I hope plenty of people send in properly shocking and edgy poems to the Bridport Prize this year, following Daljit Nagra’s recent call for entrants to liberate themselves from feeling they should submit a ‘good, liberal poem’ to the competition. I’ve submitted one that I hope will raise eyebrows and it would be great and refreshing if the eventual winner made readers sweat a bit and take a second, third and fourth look to check that they were really reading what they thought they were reading.
Poetry competitions are at their best when the winner comes as a complete leftfield surprise, and especially when it makes you as an entrant think, ‘Ouch – that’s a beauty!’, which was the effect Dom Bury’s National Poetry Competition winner The Opened Field had on me this year. A sestina! That’s not supposed to happen – they’re too formal, too old fashioned and –…