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October 2016 Competition Results

Isabel Rogers, Hampshire Poet 2016, commented that she was looking forward to reading all of the entries when she adjudicated the competition for October 2016. ‘Inspired By Hampshire’ inspired our members to write a poem within the 300-word limit. Isabel has chosen the winners and shares her thoughts about them below.

1st Place: Scratch (Peter Hitchen) – New Forest UXB: ‘Historical’

2nd Place:  Hilary Hares – Hampshire

3rd Place: Sally Russell – The Bull of Bull Drove 

Highly Commended: Sue Spiers – The Alcorns and Avril Stephenson – Hampshire Haven 

1st Prize:

New Forest UXB: ‘Historical’ by Scratch (Peter Hitchen)

Isabel Rogers: This poem sustained a metaphor brilliantly throughout, as well as rooting the subject deeply in Hampshire locations. I loved the playful approach to language, teasing with multiple meanings of words, which brought out the deeper theme of the work. It conveyed a complex situation with huge economy…

I was asked recently for some advice on writing monologues. This, with some additions and redaction, is what I wrote:

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If you have taken part in any kind of writing course or workshop then chances are you have written monologue. Like the nursery slopes of playwriting, monologue warms you up, builds up your writing muscle and gets you ready for the ‘real work’ of dialogue writing.

However, once you have moved on from writing a page or two, you discover writing a whole show as a monologue is much, much harder than it looks. How to keep interest when it is just one person talking for 45 minutes? When other people come into the story, how much dialogue to report? How much description is too much?

It is definitely worth getting to grips with monologue form especially as the way things are going financially nobody is going to…