Viola Beadleton’s

I’m sure you are all itching to send your latest masterpiece off to the Bravado Poetry Competition..great judges..great prizes..all inviting great poets to participate! If you’ve missed out on recent news and want to know more, well here it is…

Last year she was The Robert Burns Fellow at the University of Otago. This year Sue Wootton is the highly-esteemed judge for the 6^th Bravado International Poetry Competition. Competition secretary Jenny Argante jokes, “It was the only way we could stop her winning prizes in it! In 2007 she came third. In 2008 she came second. We thought we’d baffle her intentions this year, and invite her to be our judge.”

Sue Wootton has published two collections of poetry, Magnetic South in 2008 and Hourglass in 2005, both with Steele Roberts in Wellington. Her individual poems and stories have featured in a diverse range of magazines and on Radio New Zealand, most recently in Blackmail Press 24 online, and in the anthologies Our Own Kind, 101 Poems about Animals (Random House, Auckland) and Voyagers: Science Fiction Poems from New Zealand.

Was Sue foretelling her own future as judge when she penned these lines?

Suddenly tired

of the complicated interlacing of words in lyrical trim

she goes outside

and shouts very loudly

into the night

                                                          (from ‘the verdigris critic’)

‘Words in lyrical trim’ are what Bravado is seeking, and the literary arts magazine from the Bay of Plenty is offering its usual generous cash rewards –a First Prize of $500, 2nd @  $250 and 3^rd @ $100. This year for the first time it’s introducing a Special Prize of $100 for a previously unpublished poet, and five runners-up will get a year’s free subscription. The entry is $5 a poem, or three for $10. All prizewinning poems will be published in the November edition of Bravado.

You can download a copy of the rules and an entry form from the Bravado website at www.bravado.co.nz) or send an e-mail to bravadoinfo@bravado.co.nz or, if you prefer, drop a line to Competition Secretary, Bravado, PO Box 13 533, Central Tauranga 3141. Briefly, poems must be original, unpublished and no longer than 40 lines. Theme is unimportant, as is form, or whether free verse or rhyme.  “All we ask”, say the Bravado team, “is send us your best.”