[Jayne Osborn]

"No entrant may win more than one prize"

Is there a good reason for this rule? If there is, I can't see it; the poems are judged on merit, after all.

If you submitted five poems, say, to a competition and the judge just happened to like two of them enough to give them a place, why shouldn't you be awarded 1st and 2nd prizes, or 2nd and 3rd if another poem was rated higher, or even 1st and 3rd?

If the above rule is followed, the judge is not being true to his or her original decision. After discovering the name of the author they would then presumably have to demote one of the poems in favour of one they liked less.

(When John Whitworth and I judged a comp together for two years we didn't include that rule... and someone did win two prizes one year, if my memory serves me correctly.)

Jayne

[Max Goodman]

A judge's perception of merit is largely a product of her taste. Liking one poem by a given poet makes it probable she will like others. Another judge will favor a different poet's poems. True merit comes into play (if the judge has skill, she won't choose a bad poem), but so does luck. Making the judge choose a poem by a different poet for each prize puts each entrant slightly less at the mercy of this luck.

It seems a reasonable rule to me--but others' taste in rules will differ.

[Michael Cantor]

Max's reply makes sense to me. Judges aren't perfect - they have quirks and favorite approaches and styles just like the rest of us. Any time you appoint a judge, you are - to some extent - skewing the judging in advance in favor of one group or another, depending on the judge's predispositions. (I assume you's agree, Jayne, that any contest is a crap shoot - there is no "best" poem - it depends on the judge.) Limiting every entrant to one award is a logical step toward limiting the influence of the Judge's specific taste, of smoothing the contest.

In other words - what Max said. (I didn't realize, as I wrote this, how closely I paralleled his remarks.) You can judge contests I enter whenever you want, Max.

Just out of curiousity, Jayne - what prompted this?

[Brian Allgar]

Jayne, that rule certainly doesn't apply to the Flash 500 competition, where Martin Parker recently won two of the prizes, and before that there was a quarter when Melanie Branton won all three.

And where would Bazza, Chris, and sometimes even myself, be if multiple wins (admittedly pseudonymous) weren't allowed? Starving in the gutter, that's where!

I don't buy the "It helps to counterract the judge's own preference" argument. "Judged on their merits" should mean just that, and I don't think that "positive discrimination" is any more desirable in this context than elsewhere.

[Wintaka]

I agree with you, Jayne. If there is any hint that judges will choose based on style rather than merit, get better judges.

Wanting to limit entrants to one prize may be a good reason for a one-piece-per-participant rule but, as I see it, once you allow multiple entries, you have, in essence, allowed multiple prizes. Otherwise, you are not treating all entry fees equally.

-o-

[Chris O'Carroll]

Although I hear the siren song of Max and Michael's argument, I'm going to steer my ship in Wintaka's direction for now. If there's a one-prize-per-person limit, then there ought to be a one-entry-per-person limit as well. This applies particularly to contests that charge a fee. There's no justice in accepting multiple entries, collecting the multiple fees, then declaring some paid entries ineligible for any prize.

[Max Goodman]

Originally Posted by Wintaka

If there is any hint that judges will choose based on style rather than merit, get better judges.

We must be using "style" differently, Wintaka. I don't see how a poem can have any merit that doesn't largely derive from the poet's style.

I'm drawn to Wallace Stevens's poems because of his style. To Larkin's because of his. Given their collected works and a bunch of other stuff I like less, and with two prizes to award, I'd choose two poems by the same poet. (Which one is irrelevant here.) That result would please me, but no more than the result of having to choose poems by more than one--and the second result, I think, would better reflect the merits of the batch from which I could choose.