Feature Local Writer Wins the National Poetry Competition

Local man Paul Adrian scoops a prestigious poetry award previously won by Tony Harrison and Carol Ann Duffy

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Feature: Local Writer Wins the National Poetry Competition

“It’s always been my ambition to have a poem published,” says Leeds writer Paul Adrian. “I saw the entry form pinned up on the notice board in the library and decided to give it a try, although I didn’t believe I had any chance of winning.

“I submitted it a few hours before the deadline because I’m never happy with a ‘finished’ poem – I keep returning and revising until I get tired of the thing and abandon it in despair. More than anything, I think I used the competition deadline as motivation to push myself and my writing.”

Paul was born in Leeds in 1984 and still lives here now. During his time in the city, he’s been books editor of this very magazine and still writes a regular politics columns for us.

The National Poetry Competition is run by the Poetry Society and has been running since 1978, making it one of the longest running single poem poetry competitions. Previous winners include fellow Loiner Tony Harrison, current Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy and T.S. Eliot Prize-winner Philip Gross.

“The National Poetry Prize is wonderful in its democracy: open to all, professionals and amateurs alike, and judged anonymously, it focuses solely on the strength of the poetry,” says Paul. “The calibre of the past winners is truly intimidating. Winning it is a bewildering, terrifying honour, and a tremendously flattering endorsement. It felt like somebody snuck into my head when I wasn’t looking and rearranged all the furniture. I’m waiting patiently for the judges to realise their mistake.”

Paul rates Ted Hughes, Pablo Neruda, Wallace Stevens, Philip Larkin, Sylvia Plath, Nicanor Parra, Paul Farley and Jim Dodge amongst his favourite poets and says that: “It is my opinion that poetry is entirely subjective, and belongs to the reader rather than the writer. A poem can mean everything or nothing to different readers, or even the same reader at different points in their life. The reader will take what they want to from a poem, regardless of what the writer intended. That’s the most appealing thing to me about poetry: its malleability, its openness to infinite, varied readings. Your interpretation of my poem is probably more valid than my own.”

He claims he’s “written the opening lines of hundreds of poems, but only rarely makes it to the end of one,” and says his inspirations “are the myriad tiny, domestic ways in which we reaffirm our connections with the flux of the world around us.”

Paul’s winning poem, ‘Robin in Flight’ (printed below) will be published in the spring issue of Poetry Review alongside joint second prize poems ‘Wish’ by Josephine Haslam and ‘A History of Glassblowing’ by Matthew Sweeney.

The National Poetry Competition 2011 opens for entries on 7th April 2011. To download an entry form visit www.poetrysociety.org.uk

Robin in Flight

Let’s imagine for a second that the robin
is not a contained entity moving at speed
through space, but that it is a living change,
unmaking and remaking itself over and over
by sheer unconscious will, and that
if we were to slow down the film enough
we would see a flying ball of chaos,
flicking particles like Othello counters,
air turning to beak in front just as tail transforms to air behind,
a living being flinging its changes at a still universe.

This would require infinite alignments. Each molecule
privy to the code of its possible settings,
the capacity of a blade of grass to become
the shadow of a falling apple by pure force
of the tree’s instinct. Every speck of world with the potential
to become stone, dog’s breath, light twisted through glass,
filth under fingernails, the skin’s bend at the bullet’s
nudge the moment before impact,
the thought of a robin in flight,
the thought of the thought of a robin in flight.

Printed courtesy of the Poetry Society

Posted on Tuesday 29th March 2011
TG

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