Lakeland Poetry Magazine
 

Lakeland Poetry Magazine have a comp advertised, but frankly it reads as unprofessional, with spelling, punctuation & formatting blips. They even give two different deadline dates, and two spellings of the judge's name:

http://lakelandpoetry.blogspot.co.uk/

Does anyone know about this comp, or the judge: Jayne Sykes (or is it Jane?)

I sent them an email last week, but have had no reply.

Does this new journal, which has yet to publish an issue, solicit submissions through any other channel? Or is paying a fee to enter the competition the only way of submitting? If so, interesting way of doing business. Unappealing, but interesting.

Typos in the publicity for a literary magazine or website are an absolute deal-breaker for me. If an editor can't even be bothered to make sure his or her own copy is proofread, what level of care and attention can I expect to be given to the presentation of my work?

All you have to do is google: http://www.jaynesykesauthor.co.uk/

That should tell you all you need to know, if Julie hasn't already.

I can't help thinking that there's something rather endearing about someone who writes:

"My ultimate dream is to one day be published by Mills & Boon."

I once taught someone who was published (a lot) in 'The People's Friend'. Didn't Sylvia Plath try to write Mills & Boone stuff?

Yes, I did the research when I first saw the comp. Yes, I agree that the 'googled' Jayne Sykes doesn't seem the type of 'author' who would judge a poetry comp, which led me to believe there could be another writer - even a poet - by the same name.

The comp is listed in The Poetry Library and the Poetry Kit. I assumed - maybe incorrectly - that inclusion in these listings implied the comp is genuine.

As I still haven't had a reply, I'm assuming this half-hearted enterprise is not one worthy of support.

Thanks for the replies.

The bio page gives you all the sort of information you need to write a poem that will appeal to her. I think we can safely assume that she'll read all the entries.

I suspect she's hoping to raise a little capital to start the magazine. I wish her luck.

She sounds naive and appears to have a relaxed attitude to proof-reading (whoever is without sin...etc) but it doesn't come across to me as moneygrubbing or dishonest. There's enough information for each of us to decide whether to enter, and I think most of us have.

And it does say quite clearly in the rubric that "no correspondence will be entered into".

Ah, but there's correspondence about the merits of submitted poems, and correspondence about the organisation of the comp itself. All I did was query the contradictions in the guidelines.

No cause to doubt its genuineness, as far as I can see. That is, I expect somebody really will win and the prize money really will be paid. However, quality and prestige are separate issues from authenticity. Whatever vetting of submitted listings may go on at the Library and the Kit (I have no idea what their procedures are), I'm not sure that a decision to publish a listing constitutes an endorsement of the comp. To paraphrase Thomas More in A Man for All Seasons, they're probably not recommending the comps, just pointing them out.

Did they have comps in Thomas More's day?! I thought Vicky had been around a long time...

The web page specifies two different closing dates, one of which was 14th February. I wrote to them for clarification, and they confirmed that the correct date is 29th February.

I can't recall when I've seen more fuss made over such a clearly amateur endeavor since the time - about three years ago - when everybody was doing handstands about the announcement of a new magazine, and I googled the founder and publisher, and discovered he was fifteen years old. I don't know about you guys, but there are far more decent and established (and form friendly, or at least form-tolerant) magazines out there than I have poems or time to cover. Why worry about something started by a non-poet which gives every sign of being non-poetical?

Don't forget Rimbaud was fifteen when he wrote his best poems. I rather like the cut of her jib. She is, as you rghtly say, no poet, but then that is true of many editors (the ones who don't print my stuff.

Incidentally, the Speccie printed a longish, incoherent (natch) poem by Jory Graham in the front half. O me miserum as the Romans were wont to say.

Really? Which ones, beyond possibly a few poetry-and-prose contest editors? This is not a scientific survey exactly, but I took a look at where I submit my stuff, and as far as I know virtually everybody who makes the decision is a poet.

Peter Fobes, who edited Poetry Review very well for many years and printed reams of Whitworth was no poet and the editor of PN Review, Michael Somebody or other, doesn't write poetry either. I will fill the name in when I remember it.

Peter Forbes may be a science writer rather than a poet per se, but he edited the anthology Scanning the Century which relates history to poetry in a way that makes it one of the best such books of recent years.

However, if you mean Michael Schmidt, he not only writes poetry and publishes poetry (Carcanet) but is Professor of Poetry at Glasgow and writer in residence at one of the Cambridge colleges.
.

Peter Forbes's anthology is indeed splendid, containing as it does, two splendid poems by me. But he wrote no poems of his own. Michael Schmidt, so he does but he shouldn't. Terrible stuff, formless, preachy, like very bad prose. But he's a good editor. John Jones was the Oxford Professor of Poetry without writing any poetry except one bawdy limerick. Maurice Bowra, Christopher Ricks and A.C. Bradley were distinguished Oxford Professors of Poetry. I don't think any of them wrote an actual poem.

Patricia Oxley, who has edited Acumen splendidly since the Flood, writes no poetry, though her husband William does.

Michael, to answer your question succintly: a hundred quid.