Forward/emagazine Creative Critics Competition 2022 – Results

We were really struck by the quality of entries in this year’s competition – possibly the strongest batch ever! The invitation to write a poem inspired by one of the Forward shortlisted poets provoked superbly crafted poems and commentaries that showed an impressive depth of engagement with the original poems. We were especially pleased to see the authenticity of students’ responses. All of the shortlisted entries could have been worthy winners!

Moniza Alvi has high praise for the winning poem by Francesca Lynes and those of the two runners up, Elsa May Dormon and Maryam Haddad. We agreed with her. We also thought that all three showed, in their commentaries, how closely and thoughtfully they’d read and reflected on the original poems. They were full of valid, well expressed, insightful ideas.  Francesca’s comment, ‘El-Kurd encourages the reader to grieve the country’s loss by contrasting the domestic foundations of its reality: ‘breakfast table’, ‘za’atar’, with the intense tragedy it endures: ‘every footstep is a grave’,  gets straight to the heart of the poem, its ideas and its style, before going on to explore how her own poem develops these themes. Maryam deftly draws out the stylistic parallels between her poem and that of El-Kurd. And Elsa May’s commentary, with its sophisticated take both on the Eurydice story and McCrae’s version of it, shows an impressive understanding both of the poem and of the possibilities in such re-writing of myths.

Congratulations to all three of them, the students who have been highly-commended and the rest of the excellent shortlist.

Barbara Bleiman

This year's judge, poet Moniza Alvi, comments:

In ‘Coming Apart’ the writer brilliantly and movingly lets the imagination work on images and ideas suggested by Mohammed El-Kurd’s ‘Bulldozers Undoing God’. A new poem is created in which remorse is expressed at glimpsing a war-torn country only at a time of its despair: ‘What happened to your once embroidered land? // Why did I never see this? Why did I only see the ruin and the rips? The layout makes full use of the canvas of the page, the white space allowing contemplation. The tactful questioning stance feels so necessary to this poem which shows a way to respond to a country and a culture which is not our own.

Inspired by Shane McCrae’s poem giving Eurydice a voice, ‘Eurydice on the Artist’ encapsulates Eurydice’s sorrow, anger and nostalgia. As the writer suggests, she longs for a state that never really existed, while protesting that it should have been stolen away. I was impressed by the adventurous and daring language, such as ‘He always said he’d press a poem out of me: Wildflower pretty, wildfire pretty’. The poem’s phrases are resonant and contain fine imaginative leaps. The form is striking with the differing line lengths enacting the disjointedness of Eurydice’s thoughts and her disorientation.

The memorably titled ‘Olive Oil Blood’ responds to Mohammed El-Kurd’s ‘Bulldozers Undoing God’, taking as its central preoccupation the idea of ‘clinging’ to a cultural identity, keeping it alive. The poem emphasises what the original homeland means regardless of a life lived within the diaspora, a belonging as integral as being part of the traditional embroidery: 'But we will always be part of the land // woven and stitched into her tatreez’, / The intertwining roots and threads holding our beings together’. The open-ended stanzas carry a strong momentum in this eloquent, explorative poem.

Winner

Francesca Lynes, Waldegrave School: ‘Coming Apart’ (in response to Mohammed El-Kurd's ‘Bulldozers Undoing God’)

Runners-up

Elsa May Dormon, Britannica International School Budapest: ‘Eurydice on the Artist’ (in response to Shane McCrae's ‘Eurydice on the Art of Poetry’)

Maryam Haddad, Doha College: ‘My Olive Oil Blood’ (in response to Mohammed El-Kurd's ‘Bulldozers Undoing God’)

Highly-commended

Hafsa Ahmed: ‘nine.’ (in response to Kaveh Akbar's ‘Reza’s Restaurant, Chicago, 1997')

Dewi Jane Gree, Dyatmika: ‘My Mother’s Face’ (in response to Anthony Joseph's ‘Precipice’)

Anjali Mistry, Haberdashers' Girls' School: ‘Address’ (in response to Stephanie Sy-Qia's ‘from Amnion’)

Commended

Aleena Ghaffa, Doha College for 'The Trail of the Snail' (in response to Padraig Regan's 'The Snail')

Roseanne Nicols, Invicta Grammar School: 'I am the/Kitchen dweller' (in response to Padraig Regan's 'The Snail')

Edouards Ziverts, Orleans Park Road: 'Where are you from?' (in response to Stephanie Sy-Quia's poem 'from Amnion')

Aemilia Hayes, Waldegrave School: 'Gosh you've grown!' (in response to Stephanie Sy-Quia's poem 'from Amnion')