Prizes | Fiction | The Inkies

    Filling in for Jon Ware, I was planning to expound upon my rather considerable knowledge of 19th Scottish servants’ ‘found poetry’, disguised as shopping lists. 
But then I took a look (as one does) at today’s literary prize scene, and what I saw there filled me with loathing and righteous bile.  Take the renowned ‘Silkies’, or, as they’ve become known under Phil Brown’s dubious leadership, ‘The London-and-Kent Haberdashers/International Imitation Cider Distillery Silkie Awards’.  Let me give you some examples of the ways in which this potentially fantastic poetry award has sunk into cynical, mainstream self-congratulation.

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Best Title of a Collection

I won’t even attempt to go into the obvious self-contradiction of such a category’s existence.

Best Title of a Poem

The cynical, mainstream disregard for other forms and other media is sickening.  Apologists for Brown will probably whine that the ‘Silkies’ are supposed to be a ‘poetry’ award.  I spit back in their faces,
    “What about Hilary Mantel’s novel Wolf Hall- is there not audacious poetry in giving that title to a book which spends much of its length in halls more relevant to the plot and with more metaphorical power than Wolf Hall itself?  And how about the poetic juxtapositions of Die Hard 4: Live Free or Die Hard?  What,” I add, poking them in their tobacco-weakened, possibly cravat-wearing chests, “about Ugandan artist Abraham Karungi’s utterly poetic series of pottery David Beckhams?”


Best Cover Illustration

    Sickening.


Best Press Photo

    Sickening favouritism.  Why wasn’t I, I wonder, entered into the running?


Best Name of Poet

Sickening gimmickry to attract the nouveau-intellectuals.


Best Use of Box Brackets

    This category is actually pretty good.  Still, Brown’s obvious pandering to the so-called ‘Rape Poet’ movement (see also the winner of Best Cover Illustration) is inappropriate and sickening.  I wonder he didn’t award Best Title of a Collection to his crony James Harringman’s cynical, mainstream collection ‘A Rapist’s Handbook: Japes and Rapes of an Englishman in the Brecon Beacons’.

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Enough is enough, I say.  And so it is (with great reluctance) that I’ve taken it upon myself to single-handedly rescue the literary prize scene from the abyss into which it has sunk.
My theory is this; when, say, authors claim that prizes are killing literary fiction, they really mean that they themselves are too feckless, impressionable and stupid to be able to accept a large sum of money and a couple of newspaper interviews without instantly sinking into a mountain of cocaine, dubbing themselves ‘The Second Coming of Colonial Fiction’ and not writing a single word for the next eighteen months.  Then, perhaps, they’ll write a mawkish second novel about the appalling pressures of being an author with money and fame.

My point is this; that prizes are only dangerous (like heroin) when they cease to be a tool of the author’s, and the author becomes a tool of the prize.  A great deal of this comes from this sense of an inner circle; the utter lack of self-reflection of those who run the awards.

So it is with this in mind that I am proud to announce the inaugural Inkies, a prize awarded to the finest (and the foulest) of literary prizes.  The winners may not alter a great deal over the years.  Each prize-winning prize will win the opportunity of a lifetime- I offer myself to you, to add my expertise and cutting insight to the drab C-list celebrities and Michael Portillos that usually make up your judging panels.  I also may not punch you in the face when next we meet.

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Most Worrying Dagger Fixation:

Goes to the Crime Writers’ Association, for their Dagger in the Library, Debut Dagger, Ian Fleming Steel Dagger, Gold Dagger, Cartier Diamond Dagger, Dagger in the Library, Duncan Lawrie International Dagger, John Creasey Memorial New Blood Dagger, Ellis Peters Historical Dagger Award, and their most sinisterly-titled Short Story Award.

Apparently, this year Chuck Swain’s The Blood Doth Stream Over The Prawn Cocktails, a detective novel set at the awards, in which the year’s most exciting crime novelists are killed off one by one, is predicted to win all ten.

 
Most Likely To Be Barked Out By A Drill-Sergeant With Little Ear For The Subtleties Of Rhythm:

Goes to the Pritzker Military Library Literature Award for Lifetime Achievement in Military Fiction.


Most Likely To Have Been Won By Henning Mankell Or Stieg Larsson:

Goes to the Best Swedish Crime Novel Award.


Prize For Under-35s Dedicated To The Memory of An Author With A Name That Could Surely Never Have Belonged To Anyone Under 35:

Goes to the Betty Trask Award.


‘Hilarious, Affectionate’ Prize Nickname Most Likely To Induce Nausea, Psychosis:

Goes to the British Book Awards, aka ‘The Nibbies’.  As it will every year.


Most Tenuous Link Between Prize Name and Prize Subject:

A hard decision, this one.  But in the end we settled on The Macavity Award, named after T.S. Eliot’s Mack the Knife- inspired ‘mystery cat’ and master criminal.  The prize itself is awarded to writers of mystery fiction, rather than, say, fiction about master criminals or talking animals.


 
Most Exciting New Prize

Goes to the Warwick Prize for Writing.  It really was very good last year.


Children’s Book Prize Title Least Likely To Have Been Chosen By An Actual Child:

Many worthy applicants this year; the Amelia Frances Howard Gibbon Illustrator’s Award was disqualified, although we’re still uncertain how many children could have pronounced the late Canadian children’s author’s name in one breath.  Which means that the award goes to the Cool Awards, a title so cringe-inducing in its attempt to reflect its young readership that I was almost moved to pity.  The fact that Cool is an acronym only, to my mind, exacerbates the prize’s crimes against actual coolness.
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I’m afraid that’s all we have time for- this year, at least.  But do come back next time around for another session of the Inkies; the one literary prize that will never compromise its integrity by selling out into the mainstream.

Signing off,
Donald ‘Voice of the’ Everyman

Jon Ware is away

Prizes | Poetry | The Silkies

“Contemporary poets, alas, have prizes instead of readers. The number of poetry prizes in the land is astonishing… Such is their plentitude that one is almost inclined to think contemporary poetry less an art than a charity in need of constant donations.”
– Joseph Epstein

“It’s scary… Who’s number one? Who’s number one?”
– John Berryman upon hearing of Robert Frost’s death.

In literature, prizes have always been of great importance, especially in poetry. There are several reasons for this; an indication of quality in a medium with no apparent rules, a source of financial support for practitioners of a non-lucrative profession, a source of encouragement for up-and-comings, a means for boosting the prestige of a publishing house or company and encouraging big names to submit.

The reason for literary prizes that I want to pay closer attention to however, is ‘encouragement’.  In Tradition and the Individual Talent, T.S. Eliot seems to draw a line between the young poetaster and ‘any-one who would continue to be a poet beyond his 25th year’. Eliot distinguishes between these camps because:

“The mind of the mature poet differs from the immature one not precisely in any valuation of “personality”, not necessarily more interesting, or having “more to say”, but rather by being a more finely perfected medium in which special, or very varied, feelings are at liberty to enter into new combinations.”

Whilst I agree that there is a distinction to be made between the ‘mature’ and ‘immature’ in poetry, it can be very difficult sometimes to see why one would ever put in the hours and effort to graduate to ‘poetic maturity’. Society is all too aware that, in the hunter/gatherer sense, we do not need poets, just as with actors, footballers, journalists and musicians. Whilst we poets do not share the salaries that some of these other professions enjoy, we do share their preoccupation with prizes.

Whilst there is invariably money attached directly and indirectly to the Oscars, the F.A. Cup, the Grammys and the T.S. Eliot Prize, the real importance is their role in the community. These prizes send out a clear message to the winners, the runners-up, the fans and general public alike – ‘our pursuit has a tradition and it matters’.

To this end, I have elected myself judge and jury for the first season of what I hope will become the most coveted poetry award in the country – ‘The Silkies’. In order to win one of these awards you must fulfil one vital criteria only – you must appear on my bookshelf. I am accepting entries from all origins and eras, but will aim to keep my main focus on contemporary poetry.

All (living) winners of this most prestigious award are entitled to one free drink up to the value of £5.20 should you spot me at any literary event, or indeed anywhere. Proof of identification required.





Best Title of a Collection

This was perhaps the easiest decision to make of all the awards. The award for best title must undoubtedly go to Matthew Welton’s audacious 101 word title –

‘We needed coffee but we’d got ourselves convinced that the later we left it the better it would taste, and, as the country grew flatter and the roads became quiet and dusk began to colour the sky, you could guess from the way we retuned the radio and unfolded the map or commented on the view that the tang of determination had overtaken our thoughts, and when, fidgety and untalkative but almost home, we drew up outside the all-night restaurant, it felt like we might just stay in the car, listening to the engine and the gentle sound of the wind’



Best Title for an Individual Poem

This award was a closely-fought battle between Robert Sheppard’s “Fucking Time: six songs for the Earl of Rochester” (from Complete Twentieth Century Blues) and the eventual winner. In the end however, I went with this one from Roddy Lumsden’s last collection, Third Wish Wasted:

‘Between the Penny Dropping and the Penny Landing’



Best Cover Illustration

Horrific and beautiful, Tabatha Vevers’ depiction of the mermaid, Europa, having been literally raped in half and left for dead on a rock is one of the most harrowing things to ever catch my eye in Foyles. An interesting fact about this collection is that the poem ‘Mermaid’, which is one of Alvi’s best, was only written and included after the poet had seen the illustration above. Thankfully, this collection is just as emotionally beguiling and powerful as the cover suggests.




Best Press Photo

Handsome, urban, serious with messy hair and an upturned collar. One of the finest modern writers to have written extensively about London.

 “What are you writing about Tobias?”

“What have you got?”

Tobias Hill – Salt Publishing


Best Name of  Poet

It was almost impossible to choose this one. A large part of me wanted W.D. Snodgrass, or Toby Martinez de las Rivas, Ryan Van Winkle or Tom Pow. Whilst all of these writers display what are inarguably superb names, the award for this category must surely go to this Irish poet. I am particularly fond of how the three acute accents make the name look as though it is facing a strong Westerly wind:

Eiléan Ní Chulleanáin



Best Use of Box Brackets

When I am marking the writing of my pupils, one of the things that the curriculum tells me to look out for is ‘inventive use of punctuation’. What exactly this means can be a somewhat obtuse idea until facing an example such as this from the excellent poem ‘Observations of a Neanderthal Colony’ by Sam Riviere:

“She kept singing as they knuckled her to the ground.
The [children] continued to sleep as both [men] began to [rape]
her, their scruts bobbing an instinctive, pneumatic rhythm.”




Best Use of Public Transport in a Poem

Very tempting to bring in our good friend Tobias Hill again on this one, but in the end, Lachlan Mackinnon reigns victorious with this line from Riders on the Storm, which appears in the collection The Jupiter Collisions:

“The trams run all night, their opening and closing doors
the city’s gills.”



Best Dig at a Famous Spouse

Really nearly went with a bit of Hughes here, but in the end this one has to go to Nick Laird. OK, so there’s every chance these poems are entirely hypothetical or about other people but they still leave me with a clear memory of the time I wrote a poem about how bad my girlfriend’s Pocahontas costume looked one Halloween and she didn’t speak to me for days. This extract is taken from Nick Laird’s ‘Waging War’ from the collection ‘On Purpose’

“This evening at dinner your very existence
was enough to disprove Darwin.
I outhitlered Hitler.

These nightly show-trials are
becoming tiresome and factious,
each decree absolute and absurdly revanchist.”



Best Use of Poem-Shape

This award really goes to the entire of Anne Carson’s collection ‘Decreation’, which is a favourite of mine for many reasons – not least of all the beautiful and bizarre shapes that her poems take on in this collection. I provide below one short example:

OUR FORTUNE

In a house at dusk a mother’s final lesson
ruins the west and seals up all that trade.
Look in the windows at night you will see people standing.
That’s us, we had an excuse to be inside.
Day came, we cut the fruit (we cut
the tree). Now we’re out.
Here is a debt
paid.

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Thank you one and all for tuning into this inaugural presentation of The Silkies. We look forward to seeing you soon for another round of this highlight in the literary calendar.

Phil Brown
Poetry Editor