I entered five poems for the 2023
competitions, of which two, Asteroid and Anonymous, were placed
first and second for the Pomfret Cup, and three, Elegy For a Hermit, Lockdown
Safety Glass and Torbreck were placed first, second and third for
the Batty Cup. I usually write poetry and my preferred typeface is Calibri. I
like to enter poetry competitions to test my competence which I think (and hope)
is still developing after 30 years of writing. My urge to concentrate on poetry
rather than prose was very much influenced when I won a nationwide competition
in 2003 to write a poem on the theme of 'Discovery' associated with the renaming
of the Swan Hellenic Ship 'Minerva'. The competition was adjudicated by the then
Poet Laureate Andrew Motion and my wife and I were invited to attend the
re-naming ceremony in the Pool of London where my winning poem was read by Dame
Judi Dench. I joined the LAA in 2016 having previously been unaware of its
existence, even though I was born a true Lancastrian in Wigan 86 years
ago.
My current writing project is to
publish a fourth collection of poems. I've already written about ninety, but I
know that some need to be revised. There's no going back once your words have
appeared in print.
The photo was taken on the summit
of Suilven, a Scottish mountain. which I climbed at the age of 83, and the
book, A Distillation of Hills was published last year by Chapeltown
Books. Although fundamentally an autobiography based on some of my selected
walks and climbs, it also contains some of my poetry.
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