Friday, December 5, 2008

I came fourth in The Patrick Kavanagh Award !

Well not officially (or in any kind of earthly reality ,obviously), but as Ireland's greatest living poet and in the absence of any comunication whatsoever, I can only assume that this is the case.Clearly I'm disappointed that I didn't get the top spot but perhaps my collection was too good and the Judges worried that I might just end up winning everything all across the board and this would not be good for the poetry scene in general and the morale of inferior(to me) poets in particular. Interestingly I got neither an acknowledgement for my entry nor a rejection which I think is poor show for the €20 entry fee.Such a lack of feedback does make you feel like you have just made some kind of donation rather than an application. I am also beginning to feel that , a bit like the lottery, you've as much chance of winning without an entry as with one. You see comrades ,we are aspiring poets, the lowest of the low, in the cut-and-thrust of literary market forces we are crushed by the laws of supply and demand.They have us over a barrel. The only peole who read poetry also write it, there is no huge market out there for us.We are the poetry equivalent of a million bees buzzing around trying to land on a prize bloom that accomodates about 5. But do we give up - do we feck, because despite it all we are poets and we believe in hope.Never mind the long months spent watching for, and waiting on ,the post only for the bitter sting of rejection to jab us in the arse, forget the sleepless nights toiling away at the keyboard, those long dark nights of the soul, the sweat blood and tears that go into every letter of every word,, forget the all consuming envy for those faceless anonymous smug bastards that top the poetry echelon in my warped imagination, we are the workers we are the warriors, words are our weapons ,hope is our saviour and we will overcome coming 4th in The Patrick K. Remember my friends there are only two letters between whining and winning!

2 comments:

Group 8 said...

Yay, congrats! And look, it's only a matter of time before you take the top spot. Genius ALWAYS floats to the surface in the end.

Totalfeckineejit said...

Thanks WRW, you are right, Guinness always floats to the top.