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A group of self-styled poetry commandos have unleashed their anonymous inner XFiles-wannabe-cum-cyber-bully on the placid waters of the American institution known as "the poetry contest". Despite the often ridiculously overblown rhetoric and nigh slanderous posts on their discussion boards, the facts seem to show they occasionally have a point. In theory, they provide a valuable check on a system prone to corruption, but in reality they more often seem vigilante thugs swinging the proverbial sack of doorknobs. Poet and critic Zach Wells looks homeward and wonders whether the Canuck constellation of contests and prizes needs its own rabid watchdog organization. The answer is not what you might immediately think. |
| Eyes on the Prize As we've seen in recent Bookninja posts, a group of self-styled poetry guerrilla warriors going by the name "Foetry" has been raising a ruckus south of the border. Foetry fancies itself the watchdog of a corrupt poetry culture in which it is far too easy to trace direct links between prize-winners and judges of poetry contests. The anonymity of Foetry's membership, and the vitriolic zeal with which they pursue their mission, has led to a movement among its critics to discredit the group by "outing" Foetry's members. Foetry's motives are undoubtedly questionable, but in spite of the name-calling timbre of allegations made from the safety of anonymity, it's pretty hard to argue with some of the sordid facts they've published. The question is: are things any better up here? Perhaps, but if so only because Canadian publishers rely more on arts council grants and than proceeds from manuscript contests to fund their notoriously unprofitable books of verse. But, as I wrote recently in Maisonneuve—with Robert Bringhurst being en flagrant délit vis-à-vis three titles and Russell Thornton linked to a fourth in this year's Governor General's Award for Poetry, and with a number of juror/shortlist correspondences almost too intricate to untangle in the most recent A.M. Klein Prize—we can hardly hold Canadian poets up as paragons of virtue. I don't mean to suggest that the books are necessarily unworthy of the honour, but that the honour itself is besmirched when a conflict of interest, apparent or real, is involved. The Minister of Transport's son may well be the best man for the paving contract, but try explaining that to the taxpayers. I've noticed this in a few minor Canadian contests of late as well. Take, for instance, this year's "Great Blue Heron" poetry contest in The Antigonish Review. The third place winner is one Kate Hall, whose bio tells us that "[s]he lives in Montreal where she is completing her M.A. at Concordia University." Not in and of itself remarkable, except that one of the judges in this year's contest was Stephanie Bolster, whose bio tells us that she "teaches creative writing at Concordia University in Montreal." Interesting also to note that Stephanie Bolster was selected for this year's jury by virtue of the fact that she won the contest the previous year. On that year's contest jury was Eleonore Schönmaier, a friend of Stephanie's from UBC, whom Stephanie thanks in the acknowledgments of her two most recent books. Another recent example is this year's Arc "Poem of the Year" contest, judged by Lorna Crozier. The first and third place prizes went to Crozier's Victoria area friends Susan Stenson and Linda Rogers, respectively. Now, I'm not saying that the judges of these contests are necessarily nepotists (or "sychophants", as Foetry would call them), nor that the poems they selected are necessarily without merit. The situation, I daresay, is almost never as cut-and-dried as Foetry pretends. Sometimes, worthy poems do win prizes. Kate Hall's Blue Heron poems are, I think, very good. Stephanie's winning poem the year before I thought definitely worthy of the notice—but then again, I do have a certain bias on that front, as I shall reveal shortly. The judges of contests are not all self-serving cynics, as Foetry rather zealously seems to insist. Eleonore, who lives outside my home town, is someone I've met socially on a couple of occasions and whom I quite like and, though I can't say I know her well, she strikes me as a sincere person dedicated to the craft. Furthermore, Stephanie is a former professor of mine and, besides that, is a good friend whose taste and judgment I hold in the highest esteem. Last year, she passed on a review assignment to me from Canadian Literature because one of the books assigned was Tim Bowling's The Witness Ghost. Bowling is a friend of hers and she didn't feel comfortable reviewing a friend's book, so I know that she's scrupulous about ethical matters of conflict of interest. So, why do there appear to be different standards when it comes to judging a poetry contest where, if anything, the stakes are higher than in a review? Part of the answer lies in the "blind judging" most of these contests advertise. In practice, this means that the judges see only the poems submitted, not the names of their authors. In theory, therefore, this means that the verdict will be perfectly disinterested, based on nothing but the perceived merit of an individual piece of writing. The reality, however, is that there can be no such thing as completely blind judging when a judge is already familiar with the writing of the contestant. There is always the distinct possibility that a judge might already know—indeed, might have helped edit and improve—some of the contending poems before they were submitted to the award. Even if this is not the case, most writers can often be discerned from a homogeneous crowd by their friends and teachers. In short, the phrase "blind judging," however optimistic it might be, makes for a handy ex post facto disclaimer, should anyone cry foul. One solution for keeping contests clean is plain: make friends, family and past associates/students/teachers ineligible for the award. If someone ignores this rule and submits anyway, disqualify them from the competition, even if the conflict only becomes known after the judges' decisions have been rendered. Why then don't literary journals implement such an easy safeguard? Simple: the motivation behind these awards is tied into economics. Ever notice how the entry fee for all these prizes includes a year's subscription to the magazine? They are basically lotteries designed to boost revenues artificially and inflate circulation figures, thereby imparting the rosy glow of garish rouge to the pale face of literary culture. Restricting entry would restrict subscription sales. I'd wager that the majority of the people entering these contests couldn't care less if they had a year's subscription to TAR or Arc; I'd also wager that more people get their subscriptions to journals from entering a contest than otherwise. The motivation of the average contest entrant is the cash prize, but probably more than that, the possibility of public acknowledgment of their talent. This is my personal experience, at any rate. I used to enter contests quite regularly, hoping that I too would be recognized for my shining genius. I very rarely was, and that was largely because the shine I imagined was rather duller in reality than in my own vain reckoning. But the poems that did win were rarely better—quite often worse—than what I submitted, as I saw it. In part this was due to the inevitable divergences of taste and opinion that any two people will have about what constitutes good poetry. But in part this was due, as an older less ingenuous version of me came to realize, to the fact that judges were not always strangers to the work they laurelled. I came to realize, slowly, that it was vain in two different senses to enter these contests: vain because I wanted to have my ego stroked, and vain because it was extremely improbable, no matter how good the work I submitted, that I would win. I came to realize that I was being suckered routinely out of $20-$30 that would have been much better spent on books of excellent poetry or a bottle of not-so-excellent whiskey. These contests are fuelled by vanity. My
appeal to all writers of poems and stories is to please stop entering
contests that require entry fees and provide subscriptions in return.
Please, have faith in the intrinsic value of your writing and don't
look to others to affirm your genius. Please, pull the plug on the
life support to a score of mostly unwanted and unread literary journals.
Although their methods are, to borrow a phrase from Conrad, unsound,
Foetry is right to point out the questionable ethics of contests
held by American universities. But the solution is not to put an
end to the corrupt practices or punish the contestants and judges.
The only foolproof remedy is to choke off the contests' air supply.
And the only way that can be accomplished is if aspiring poets refuse
to be gulled into submitting their work and if established poets
decline invitations to judge.
Zach Wells is the author of Unsettled, a book he doubts will win any prizes. He recently lost the Halifax CBC Poetry Face-Off.
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