[John Whitworth]

But I DON'T mix you up, Janice. Your poetic styles are entirely distinct. It is not the QUALITY of the judges I am talking about. It is the fact that they are ALL free verse persons who suppose that what I do, what a lot of you do, is not really poetry at all. Whereas I am of the opposite persuasion and suppose... enough of that!.

[Janice D. Soderling]

I see. Well, maybe it is time for another swing of the pendulum.

Something newsworthy, something sensational. A formal poem wins the National Poetry Competition. It is an idea whose time may have come.

(Not that I can do it, but you might pull it off.)

[A. E. Stallings]

Not all judges pick poems that sound like what they write themselves.

Maybe there weren't that many decent formal poems submitted last year. And by not submitting because one assumes formal poems aren't going to win, how does that help? Why assume that a poet who writes free verse will automatically rule out a formal poem?

[Mark Allinson]

While I agree with Alicia, that one should not assume that metricals will get a second-class reception from all editors, I also agree with John that - "It is the fact that they are ALL free verse persons who suppose that what I do, what a lot of you do, is not really poetry at all."

And this attitude comes straight out of the pomo academy. Surfing about on the topic I came across this blog entry, which I feel is quite typical of the times:

"This is a cards-on-the-table confession: I have a degree from Penn, an MFA, and, in the course of completing a PhD, have earned another MA, and y'know what? I wouldn't know an anapest if you pested it to my ana. I wouldn't know a trochee if you trocheed it to me; I wouldn't know a spondee if...you get the point ... When we think of the great metrical poets in the canon (if there is one), we seem more inclined to talk about their politics and the thematic angles of their poetry than to discuss whether this or that line happens to be in hexameter and whether his or her iambs are regular or not. When poets do talk metrics these days, it often seems a bit rote and show-offy, a gambit to achieve conversational dominance and/or to "pound" the listener(s) into submission." (Google a phrase for the source).

Which means that you can study poetry up to Ph.D level today and NEVER hear of metrics. Which to me borders on the criminal or insane.

This is the attitude of most contemporary universities - that politics mean everything, and metrics are forever befouled in retrogressive politics. And for many who have been trained in this way, the mere look of a metrical poem screams "FASCIST" at them. These people inevitably go on to become editors.

[Jerome Betts]

I followed up the PS link to read about the judges, two of them previously unknown to me, and was intrigued by the following extract about one of Neil Rollinson's pieces:
Underlying all this though, is a quality of loneliness and scariness clear in poems such as Neil Rollinson. (1960 - ), where the hyphen supplied in the index to an anthology is an "intimation of mortality, / a knowing nod to some bleak point in the future".
I don't know the date of his poem and have not seen it, but I had a piece of light verse on the same topic (those brackets with YOB and hyphen) in Antiquarian Book Monthly Review in December 1975, so probably rather earlier than the NR offering.

[Clive]

John - I guess you can take heart from the fact that the Forward Prize 2009 went to the late Mick Imlah for his collection The Lost Leader which - goodness no! - had poems that actually rhymed and scanned.

[John Whitworth]

Well I could. But my last book 'Being the Bad Guy' was not reviewed by ANYBODY in the UK. It was reviewed by Les Murray in Australia and Sam Gwynn in the USA - both nice reviews, perhaps they felt solidarity with another not-so-young poet of comfortable build. And - as I sad before and it's getting to be ad nauseam - my jolly good (I think) essay on the writing of rhyming poetry was rejected by the (very nice) editor of Poetry Rview because it was too contentious. That wasn't because I slagged anyone off (well would I?) but because of the subject matter itself.

As for taking my bat out in a fit of pique, I have enteerd three poems EVERY YEAR in the National Poetry Competition and I haven't won a thing since something like 1983 when the good Wendy was a judge. In that time I have won a fair amount in other competitions, half a dozen firsts, half a dozen seconds, not a few places. But I do think (YES I DO) that there is a kind of Oxford-educated male, vaguely Guardian-reading (that means soft left) consensus in these matters. And yes I know that I am male and Oxford-educated but you wouldn't know it, if you see what I mean, well you wouldn't know the Oxford bit.

I think the best Brit poets of my generation are Kit Wright and Wendy Cope and, yes, me. And in the generation below I am very fond of Sophie Hannah and Ann Drysdale and I quite like Carol Ann when she's not being politically right-on. All that means is that I like stuff that rhymes and scans. Bill Greenwell is a poet, according to me and I hope according to you, but NOT according to...

[Clive]

John, just to say I'd totally agree with you in your estimation of those poets. Kit Wright especially is criminally overlooked.

[John Whitworth]

You said it, Clive. The book by Kit Wright that you all need is called 'Hoping It Might Be So' published by Leviathan and long out of print. But I'll bet Amazon has second-hand copies. Buy it, Sphereans! You won't regret it.