardest part of judging I found was to decide which of the poems jostling in the Highly Commended category really deserved second or third place. (First place, I realised, had been settled very early on, almost without me realising it.)

Third place eventually fell to “Scaling the Mountain” a poem in terza rima. I was partly attracted by the deft way this form is handled, particularly in rhymes such as “helter-skelter/Delta/swelter” and “upsetting’s/spaghetti/confetti”. However, it’s the overall movement of the poem that I found most compelling, as it builds detail and story to a climactic image of swallows enslaved by freedom. I’m not sure it works quite as perfectly as it might at the end, because it seems to overplay its hand a little, but the core conceit of tourists themselves being the instruments of the misery they come to witness is a powerful one, and the final ambiguities of smiles that might be forced, serene, happy, sardonic, hypercritical or much more seemed rich with undercurrents of meaning to me.

“Listen” achieved second place because it was the best example of a tight, pared-down lyrical poem among the one hundred and sixty eight poems submitted. But what particularly lodged it in my mind were the lines “place my fingers/in the memory of yours” a beautifully elegant summary of both the physical and metaphorical, which at the same time tells us something about a relationship and something about loss. The intimacy of the moment captured here is excellently conveyed through suggestion rather than statement – the poem works as much due to what is left out as what is included, which is a difficult trick to get right.

“Late May” was pretty much top of my list from first reading. It’s a sonnet, which makes it a risk in a competition – some judges hate traditional forms, and it is difficult to pull off such a well known form in a way which offers something new or is otherwise interesting. Sonnets tend towards the “safe”, the rounded sentiment, the pre-packaged idea. But this poem has sensitivity and subtlety, as well as a poet willing to take a bit of a risk (perhaps to grab the judge’s attention – if so, it worked) – how many times have you seen “wisteria” set up for a rhyme, for example (it’s rhymed here with “hysteria”) or compared with “an ex-wife’s compliment”? There’s much subtlety in this poem. This link of the wisteria, for example, as an image of middle-class contentment, with hysteria, and both together with the “ex-wife” is an instance of how several threads are wound together, yet none of them in an obvious or heavy-handed way. We get the sense of a depressed middle-aged speaker, of a failed relationship, a marriage gone sour, of a poet who, both desires and dreads to be alone, isolated, perhaps, by her or his own comforts who has perhaps even driven her or his partner way. Yet this is all done in pretty simple language, as in the final couplet:

“The ice-cream tune of someone else’s phone
chimes bleakly out, cuts off, leaves me alone.”

The ice-cream tune is at once a snide note which tells us the speaker is perhaps a little snobbish, a little “above” such things, and also a hearkening to a lost life, ice-cream being an innocent, perhaps lost, pleasure, a childhood gratification. The phonecall is necessarily someone else’s: the speaker knows it’s not for them, because the speaker knows there’s no-one who will bother to ring, suggesting people lost, one way or another. The chimes are bleak, almost oxymoronically, with their false brightness and optimism. The phone cuts off as the speaker is cut off. And then, the speaker is left alone. He wants to be left alone. He gets his wish. He seems to deserve all he gets.

The succinctness and suggestiveness of such devices is little short of brilliant. A superb piece of work and very worthy winner.

The results

Commended

Bryan Marshall - Night Waves

Alyn Fenn – The Window

Maeve Henry – Singing

Linda Burnett – Lumber Room at the Twilight Hotel

Idore Anschell – Grandmothers in the Garden

Alan Nolan – An Exercise for a Writing Group

Victoria Kennefick – Rise and Fall

Richard Schwartz – Things you should be able to talk about without politics intruding.

Frank Dullaghan – Pay Attention

Highly Commended

Roger Elkin – This Need of Foxes

Daniel Knibb – Journeys

Victoria Kennefick – The Rescue

Third Prize:

Tim Ellis – Scaling the Mountain

Second Prize:

Celia Baines – Listen

First Prize:

Daniel Knibb – Late May

SENTINEL LITERARY QUARTERLY SHORT STORY COMPETITION (DECEMBER 2012) – JUDGE’S REPORT

2013-02-28T16:56:00.001-08:00

There are many ways of writing a short story, but whatever its form, ideally there should be a journey and a change for your chosen protagonist. Good writing is a given, but I like a story to have Character, Plot, Conflict and Conclusion and not be just a mood piece or an incident. There are, of course, many excellent short stories that don’t include all these elements, but personally, I look for an opening that grabs me from the start, characters I can empathise with and a storyline that carries me through to a satisfying conclusion. I also like an unusual subject that can take me into a different world and show me something new. There’s nothing wrong with stories about families and broken relationships, but competitions get a lot of them and a story that’s a bit different can go a long way.

I enjoyed reading these stories very much and deciding on winners wasn’t easy. When judging previous competitions, I have been able to set some aside immediately as being of very poor quality, but I was pleased to find that these stories were thoughtfully-written, literate and obviously cared-for. I hesitate to mention that they were also of a high standard of grammar and spelling, but rightly or wrongly, bad presentation can put a judge off.

However, there were a few errors that could have been avoided with careful vetting – it’s always good to get someone else to read it first.

First of all, the mood pieces. Beautifully written, in many cases, but without incident, characterisation, conflict or conclusion. I would get to the end and think, ‘What has this writer told me?’ Perhaps a turn in the events or a conflict would have provided the force to drive it along.

Next, there were the ones that wouldn’t get off the ground and spent the first page on exposition and flashback, instead of getting on with the story. You only have a limited number of words, so use them wisely. Short stories happen in the here and now. Life histories are for the novel.

Far too many had no dialogue. Even some of the winners didn’t. For me, dialogue is essential. A short story is a little drama and characters should speak to each other. Dialogue can do so much to convey the nature of characters and the interaction between them, and speech enlivens the page.

Finally, although I didn’t penalise for this, I would like to have seen more writers indenting their paragraphs. White space is important for the look of a page and denseness gives a stodgy appearance to what might otherwise be an excellent story.

The pieces I eventually chose were relatively ‘simple’. They were well-written, they didn’t obfuscate with over-flowery language, they told the story, and in a couple of cases they raised a little smile.

All three main prize winners had strong characters, conflict and conclusion.

First prize went to 'The Butcher', a great piece of Grand Guignol, slightly reminiscent of 'Fried Green Tomatoes At The Whistle Stop Cafe'. The writer got straight into the story and held my attention throughout with terse and characterful language right to the grisly, yet satisfying, conclusion.

Second prize: The writer of the very entertaining 'The War of the Apricots' chose an original subject, and followed it through with gusto. I slightly lost sympathy for a man who, even if he was under extreme pressure, could batter squirrels, but it was strongly written with a pleasingly ironic end.

Third prize: 'The Last Revolution', a tense post-apocalypse story of betrayal. This was a very visual, cinematic story which got straight into the situation, leaving explanations till later.

Highly commended.

For the final three, I chose 'The Trapper' for its interesting subject, very real sense of being there, and an ending that took me by surprise, 'Iceman' for its arresting opening and sense of other-ness, and 'A Funeral' for its delicate surgery on a relationship and oblique finale.

All the writers are to be congratulated on a very high standard of work.

- Clare Girvan

SENTINEL LITERARY QUARTERLY SHORT STORY COMPETITION (DECEMBER 2012) RESULTS

1st Prize - The Butcher by Daniel Knibb

2nd Prize - The War of the Apricots by Marie Gethins

3rd Prize - The Last Revolution by Daniel Knibb

Highly Commended -

The Trapper by James Collett

Iceman by Paul Saville

A Funeral by Brindley Hallam Dennis

Christian Ward, why we are not joining the mob

2013-02-20T19:56:00.001-08:00

In January 2013 there was shock and widespread condemnation of Christian Ward for using parts of Helen Mort’s poem without permission. His reputation as a growing poet of note became quickly shredded to nothingness and his name spat at and words like plagiarist, and thief have been used to describe him. It would seem that his career as a poet is well and truly over unless he is able to, in the due course of a couple of years manage to rehabilitate himself with the support of editors who might be willing to give him a chance.

Since that unfortunate exposure of Ward’s bad behaviour regarding Mort’s poem, we at Sentinel have been under a lot of pressure by individuals claiming to be investigating Christian Ward. Generally these people want us to send them copies of our magazines and book in which Ward’s poems appear so that they may check the texts for possible plagiarism. Quite a few Ward poems are accessible free of charge on our site, but we have no intention or budget of sending books and magazines free of charge to these self-appointed Christian Ward investigators.

We have checked Ward’s poems in Sentinel publications ourselves and are satisfied that they are his original work. However we may not be 100% right as there is no way we could possibly check every publication in the world. Therefore if in due course one of his poems we have published is found to be copied from some other poets’ work, we will make a note of that on our site.

In the meantime, there is no plan for us to issue a public condemnation of the poet. Some people have written to say that we should name and shame him as a plagiarist, remove his name from our website as the winner of the Sentinel Annual Poetry Competition 2010, make him refund his prize money and upgrade the runners-up. This is a ridiculous demand and we have no intention of doing that. Nobody has established that his winning poem, ‘Filming the Beheading of Daniel Pearl’ was stolen, there is no reason to go that far. This poem has also since been published by by Fuselit.

At Sentinel we shall not be joining the mob to drive the final nails into Ward’s poetic coffin. His behaviour regarding Mort’s poem has been quite baffling, but he has admitted he was wrong and he has apologised. While we will not go out of our way to join in the destruction of this young man, if there is proven evidence of wrongdoing in any of our publications, we will deal with it accordingly.

Administrator, Sentinel Poetry Movement

Have you registered to attend the SPM London Book Launch?

2013-02-14T05:51:00.001-08:00

On the 9^th of March, 2013 SPM Publications, the publishing division and primary imprint of Sentinel Poetry Movement will hold a presentation and launch of some books we published in 2012. The books are:

1. Marking Time by Roger Elkin

2. The Bridge Selection by Nnorom Azuonye

3. Letter Home & Biafran Nights by Afam Akeh

4. All the Invisibles by Mandy Pannett

5. Sentinel Annual Literature Anthology 2012

The event will be held at the Waterloo Action Centre, 14 Baylis Road, London SE1 7AA. The venue is just 3 minutes’ walk from Waterloo Station. There is also ample metered parking around the venue.

Admittance is completely FREE of charge, however pre-registration is required due to the limited spaces available.

ARE YOU FEELING LUCKY?

How would you like to win 1, 2, 3, 4 or all 5 books to be launched on the 9^th of March? We have a raffle to be drawn on that day. It is just £2.50 per raffle ticket. By buying a raffle ticket, you not only give yourself a chance to win these books, but you also support the work of Sentinel Poetry Movement.

Please note: You may buy a raffle ticket even if you cannot attend the event. If you win, we will send you the signed books free of charge to any address in the world.

FREE event tickets and the raffle tickets are available at: http://spmbooklaunch0313.eventbrite.co.uk/#

SPM BOOK OF THE MONTH – FEBRUARY 2013

The SPM Book of the Month (February 2013) is Mandy Pannett’s ‘All the Invisibles’. This seminal poetry collection has received excellent reviews and has excited poetry lovers in the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada and Nigeria where those who have bought it are recommending it to their friends.

Throughout February All the Invisibles will be delivered to United Kingdom addresses without any delivery charges whatsoever. International orders will receive £1.50 off delivery charges and all buyers will receive FREE pdf versions of Sentinel Literary Quarterly magazine issues Jul-Sept 2012 and Oct-Dec. 2012 (2 issues).

To learn more and to buy All the Invisibles today visit http://www.sentinelpoetry.org.uk/publications/alltheinvisibles/index.html

SENTINEL COMPETITIONS

Closing March 31, 2013

Sentinel Literary Quarterly Poetry Competition

(March 2013)

Judge: Oz Hardwick

Prizes: £150, £75, £50, and 3 x £10

Publication: In Sentinel Literary Quarterly Magazine.

Fees: £4 per poem, £7/2, £9/3, £11/4, £12/5, £16/7 £22/10

Enter Competition Here

Closing March 31, 2013

Sentinel Literary Quarterly Short Story Competition

(March 2013)

Judge: Kate Horsley

Prizes: £150, £75, £50, and 3 x £10

Publication: In Sentinel Literary Quarterly Magazine.

Fees: £5 per story, £8/2, £10/3, £12/4

Enter Competition Here

Sentinel Nigeria All-Africa Poetry Competition 2013

Closing Date: 28-Feb-2013

Theme: Open

Length: 50 lines maximum (Excluding title)

Prizes: N35,000 (1st), N20,000 (2nd), N10,000 (3rd), N4000 x 3 (High Commendation).

Fees: N450 / £2.50 per poem

Publication: Yes. In Sentinel Nigeria Magazine

Judge: Chiedu Ezeanah

Enter online or by post here.

Sentinel Nigeria All-Africa Short Story Competition 2013

Closing Date: 28-Feb-2013

Theme: Open

Length: 1500 words maximum (Excluding title)

Prizes: N35,000 (1st), N20,000 (2nd), N10,000 (3rd), N4000 x 3 (High Commendation).

Fees: N450 / £2.50 per story

Publication: Yes. In Sentinel Nigeria Magazine

Judge: Judge Dibia

Enter online or by post here.

Mandy Pannett’s All the Invisibles is SPM Book of the Month

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In November 2012 SPM Publications published a brilliant poetry collection, All the Invisibles by prize-winning poet Mandy Pannett.

All the Invisibles is the Sentinel Poetry Movement book of the month and throughout February 2013 there will be absolutely NO DELIVERY CHARGES in the UK and international buyers will receive £1.50 off delivery charges. Every buyer will also receive FREE pdf versions of the Sentinel Literary Quarterly magazine July-September and October-December 2012 issues.

Reviews of All the Invisibles:

Light is threaded through Mandy Pannett's poems, along with a tantalising sense of individuals captured momentarily in many different landscapes, among them, the artists, Durer, Seurat, Monet and Ravilious.

Her language is visual and athletic with metaphor, she's drawn to lost traditions and phrases and brings them into the present with a playful sense of inquiry.

This book moves through a range of emotional states - all of them bittersweet: melancholy, change, curiosity - but Pannett is spare with words and her lines feel charged as a result. Expect to be startled by the images she creates, intrigued and excited by her talent for description and the insights her poems offer you, like delicious, rare fruit.

- Jackie Wills

"Mandy Pannett's poetry is varied, original, magical and full of surprises."

- Susan Skinner

In Pannett's All the Invisibles "The lyrical is always hovering, but if she does bring daisies she makes us work for it...Mythological and historical themes broaden the rhythms ... "

- Paul Matthews.

"Mandy Pannett brings a host of figures from bible, myth and history to brief but vivid life. They step out of the Bayeaux tapestry, from Shakespeare's plays, classical and Norse myth,

along with beasts - hares, horses, foxes, flies - and are fleetingly illuminated, for the most part in free verse, but there are also sonnets and terza rima, before retreating once again into their shadowy worlds."

- Gabriel Griffin

To buy a copy or more of All the Invisibles, go to http://www.sentinelpoetry.org.uk/publications/alltheinvisibles/buy.html

Sentinel Literary Quarterly Poetry Competition (March 2013)

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Closing Date: 31-March-2013

For original, previously unpublished poems in English Language on any subject, in any style, up to 50 lines long (excluding title). Poems entered should also not be entered into another competition running at the same time. Poets of all nationalities living in any part of the world are eligible to enter.

Prizes: £150 (First), £75 (Second), £50 (Third), £10 x 3 (High Commendation).

Publication: The winners and commended poems will receive first publication in Sentinel Literary Quarterly magazine.

Fees: £4/1 poem, £7/2 poems, £9/3 poems, £11/4 poems, £12/5 poems, £16/7 poems, £22/10 poems.

Judge: Oz Hardwick

Enter online and pay securely by PayPal or download an Entry Form for postal entry at:

http://sentinelquarterly.com/competitions/poetry/

Send Cheques/Postal orders payable to SENTINEL POETRY MOVEMENT with poems, Entry Form or Cover Note to Sentinel Poetry Movement, Unit 136, 113-115 George Lane, South Woodford, London E18 1AB, United Kingdom.

SLQ Short Story Competition, March 2013

2013-02-04T05:25:00.001-08:00

Dr Kate Horsley returns to judge this quarter's Sentinel Literary Quarterly Short Story Competition closing 31st March, 2013.
Prizes: £150 (1st), £75 (2nd), £50 (3rd) and 3 x £10 (high commendation) learn more and enter now at:
http://www.sentinelquarterly.com/competitions/short-stories/index.html

Sentinel Nigeria All-Africa Poetry & Short Story Competitions 2013

2013-02-04T02:12:00.001-08:00

24 Days left to enter the Sentinel Nigeria All-Africa Poetry & Short Story Competitions 2013
Who can enter?: All African writers, professional or amateur, living anywhere in the world.
Poems and stories will be judged blind. Let your work speak for itself.
Prizes in each category:
First: N35,000.00
Second: N20,000.00
Third: N10,000.00
High Commendation: N4,000.00 x 3
Entry fees: N450 (£2.50) per poem or Story.
Closing date: 28/February/2013
Judges: Chiedu Ezeanah (Poems), Jude Dibia (Stories)
www.sentinelnigeria.org/online/competitions

REGISTER TODAY FOR THE SPM PRESENTATION & LAUNCH OF 5 BOOKS

2013-02-01T04:49:00.001-08:00

ONLY 32 PLACES LEFT. REGISTER TODAY FOR THE SPM PRESENTATION & LAUNCH OF 5 BOOKS
Nnorom Azuonye's The Bridge Selection - Poems for the Road (Second Edition)
Afam Akeh's Letter Home & Biafran Nights.
Roger Elkin's Marking Time.
Mandy Pannett's All the Invisibles
and the Sentinel Annual Literature Anthology 2012 edited by Nnorom Azuonye, Unoma Azuah and Amanda Sington-Williams.

Come and be a part of this event and experience reading from the books and interact with the authors.

Gate: FREE
Date: Saturday, 9th March 2013
Venue: Waterloo Action Centre, 14 Baylis Road, SE1 7AA. (across the road from the Old Vic)
Time: 3pm to 6pm

The venue is very easy to access - just 2 minutes from Waterloo Station. There is ample metered parking on The Cut and neighbouring streets.

Need help on the way, call 07812 755 751
http://spmbooklaunch0313.eventbrite.co.uk/#

Results and Adjudication Reports, Sentinel Annual Poetry and Short Story Competitions 2012

2013-01-19T15:45:00.001-08:00

We are pleased to announce the results of the Sentinel Annual Poetry and Short Story Competitions 2012.

These competitions closed on the 30^th of November 2012 and the judges have stated that the quality of entries was particularly very high. Because of this level of participation we have decided to recognise more poems and stories than we had originally advertised.

We were initially going to have just three winners (1^st, 2^nd & 3^rd) and five Highly Commended authors in each category, and the winning poems and stories were to be published in the Sentinel Literary Quarterly magazine.

What we have done instead is to have in Poetry category, 12 Commended, 5 Highly Commended, and the top three winners.

In short story category we have 5 Commended, 5 Highly Commended and the 3 top winners. The judge felt very strongly about 2 other stories which have received special mentions.

The other change is that instead of publishing the winners in Sentinel Literary Quarterly magazine, we propose to collect these 20 poems and 15 short stories in a winners’ anthology to be published in the Summer of 2013 by SPM Publications.

Here are the results and adjudication reports by the judges.

1.0. RESULTS: SENTINEL ANNUAL POETRY COMPETITION 2012

Commended (in no particular order)

Please note: Commended poems do not receive any prize money, but will be included in the winners anthology.

Robin Mvers – The threat of sweet peas

Mandy Pannett – A marrying of Herbs

Steve Scholey – The harmony of swallows

Adrian K.S. Shaw – Holy Trinity

Margaret Eddershaw – Hibiscus

Lesley Burt – Freeze-framed

John Robinson – To My Wife, Our Life

Clive Burson-Thomas – Morning milking

Carolyn King – Quarry

Christine Coleman - An Arrangement of Bones in the British Museum

Eilidh Thomas – Sweet Wood and Apple Pie

F. Philip Holland – Foxfire

Highly commended (in no particular order)

£25 each plus publication in anthology.

Norma Powers – Sir Walter Raleigh – On His Portrait

Joe Hackett – Father’s Knife: My Apples

Julie Mellor – Meat

Deborah Harvey – An Approximation

Catherine Edmunds – Later

Third Prize

£125 plus publication in anthology

John Lindley - John ‘Hangman’ Ellis.

Second Prize

£250 plus publication in anthology

Linda Burnett - Stand-off with hare.

First Prize

£500 plus publication in anthology

Oz Hardwick - The Genesis of Falcon.

2.0. RESULTS: SENTINEL ANNUAL SHORT STORY COMPETITION 2012

Special Mentions

Rhuar Dean – Blood Dress

Stephen Atkinson – Table Top Invitation

Commended (in no particular order)

Commended stories do not receive any prize money, but will be included in the winners anthology.

David Crewe – The Mysterious Man

Mel Fawcett – The Family Way

Shiko – Damned on the Kitchen Floor

Anne Oatley – Mr Carrington

Valerie Knight – The Lure

Highly Commended (in no particular order)

£25 each plus publication in anthology.

Patricia Murray – The Berries

Andy Fawthrop – The Jumper

Belinda Rimmer – The Lady Who Feeds the Squirrels

Helen Holmes – Counting

Deborah Birch – Kindness

Third Prize

£125 plus publication in anthology

Valerie Knight – Vengeance is Mine

Second Prize

£250 plus publication in anthology

Joanna Campbell – Dream Work

First Prize

£500 plus publication in anthology

Alison Bouhmid – The Day a Heart Shifted

3.0. Sentinel Annual Poetry Competition 2012 – adjudication report by Roger Elkin

One of the highlights of my poetry year is the adjudication of the Sentinel Annual Poetry Competition. For several weeks I am allowed in to a wealth of poetry worlds, and the rich pennings of hundreds of folk from a variety of backgrounds, relationships, cultures and countries. What adds a particular frisson is that because the competition is adjudicated anonymously, attention is focussed entirely on the poems before me, without any distraction that knowing names and reputations might bring. What matters are the words, their sounds, their mystery and their patterning, and their subsequent achievements. An indication of that achievement can be seen in the tremendous variety and wealth of the 20 poems that made my final short-list. As with the two previous Sentinel Poetry Competitions I have been honoured to adjudicate, the general standard of the 326 entries was extremely high and the arrival at final positioning took several days and with an incalculable amount of pleasantly-agonised reading.

Here, in no particular order of excellence, are the twelve Commended poems:

The threat of sweet peas: a questioning exploration about evolution, and the nature of man from close observation of sweet peas, whose “flutterings” become “butterflies, / debutantes with untried wings / too scared to launch”. Changing to “lifeboat pods”, that “start flying”, “Perhaps their eggs take root”. The descriptions are exquisitely delicate; and the range of imagination and philosophising as disturbing and intriguing as the poem’s startling title suggests.

a marrying of herbs: a poetic discussion of the interface between action, “making a soup”, and “musing on the word / dissolve”. The description of it as “an elusive, long-limbed word” gives way to a catalogue of beautifully-realised parallels of incident and state, so that the poem opens out to embrace the world of faith, jewels, sea, love, life and death. A beautiful, delicate, yet simultaneous probing poem.

The harmony of swallows: an account of a seven year old child’s ringing of a bronze church bell, which disconcerts the child as “twice, it clangs again, reverberates”. The description is precise, exact, and touched with wit: “Alarmed / by the element of its tune – the throbbing hum, / the strike tone, tierce and quint, the piercing nominal - / you pitch, diminuendo, run to my arms.” Such fine use of diction is the stuff of poetry.

Holy Trinity: a poem modelled with octave and sestet as a partially half-rhymed sonnet which explores the life and values of an unnamed woman, whose “marble headstone shining in the rain” serves as a reminder that “such cleanliness … is next to piety in God’s eyes”. The Holy Trinity of “Bicarb, bleach, vinegar” with which the poem opens is the visual prompt for both poet and reader: an economical exploration of a much fuller life.

Hibiscus: a moving poem paralleling a father’s admiration for the hibiscus he “sheltered … on a window-sill” with his life, and slow, quiet death. A beautifully-realised extended poetic metaphor with some finely detailed and exquisite descriptive writing. Perhaps the clumsiness of the dedication could be overcome by replacing the initial “He” with “Dad”: this would allow the reader to investigate the poem for him/herself.

Freeze-framed: an economical description of a caught moment in a family. The writing manages to echo the stillness / completeness/certainty and concentration of the photo-taking that it describes. Lovely writing: just look at the exactness of that “thwack”!

To My Wife, Our Life: exactly what the title suggests: a searching, if not critical, examination of a marriage, its hopes and disappointments, its meetings of minds and its gradual driftings. This is a sad poem; intensely honest; and, therefore, moving.

Morning milking: a delightful, life-affirming account of cows coming into the milking-parlour. The diction is so exact: just consider for example the opening image of the cattle, “Mud mothers with slab shoulders”; and marvel at the accuracy of the verbs: “barge”, “Slip-slop”, “skate”, “wrestle”, “ruck up”, “haloes” – lovely, characterful writing.

Quarry: again, economic, effective description – albeit leaner – in this account of searching for a “murdered girl” memorialised by a tree-sculpture: the use of blank space within the line is very effective: “beautifully defaced, still growing.”

An Arrangement of Bones in the British Museum: the three lengthy questions which open the poem and delve into past events give way to the present, nicely located in stanza 3 via the use of shorter sentences in command idiom. The description is visually-exact; and the stance nicely distanced, though not at the expense of sentiment.

Sweet Wood and Apple Pie: an exotic paralleling of pieces/notes/quotations from history re the nature of “cinnamon, myrrh and spikenard” alternating with stages in the preparation, cooking and serving of an apple pie. The poetry lies within the contrast: the spices, nicely luxuriating in poetic repetition/alliteration/assonance; the apple pie, a series of blunt, factual statements.

Foxfire: a full-blooded account of the mating and coupling of a pair of foxes. The writing is rich; and effective – though, occasionally, becomes slightly-portentous as in the penultimate verse charting the interface between human and animal worlds. Elsewhere, a pruning of adjectives might reap dividends.

Now to the five Highly Commended poems:

Sir Walter Raleigh – On His Portrait: a searching historical poem that cleverly comments on the painting via the use of a first-person account. Here Raleigh condemns the artist he “trusted” but who “gives no hint of risks I take”, and “will not dare the perilous waters of the mind”. The poet (using a similar level of verbal skills) has Raleigh applaud the artist, “Velvet, lace, brocade, he paints with a kitten’s tongue / and rapier’s accuracy”; and yet finally considers the portrait “so poorly done”. The reason? Why, “my hand”, “my effeminate hand”, “that weak hand”, “that hesitant right hand”. The repetition hammers out Raleigh’s discomfort. Just one caveat, try to avoid ending lines with the definite article.

Father’s Knife: My Apples: an economic portrayal of a familial and generational conflict pivoting on a bequeathed pocket knife. Dad’s knife has over the years become the symbol of the family conflict, “suitable for pruning … words / from the page of my transgressions”; “to slice out all juicy untruths … my wriggling fibs”; and yet “entirely missing the bloody point”. The punning wit is typical of the brutal honesty of the poem; and the description of the knife beautifully-honed. The finality of the isolated last word is a comment both on the picked fruit, and the son. Survival is all!

Meat: in five quatrains, the poem offers an insight into an entire village community via the description of a split second butcher’s “fall of … hand”. This heralds the commercial activities of former butchers; Billy Hinchcliffe, Alf Marsden, Arnold Roberts. Their meat-dominated lives are exquisitely, humorously and economically depicted. The detail is carefully chosen, as much for its visual impact as for its wit: the punning ambiguity of the final clause is admirable in its simplicity.

An Approximation: this poem attracted with its mystery, humour and vision. Written in quatrains, it transcends the earthly and urban. Its subject is seeded by a quotation from The Life of William Blake, and the poet uses this to explore Blake’s imagination as he records the “intimations … rustlings in twigs.” The writing is exact and unfussy; the sense uncluttered, even though an element of mystery, and epiphany is conveyed in the “approximation” of the poem’s title, “I might dream an approximation of angels.”

Perhaps too much was given away within the referencing quotation? And the poem not allowed to realize its full, independent vision?

Later: a disturbing, disturbed poem about an after-life of a man whose wife has left him, or who has died. The uncertainty is important: this poem is uncertain – its structural disjointedness, with irregular stanzas, freely-associative imagery, repetitive patternings and dislocated events is mimetic of the man’s troubled mind and life. Every piece of the detail, though economically and visually-realized, as it attempts to depict a mind coming to terms with its own disorientation and the littlest bits of meaning left in life, is in itself disorientating.

Now to the three Prize Winners

Third Prize goes to John ‘Hangman’ Ellis.

This is a powerful poem whose gruesome subject matter – the suicide of the Hangman, John Ellis – is made more powerful by its strict stanzaic form of six regular quatrains written with an ABAB rhyme scheme, usually in pure rhyme. Only the final verse stretches the half-rhyming thinly: surely someone with such verbal-dexterity should be able to pull the form off completely?!!! Say, a slight re-writing could place “tablet” to half-rhyme with “bullet”? But, that’s being pedantic! What is important is the grasp of the irony that a barber should eschew “the wrench, sway and dangle” of the hangman’s rope, in preference for the “quick rip” of the cut-throat razor, and the “red reservoir at his throat.” It is the questioning of intent, and the querying, “Who knows for sure/ how such impossible choices get made?” that make this poem essentially human, and memorable. Well done!

Second Prize goes to Stand-off with hare.

This is an outstanding poem: an exploration of a face-to-face confrontation with one of Nature’s beauties. Throughout, the poet leaves no doubt as to his wonder, awe and sheer thrill of the sight of this magnificent creature whose “staring gold” of “fixed amber beads” reaches “from the pit /of its brain, as if shot through with piercing insight / or superior sensibility” and in which the “starkness of its gaze dissolves / my bones.” While he feels “exposed”, the hare is “composed”, “imperious, bold”, “stands firm … as though theatrically posed / for camera lens.” Notice the internal rhyming here, and elsewhere. And marvel at the way in which the visual reference is translated with tremendous sensitivity and skill in image after image: from the “delicacy of moths”, via “the undulating flaps of shaken table cloth” to its “face marsupial”. A further cluster of images underpinning the dramatic nature of their “O.K. Corral” stand-off pivots on in-built contrasts such as the “ecstasy of stillness” that becomes a “brusque dismissal” that leaves the poet “unutterably cold”. And is it any wonder: for all his poetic energies have been conscripted in the writing of this and the capturing of their “all-consuming play”: close, visual detail; a wide-ranging diction; masterful and imaginative imagery; the full battery of assonantal and alliterative tools; internal rhymes and verbal chiming; and a controlling structure of half and full rhyme. This is an enviable achievement. Congratulations!

First Prize goes to The Genesis of Falcon.

It is such things as the absence in the title of the (second) definite article to precede “Falcon” that demonstrate the poetic mastery of the writing. This Falcon with a capital F is the Bird with a capital B of the third stanza, the product of an “easy” “Perfection”. The mix of the everyday in the description of the act of creation (with a lower-case), and the refusal throughout to refer to God as nothing more than “He” or “His”, and reduced to an inspired “Cocky and careless” mechanical engineer, almost cavalierly negligent of “Health & Safety” - “By the time He had done chickens / puffins, parrots, and everything else” – contrasts comically initially, but subsequently wonderfully with the wonder of the whole of God’s achievement. This is exemplified by concentrating on the particular in the shape of a detailed description of Falcon spread over ten lines; so to some extent, the poem becomes almost mimetic of the creative act it is delineating. Look at the careful phraseology, the exact diction and imagery – “soldered eyes like beacons flashing / warnings” - , and internal rhyming – “ripping”, “gripping” – and the way in which Bird, like the poem, is built incrementally piece by piece, feature by feature, line by line with clear, hard-edged perception, that both acknowledges and glorifies the creature as instrument of life, and of death:

Perfection came easy: Bird rebooted

to ripping machine of beak and talons

gripping His wrist. He held it close,

kissed his creation, inspired it with steel,

darkness and plunging fire.

There is admiration, awe, love, intensity, fear and ownership here. This is an enviable work.

My congratulations go to the writers of the winning poems; and my thanks go to all who entered for letting me share a space in their poetic worlds.

Thanks, too, to Nnorom Azuonye and the Sentinel Poetry Movement for their efficiency and organization, and for inviting me to adjudicate. It is heart-warming to see poetry thriving – long may it continue!

Roger Elkin

4.0. SENTINEL ANNUAL SHORT STORY COMPETITION 2012 –ADJUDICATION REPORT BY DAVID CADDY

Reading the Sentinel Annual Short Story Competition was an uplifting experience. There were many well-written entries drawing upon family and other relationships, childhood memories, experiences of old age, crime, gypsy and ethnic cultures and colonial life as well as mental illness, historical and feminist perspectives. Each entry was worth reading and had something to say. Sadly, there was often a lack of structure and unpredictability about many entries. It is simply not enough to have a static description of a memory, moment, state or condition that involves no action and revelation. A minimalist approach to story development can work if the detail is exact within a knowing or flawed first or third person narrative. The best stories in the competition were incredibly varied in style and tone. They were thoroughly unpredictable, page-turners, that grabbed attention with narrative force, and strong atmosphere, precise and memorable detail and a clear structure that stayed in the memory after reading. Several of the best stories were also very funny or mysterious.

‘The Day A Heart Shifted’ won the First Prize. It has a formidably strong narrative force and arc. The first person narrative filters information as the story line develops within a beautifully described sultry setting and leads to a ferocious and violent crescendo. It has an unrelenting pace and fierceness that lays bare the narrator’s refusal to accept an unequal relationship and its consequences. It focuses sharply upon a woman ironing and raising a family without any help from her partner. The consequences are unpredictable and internally coherent. The short stabbing sentences beautifully evoke and mirror the condition under review and work to make the story linger long after being read. It is the best executed story in terms of writing, plot and narrative force within the word limit.

‘Dream Work’ won the Second Prize. It has a similarly strong first person narrative that develops within a testing narrative arc and also reaches a transcendent ending. Every word and detail counts in this story written with a vernacular accent that deepens and widens during its course. It has the widest social reach of all the entries and great charm. It has an expertly controlled and unpredictable narrative that keeps the reader fully engaged. It is the simplicity of the story’s arc supported by considerable and significant detail that the reader remembers.

‘Vengeance is Mine’ won the Third Prize. It is economical, diligently delineated to maximize effect and turns on a joke at the end that surprises and delights the reader. The contrast between the hard-drinking Christian, colonial bigot and his devout Muslim manservant works splendidly with the underdog surprisingly upstaging the protagonist at the end. The story’s arc involves the bigot unwittingly drinking his own urine after mistakenly thinking that he had poisoned his manservant with his it. This wonderful twist makes the story memorable a long time after initial reading. It is a simple story that works through attention to every detail and builds up the story’s pitch to a fitting ending.

Amongst the Highly Commended Stories ‘The Berries’ is an outstanding story that is deeply imbued with atmosphere of time and place that brings the reader back time and time again. It has a cinematic richness in its imagery and a mysterious quality that lingers. It is perhaps more narrow in focus and has less of an arc than the top three stories yet it beguiles and works through authentic and concrete detail. ‘The Jumper’ is also a memorable story about a drunken man discovering a man about to jump off a high bridge and going on to the ledge seemingly to talk him out of jumping off. It is a tragi-comic story that surprises and delights the reader with its mixing of the narratives of two characters. ‘The Lady Who Feeds The Squirrels’ sequentially unfolds a narrative concerning a murderer that has lost his memory and works through things that are unsaid. It makes good use of the form and shows what can be achieved within a word limit. ‘Counting’ shows how childhood experiences help form an adult character in unforeseen ways. There is great use of detail and plenty of narrative action that propel the story forward. ‘Kindness’ covers much ground within the word limit and impresses with its narrative skills delineating how an individual can be drawn from one world into another as well as showing how actions can lead to consequences in a surprising way.

All of the Commended Stories impressed with their structure and were in different and compelling ways memorable. ‘The Mysterious Man’ is a self-contained story within a story concerning the meeting of a mysterious man with a mythical tale. ‘Damned on the Kitchen Floor’ reveals the emotional and psychological impact of a participant in a struggle that leads to a knifing. ‘Mr. Carrington’ is a study of a young girl’s infatuation with her violin teacher that culminates in her coming of age and seeing her teacher in mature perspective. ‘The Family Way’ has some tragi-comic twists and turns as a man with a pregnant wife turns to an escort for sexual relief only to discover that his sister has become an escort in order to earn a living. ‘The Lure’ is a mysterious study of attraction between murderer and victim.

These stories merit a special mention; ‘Blood Dress’ concerns the emotional, psychological and physical impact upon a woman who finds and cannot keep her perfect designer dress. The movement from triumphant bliss to unforgiving loss is wonderfully modulated. ‘Top Table Invitation’ by moves between the internalized thoughts of a character and narrative description and action within a circular symmetry.

David Caddy

CURRENT SENTINEL COMPETITIONS

SENTINEL LITERARY QUARTERLY POETRY COMPETITION

Closing Date: 21-January-2013

For original, previously unpublished poems in English Language, on any subject, in any style up to 50 lines long. This competition is open to all poets regardless of nationality, living anywhere in the world. Judge: Noel Williams.

Prizes: £150 (First), £75 (Second), £50 (Third), £10 x 3 (High Commendation).

The winners and commended poems will receive first publication in Sentinel Literary Quarterly magazine.

Fees: £3 per poem, £11 for 4, £12 for 5, £16 for 7, £22 for 10 poems.

Enter online and pay securely by PayPal or print out an Entry Form for postal entries at:

www.sentinelquarterly.com/competitions/poetry

Or send your poems with a cover note titled ‘Sentinel Literary Quarterly Poetry Competition December 2012’, together with a cheque/postal order for the applicable payment in favour of SENTINEL POETRY MOVEMENT to: Sentinel Poetry Movement, Unit 136, 113-115 George Lane, South Woodford, London E18 1AB, United Kingdom

SENTINEL LITERARY QUARTERLY SHORT STORY COMPETITION

Closing Date: 21-January-2013

For original, previously unpublished short stories in English Language, on any subject, in any style up to 1500 words long. This competition is open to all writers regardless of nationality, living anywhere in the world. Judge: Clare Girvan.

Prizes: £150 (First), £75 (Second), £50 (Third), £10 x 3 (High Commendation).

The winners and commended stories will receive first publication in Sentinel Literary Quarterly magazine.

Fees: £5 per story, £8 for 2, £10 for 3, £12 for 4.

Enter online and pay securely by PayPal or print out an Entry Form for postal entries at:

www.sentinelquarterly.com/competitions/short-stories

Or send your stories with a cover note titled ‘Sentinel Literary Quarterly Short Story Competition December 2012’, together with a cheque/postal order for the applicable payment in favour of SENTINEL POETRY MOVEMENT to: Sentinel Poetry Movement, Unit 136, 113-115 George Lane, South Woodford, London E18 1AB, United Kingdom

ROGER ELKIN

MARKING TIME

ISBN 978-0-9568101-1-3

“Marking Time is a stunning collection of poetry that brings social history to life, looks at the world with breathless precision, and gets under the skin of the characters who moulded - and were moulded by - its landscapes.

Roger Elkin's readers expect nothing less than glittering imagery and perfection in both vocabulary choice and the use of language. This collection gives more as, like all the best poetry, it affects the way its reader thinks. Reading Marking Time opens new vistas on life and death, love and ageing, and the whole human condition. Enjoy.”

- Alison Chisholm

“The latest volume by Roger Elkin is a work of considerable

maturity and vision, its success measured by the powerful ways in which stories are told, and histories recreated… rooted in

characterization, the intricate and crafted phrasing, which leave the reader moved by who we have met, and the extent to which we know them. This is unusual in poetry, and difficult to achieve. It leaves you wanting to read, meet and learn more of the same.

This is a big and important book.”

- Will Daunt

Learn more about Marking Time here>

Sentinel Literary Quarterly Poetry & Short Story Competitions Closing 21-January-2013

2013-01-01T10:38:00.001-08:00

SENTINEL LITERARY QUARTERLY POETRY COMPETITION

Closing Date: 21-January-2013

Prizes: £150 (First), £75 (Second), £50 (Third), £10 x 3 (High Commendation).

The winners and commended poems will receive first publication in Sentinel Literary Quarterly magazine.

Fees: £3 per poem, £11 for 4, £12 for 5, £16 for 7, £22 for 10 poems.

Enter online and pay securely by PayPal or print out an Entry Form for postal entries at:

www.sentinelquarterly.com/competitions/poetry

SENTINEL LITERARY QUARTERLY SHORT STORY COMPETITION

Closing Date: 21-January-2013

Prizes: £150 (First), £75 (Second), £50 (Third), £10 x 3 (High Commendation).

The winners and commended stories will receive first publication in Sentinel Literary Quarterly magazine.

Fees: £5 per story, £8 for 2, £10 for 3, £12 for 4.

Enter online and pay securely by PayPal or print out an Entry Form for postal entries at:

www.sentinelquarterly.com/competitions/short-stories

Sentinel Literary Quarterly Poetry & Short Story Competitions, closing date extended.

2012-12-31T22:53:00.001-08:00

Happy New Year all.

Please note that the closing date for Sentinel Literary Quarterly Poetry Competition judged by Noel Williams and Short Story Competition judged by Clare Girvan has been extended from 31st December, 2012 to 21st January, 2013. This is in response to messages from several of our supporters who believed that the closing date of 31st December was too close to our annual competitions which closed on the 30th of November, and they needed more time to enter competition-ready work. We agree, hence this three-week extension.

This means that the results will now be announced on the 28th of February 2013.

To enter the competition now, please go to www.sentinelquarterly.com/competitions

SENTINEL LITERARY QUARTERLY REVIEWS

2012-12-22T05:17:00.001-08:00

In the January - March 2013 issue of Sentinel Literary Quarterly we shall carry a little feast of reviews including: Miles Cain's 'The Border' and Graham Burchell's 'Vemeer's Corner' reviewed by Aisling Tempany. Richard Ali's 'City of Memories' reviewed by Alison Lock, Basil Diki’s 'To Hangmen, One Scaffold Book 1' reviewed by Sanya Osha, Brindley Hallam Dennis's 'Talking to Owls' and Sanya Osha's 'An Underground Colony of Summer Bees' reviewed by Nnorom Azuonye.

Alison Lock will also review Terence Frisby's 'Kisses on a Postcard' for SLQ April-June '13, and Laura Solomon's 'Hilary and David' for SLQ Jul-Sept '13.

If you would like to have your book reviewed in the SLQ send or ask your publisher to send review copies to: Reviews Editor Sentinel Literary Quarterly Unit 136 113-115 George Lane South Woodford London E18 1AB United Kingdom

We also have many other books received waiting to be allocated to reviewers.

If you would like to review for Sentinel Literary Quarterly, drop me a line. We do not pay our reviewers, you just have to love the written word and you get to keep the book you review. Email me editor@sentinelquarterly.com

Nnorom Azuonye www.sentinelquarterly.com

Mandy Pannett’s ‘All the Invisibles’ Reviews Competition results.

2012-12-10T14:17:00.001-08:00

We recently asked people to review one, two or all three poems from Mandy Pannett’s poetry collection for a chance to win a signed copy of the book. Three reviewers have emerged joint winners. ‘Best After Frost’ was reviewed by Paul Ward and Krystyna Hollis. E Russell Smith took on ‘Stunted’. Here are the reviews in no particular order.

BEST AFTER FROST

Reviewed by PAUL WARD

Since Mandy Pannett nods towards Shakespeare’s use of the medlar (it is mentioned in four of his plays ) , here is how he describes its essential characteristic in a witty riposte from Rosalind to Touchstone in As You Like It :

You’ll be rotten ere you be half ripe , and that’s the right virtue of the medlar

And that process of decay is most effectively registered in the first three lines of ‘Best After Frost’ . The statement is simple and straightforward enough but it is made using words chosen for the way in which sound echoes / supports meaning : The alliteration of ‘ripens’ and ‘rots’ at once establishes one process as an extension of the other and the softness of the rotting fruit is suggested by a mixture of alliteration and consonance using the soft sounds of m and s – mysterious..medlar..ripens..softens..rots..camembert..progress..mould’ . Beautifully done .

But from there , the poem takes off in some surprising directions , skidding over Shakespeare ( you need to know your references – the poet does nothing to explain here ) and landing on a saucy seaside postcard of the kind typical of the cartoonist Bamforth . What has happened is that the shape of the fruit is being compared to those impossibly large and rounded buttocks so characteristic of Bamforth’s drawings . But for the effect of comic bathos , the comparison is almost worthy of one of the metaphysicals . If you don’t immediately get ‘holes’ , look at a picture of a medlar whilst the cartoon postcard is still in your mind…

In the third verse , ‘slimy , slurpy process’ again works beautifully in terms of sound echoing meaning – but ‘blettir’ , the French verb for that process of decay , suddenly whisks the poet’s imagination away to France – and there are some very adroit bits of morphing here : rainfall…rain and footfall…rain ( in its pitter-patter sound ) suggesting drumming…. And having turned a very sharp corner of thought , there we are in the French revolution ( deftly hinted at by the ‘tumbril wheels’ ) with the decadent aristocracy beginning to steer us back towards medlars in being a ‘ripe and rotten group’ . The near repetition between verse 1 and verse 4 ( ripens / ripe , rots /rotten ) is quite deliberate .

The colour of the flesh of the decaying medlar has already implicitly taken us towards blood ( the inferred guillotine executions ) but in the last verse we get a different colour-association – that of the garnet-stone , which surprisingly , in turn , leads us to medlar jelly , so that the process of decay does not end in mere annihilation but either in what is saved as ‘sweet for Spring’s return’ or in immediate sensual pleasure , juicily evoked in the squelchy sounds of ‘flesh’ and ‘luscious’ .

The poem begins and ends with the fruit itself . In between , the poet’s imagination has taken us , in a mere nine lines or so , on a journey touching on Shakespeare , seaside postcards and the French revolution , all things connected with or developed from the treatment of the subject , though I quibble that Shakespeare – the name only – is a bit unfair on the reader : you either know the references or you don’t .

My other slight quibble is that I wish the very last line ( containing the italicised title ) kicked back a little harder into what has been read earlier . But it is a finely written poem with images that are memorable because they are fresh , original and surprising .

Stunted

Reviewed by E. Russell Smith

One poet should not attempt to review ("critique?") the poem of another. If it is worthy of its calling, I immediately seize its theme and start to hang a poem of my own on the scaffolding it presents.

In "Stunted", Mandy's scaffolding is masterful. We are presented with a boy in a state of wonder, whose raven life is a mixture of sweets and abuse. We follow his growth into a resourceful and purposeful youth. The directions he has chosen are not to be admired, but to be understood. The engines of his motivation are a rock in his chosen wilderness, a penknife (requirement of every boy) and a fertile imagination. Confinement in a dustbin is artfully contrasted with the freedom we imagine on the moors. His friend and mentor is the Troll, as stunted and as lively as as himself.

This portrait requires only eighteen lines, and it is complete. Would I change anything? Probably some lineation, and elimination of the word "upon" in two places where it seems to serve only to preserve the iambic pentameter — the perfect rhythm for the oral reading which must always be a test of excellence. As usual, Mandy's poem succeeds in all respects.

Best After Frost:

Reviewed by Krystyna Hollis

I found this poem very accessible, radiating sight, smell and touch and historic resonance.

With an intimate gossip the poet shares with us how far the medlar fruit can extend

the senses. I wanted to inspect this fruit, to hold it in my hand, to absorb what the poet clearly feels and offers the reader; just as the freezing fruit releases its flavour.

We are not only invited into lascivious speculations and earthy imagery but also into a historical connection of a time when the dried blood from the French Revolution and the rain of Montmatre mingled.

Learn more about All the Invisibles here>

24 years in the making, poetry lovers, this is Afam Akeh’s ‘Letter Home & Biafran Nights’

2012-12-10T02:39:00.001-08:00

Stolen Moments published in 1988 showcased the matured muscular yet subtle voice of a brilliant African poet, Afam Akeh.

He has published several award-winning, high-impact poems in magazines and journals since then, and has read or workshopped his poetry at literary festivals and other poetry events in Nigeria and the United Kingdom. But the question on the lips of every lover of African poetry has been, ‘when will Afam Akeh publish his next collection?’.

Ladies and gentlemen, poetry lovers, after 24 years, the wait is finally over! Afam Akeh’s long-awaited new book, the most-anticipated poetry book by an African poet, Letter Home & Biafran Nights is set to be released on the 17th of December, 2012 by SPM Publications, a Sentinel Poetry Movement imprint with an increasing number of exciting authors in its books including Uche Nduka, Roger Elkin, Mandy Pannett, Brindley Hallam Dennis, Obemata and Sentinel founder, Nnorom Azuonye.

Letter Home & Biafran Nights. There is the sense in this work of an involved and inclusive poetry, revelling in the humour, play and beauty of experience but also revealing moments of heart-rending loss and unfulfilment… a sense of poetry as story, constructing meaning and plot from the connected roles and all-significant affairs of its staged players. The poems go beyond their detailed representations of dislocation, personal and collective conflicts, to point a determined finger at the fragile moments and relationships which enact them. There is here not so much faith in the untainted breath as assurance in the possibility of recovery. In the cast of vulnerable human – and occasional animal – characters we soon recognise the dog across our street or someone we know. We catch glimpses of our own dramatic and unsettled lives.

“I have committed the last 10 years of my life to the promotion of African literature. My mindset has been to bring the very best African writing into a kind of mainstream mix, where African writers are published side by side writers from other cultures. It is a thing of great pride and extraordinary significance that in the 10th year of Sentinel Poetry Movement we publish a book by Afam Akeh, a man who believed in the Sentinel vision from the beginning and who, in continuing belief in what we do, has now entrusted us with the work he has done in nearly a quarter of a century. This in itself is a great responsibility and we cherish the privilege.”
- Nnorom Azuonye, Publishing Director, SPM Publications.

You are invited to the Letter Home & Biafran Nights pages. Explore. Share. Buy the book.

LETTER HOME & BIAFRAN NIGHTS > http://www.sentinelpoetry.org.uk/publications/letter-home/index.html

SENTINEL LITERARY QUARTERLY POETRY & SHORT STORY COMPETITIONS (DECEMBER 2012)

2012-12-02T05:51:00.001-08:00

...and now, people, the last Sentinel writing competitions of the year 2012. Let's close the year with resounding success.

Poetry Competition (December 2012) | Closing Date: 31-Dec-2012

Theme: Open

Length: 50 lines maximum (Excluding title)

Prizes: £150 (1st), £75 (2nd), £50 (3rd), £10 x 3 (High Commendation).

Fees: £3 per poem, or £11 for 4, £12 for 5, £16 for 7.

Publication: Yes. In Sentinel Literary Quarterly magazine.

Judge: NOEL WILLIAMS

Enter online or by post here.

Short Story Competition (December 2012) | Closing Date: 31-Dec-2012

Theme: Open

Length: 1,500 words maximum (Excluding title)

Prizes: £150 (1st), £75 (2nd), £50 (3rd), £10 x 3 (High Commendation).

Fees: £5 per story, or £8 for 2, £10 for 3, £12 for 4.

Publication: Yes. In Sentinel Literary Quarterly magazine.

Judge: CLARE GIRVAN

Enter online or by post here.

Uche Umez: Literary Africana: Sylva Nze Ifedigbo

2012-11-21T16:15:00.001-08:00

Uche Umez: Literary Africana: Sylva Nze Ifedigbo: The Funeral Did Not End by Sylva Nze Ifedigbo is a collection of 20 short stories. Pius Adesanmi, author of You Are Not a Country, Africa...

Win a signed copy of Mandy Pannett’s ‘All the Invisibles’

2012-11-21T05:29:00.001-08:00

ALL THE INVISIBLES is the new poetry collection by Mandy Pannett, published by SPM Publications, London.

Jackie Wills says “Light is threaded through Mandy Pannett's poems, along with a tantalising sense of individuals captured momentarily in many different landscapes, among them, the artists, Durer, Seurat, Monet and Ravilious.

Her language is visual and athletic with metaphor, she's drawn to lost traditions and phrases and brings them into the present with a playful sense of inquiry.

To celebrate the publication of this book, SPM Publications will be giving away 2 signed copies of All the Invisibles. For a chance to win this book all you have to do is visit the All the Invisibles site here and write a review of any one or all three of poems featured there. The poems are Glancing at Labels, Stunted and Best After Frost.

Your review must be no longer than 800 words long. The best 10 reviews will be published in The Sentinelle, but two reviewers will receive signed copies of All the Invisibles.

Eligibility: This review competition is open to all, regardless of where you live. It is absolutely free to enter.

Closing Date: The reviews window is open for 7 days only. Get your review in before midnight on the 28th of November.

Results: Winners will be announced on the 10th of December 2012. So there is a chance you will receive the book for Christmas if you win.

Send all reviews to competitions@sentinelpoetry.org.uk in the subject line type ALL THE INVISIBLES REVIEWS COMPETITION

Best of luck.

READ POEMS FOR REVIEW HERE

14 DAYS LEFT TO ENTER SENTINEL ANNUAL POETRY & SHORT STORY COMPETITIONS 2012

2012-11-16T03:50:00.001-08:00

Dear Sentinel writer & supporter

This is just a quick reminder that there are now only 14 day left to enter this year's Sentinel Annual Poetry and Short Story competitions. These two competitions offer a combined prize fund of £2000 plus publication of the winning and commended work. Here are the summaries once again:

SENTINEL ANNUL SHORT STORY COMPETITION 2012

CLOSING DATE: 30 NOVEMBER 2012

JUDGE: DAVID CADDY, Editor, Tears in the Fence

First Prize: £500

Second Prize: £250

Third Prize: £125

High Commendation: £25 x 5.

Fees: £5 per story (first 2 stories), £3.50 per story thereafter. Enter as many stories as you wish.

Results: To be announced 20th January, 2013

First Publication: The winning and commended stories will receive first publication in the Sentinel Champions section of Sentinel Literary Quarterly magazine in April 2013. All published authors will each receive a free contributor's copy.

For previously unpublished short stories in English Language up to 2000 words long, on any subject, in any style. Stories entered must not have been accepted for publication elsewhere. This is the maiden Sentinel Annual Short Story Competition, why not make history and be the first to win this competition?

Enter online or print off an Entry Form here:
http://www.sentinelpoetry.org.uk/sawc/2012/short-story.html

To enter by post, send your stories, together with your entry form or cover note and applicable fees to:

SENTINEL POETRY MOVEMENT

UNIT 136

113-115 GEORGE LANE

SOUTH WOODFORD

LONDON

E18 1AB

UNITED KINGDOM

All cheques or postal orders payable to SENTINEL POETRY MOVEMENT.

SENTINEL ANNUL POETRY COMPETITION 2012

CLOSING DATE: 30 NOVEMBER 2012

JUDGE: ROGER ELKIN, Author of Fixing Things. (Elkin is judging this competition for the 3rd time, after successful competitions in 2010 & 2011)

First Prize: £500

Second Prize: £250

Third Prize: £125

High Commendation: £25 x 5.

Fees: £5 per poem (first 2 poems), £3.50 per poem thereafter. Enter as many poems as you wish.

Results: To be announced 20th January, 2013

First Publication: The winning and commended poems will receive first publication in the Sentinel Champions section of Sentinel Literary Quarterly magazine in April 2013. All published authors will each receive a free contributor's copy.

For previously unpublished poems in English Language up to 60 lines long, on any subject, in any style. poems entered must not have been accepted for publication elsewhere.

Enter online or print off an Entry Form here:

http://www.sentinelpoetry.org.uk/sawc/2012/poetry.html

To enter by post, send your poems, together with your entry form or cover note and applicable fees to:

SENTINEL POETRY MOVEMENT

UNIT 136

113-115 GEORGE LANE

SOUTH WOODFORD

LONDON

E18 1AB

UNITED KINGDOM

All cheques or postal orders payable to SENTINEL POETRY MOVEMENT.

Interview with Terry Jones

Terry Jones, the poet who won both the Bridport Poetry Prize and the Sentinel Annual Poetry prize in 2011 recently granted an interview to Sentinel Literary Quarterly.

Read the interview here:
http://sentinelquarterly.com/slq-october-december-2012/terry-jones-the-sentinel-literary-quarterly-interview/

Sentinel Annual Short Story Competition 2012 | Judge David Caddy

2012-11-14T04:02:00.001-08:00

Judge: David Caddy
First Prize: £500
Second Prize: £250
Third Prize: £125
High Commendation: £25 x 5
Length of Stories: 2000 maximum
Closing date: 30 November 2012
Fees: £5 per story (first 2 stories), £3.50 per story thereafter. Enter as many stories as you wish.
Enter online or download Entry Form for postal entries at http://www.sentinelpoetry.org.uk/sawc/2012/short-story.html
Sentinel Annual Short Story Competition 2012 | Judge David Caddy

SPECIAL E-BOOK OFFER! Buy the eBook version of Sentinel Champions #11 for just £1.49 and get issues #9 & #10 FREE!

2012-11-10T14:48:00.001-08:00

SPECIAL E-BOOK OFFER! Buy the eBook version of Sentinel Champions #11 for just £1.49 and get issues #9 & #10 FREE!

Authors featured in #11 include Bob Beagrie, Terry Jones, Oz Hardwick, Simon Jackson, Debbie Jay, Sarah Evans, Vedrana Mamula, Caroline Clark, Janet Eugenia Lynch, Robert J. Miles, Matt Bryden, Andy Humphrey, Amy Thomson, Michael Farry, Katrina Naomi, Andrew Brush, Annette Volfing, Shauna Gilligan. The 15 poems and 6 short stories in the magazine were chosen by Derek Adams and David Caddy - the Sentinel Literary Quarterly Poetry and Short Story Competitions judges, January 2012.

This is a true champion read. Get yours now, it's only one quid & 49 pence (and you get the other two issues, including #9 featuring the 2011 Sentinel Annual Poetry Competition winning poem by Terry Jones.)

www.sentinelpoetry.org.uk/champions
Sentinel Champions - The Sentinel Literary Quarterly Writing Competitions Magazine

21 DAYS LEFT TO ENTER THE SENTINEL ANNUAL POETRY & SHORT SHORY COMPETITIONS 2012

2012-11-09T06:44:00.001-08:00

We have exactly 3 weeks to close the Sentinel Annual Poetry Competition (Judge: Roger Elkin, and Sentinel Annual Short Story Competition (Judge: David Caddy).

Closing date: 30th November 2012 Prizes in each category: £500 (first), £250 (second), £125 (third) and £25 x 5 (high commendation). That's a total of £2000 in prizes plus publication.

Entry fees: £5 per poem/story for first 2 entries, £3.50 per poem/story thereafter. Support these competitions by:

(a) entering your poems or short stories

(b) sharing the competition information on your facebook/twitter pages

(d) send us addresses of people you know who might be interested. We will send them the competition info by e-mail. If they don't do emails, we will send information and entry forms by post. competitions@sentinelpoetry.org.uk

Enter online now, or download entry forms at www.sentinelpoetry.org.uk/sawc

Please share freely. Thank you.

Current Sentinel Poetry & Short Story Competitions, Over £3200 in prizes.

2012-11-03T16:28:00.001-07:00

Sentinel Poetry Movement has various writing competitions currently running in the genres of poetry and short stories with over £3,200 in cash prizes. Here are some details;

Closing November 30th 2012: SENTINEL ANNUAL POETRY COMPETITION 2012.This competition is open to all writers from any part of the world. First Prize: £500, Second Prize: £250, Third Prize: £125, High Commendation: £25 x 5. All winning and commended poems will receive first publication in the Sentinel Champions section of Sentinel Literary Quarterly magazine. Judge: Roger Elkin. Fees: £5 per poem for first 2 poems, £3.50 per poem thereafter. Enter online or download entry form at http://www.sentinelpoetry.org.uk/sawc/2012/poetry.html

Closing November 30th 2012: SENTINEL ANNUAL SHORT STORY COMPETITION 2012. This competition is open to all writers from any part of the world. First Prize: £500, Second Prize: £250, Third Prize: £125, High Commendation: £25 x 5. All winning and commended stories will receive first publication in the Sentinel Champions section of Sentinel Literary Quarterly magazine. Judge: David Caddy. Fees: £5 per story for first 2 stories, £3.50 per story thereafter. Enter online or download entry form at http://www.sentinelpoetry.org.uk/sawc/2012/short-story.html

Closing November 30th 2012: SENTINEL NIGERIA ALL-AFRICA POETRY COMPETITION (NOVEMBER 2012).This competition is open to Africans living within or outside the continent. First Prize: N30,000, Second Prize: N20,000, Third Prize: N10,000, High Commendation: N4,000 x 3. All winning and commended poems will receive first publication in the Champions section of Sentinel Nigeria magazine. Judge: Chiedu Ezeanah. Fees: N450 per poem. Enter online at http://sentinelnigeria.org/online/sentinel-nigeria-all-africa-poetry-competition-november-2012/

Closing November 30th 2012: SENTINEL NIGERIA ALL-AFRICA SHORT STORY COMPETITION (NOVEMBER 2012). This competition is open to Africans living within or outside the continent. First Prize: N30,000, Second Prize: N20,000, Third Prize: N10,000, High Commendation: N4,000 x 3. All winning and commended stories will receive first publication in the Champions section of Sentinel Nigeria magazine. Judge: Jude Dibia. Fees: N450 per story. Enter online at http://sentinelnigeria.org/online/sentinel-nigeria-all-africa-short-story-competition-november-2012/

Closing December 31, 2012: SENTINEL LITERARY QUARTERLY POETRY COMPETITION (DECEMBER 2012). This competition is open to all writers from any part of the world. First Prize: £150, Second Prize: £75, Third Prize: £50, High Commendation: £10 x 3. All winning and commended poems will receive first publication in the Sentinel Champions section of Sentinel Literary Quarterly magazine. Judge: Noel Williams. Fees: £3 per poem, or £11 for 4, £12 for 5, £16 for 7, £22 for 10. Enter online or download entry form at http://sentinelquarterly.com/competitions/poetry/

Closing December 31, 2012: SENTINEL LITERARY QUARTERLY SHORT STORY COMPETITION (DECEMBER 2012). This competition is open to all writers from any part of the world. First Prize: £150, Second Prize: £75, Third Prize: £50, High Commendation: £10 x 3. All winning and commended stories will receive first publication in the Sentinel Champions section of Sentinel Literary Quarterly magazine. Judge: Clare Girvan. Fees: £5 per story, or £8 for 2, £10 for 3, £12 for 4. Enter online or download entry form at http://sentinelquarterly.com/competitions/short-stories/