http://www.writers-online.co.uk APRIL 2020^55illiam Wordsworth
was born in
Cockermouth, on the
north west fringe of
the Lake District, on
7 April, 1770, so to mark his 250th anniversary
the next Writing Magazinepoetry competition
will honour him.
He is known for his autobiographical tour de
force The Prelude, for numerous odes, sonnets
and lyrical pieces, but especially for a single
poem concerning a walk taken with his sister
one spring, I wandered lonely as a Cloud. This
is regarded as the most famous poem in the
English language, and the version we know
today is rooted in Dorothy Wordsworth’s
journal entry of 15 April 1802, drafted in
1804, revised and amended, and including
input from the poet’s wife, Mary Hutchinson.
There’s a lot more to Wordsworth than
daffodils. His childhood adventures, the loss of
his mother when he was seven and his father
a few years later, his trips abroad and the birth
of his daughter in France, his relationship with
his siblings and fellow poets, his reactions to
the railway, marriage and family, his eventual
acceptance of the laureateship... all of these,
and a kaleidoscope of experiences during a
long life, provide material for stunning poems.
The competition is for poems that look at
any aspect of Wordsworth’s life and career,
or at any of his writing. You do not have to
be fixed in his 1770-1850 lifespan. The way
history has placed the poet, the industry that’s
grown around him and the joy or horror ofoff the phone, ignore the doorbell, resist any
distractions. If you can manage to get the
complete first draft down in a single session of
writing, a unity of voice is inevitable. The poem
will have a cohesion that is remarkably difficult
to achieve if it’s written in fits and starts with
conversations and interruptions in between.
Newly written poems benefit from a resting
period, so if time allows try to set your fresh
piece aside for a while before you complete
your revisions and then submit. If time is
tight, even a single day to let it settle between
one check and the next is useful. It’s surprising
how a fresh reading the morning after the
poem was created can reveal tiny flaws
that you then have a chance to correct, or
opportunities to tweak a word or phrase and
make it more compelling.
One of the joys of adjudicating a poetry
competition is that you never have any idea
of what the winning poem will be like, or the
angle it will take. You can simply be sure that
it will be good, to earn its top place over all
the other entries submitted. It will have been
devised with imagination, developed with
flair and revised meticulously. It is likely to be
rich in imagery and compelling in vocabulary
choices. It will probably have an interesting
title, use language grammatically, and be
punctuated with accuracy.
Without a doubt, it will grip you and
remain with you for the next day, the next
year, maybe your whole lifetime. If you can
write that poem, send it in with confidence.
Good luck.‘doing Wordsworth’ for school exams extend
the contest’s range still further. This gives
enormous breadth, and challenges writers to
draw on the vastness of their imagination in
order to offer fresh slants on well-documented
topics, or new comments on the poems.
Think of all the other people preparing
their entries at the same time. What will make
yours stand out from the crowd, insisting its
message to the adjudicator? Unless a specific
topic is burning in your mind and demands
to be written, it would be a good idea to steep
yourself in the source material, re-reading
Wordsworth or learning new facts about him,
until ideas for your entry start to formulate.
Whatever clings to your imagination has
the potential to trigger a new piece of writing,
and sometimes you can be lucky enough to
find inspiration for two, three, four or a dozen
new poems. It’s worth pursuing every avenue
offered. Attempting a few different ideas will
help you to focus on the one that intrigues you
the most, as well as giving you the opportunity
to develop the others in the future.
Your poem can be in any form. You may
choose one of Wordsworth’s own favourites,
anything from the blank verse of The Prelude
to Petrarchan sonnets using his own variants
in the sestet. You may prefer to work in free
verse or a more recently developed form. As
long as the pattern and content of the piece fit
well together, there is no limit to the range of
options.
During the actual writing, give yourself
entirely to the poem as it emerges. SwitchENTER NOW
Submit poems up to 40 lines.
Prizes are £100 and £50.
See p95 for entry details.POETRY LAUNCH
The greatRomanticThere is much, much more to William Wordsworth than daffodils,
says Alison Chisholm as she launches WM’s poetry competition in his honourGrasmere from the Rydal Road 1786 by Francis Towne, photo by Birmingham Museums Trust on UnsplashW