E Y E W E A R, THE BLOG - FREEDOM MEANS BEING UNAFRAID TO WRITE WHAT YOU THINK

SUBMIT UP UNTIL MIDNIGHT TONIGHT!: http://store.eyewearpublishing.com/pages/the-best-new-british-and-irish-poets As the saying goes: judging poetry is like judging a friendship, or flavours of ice cream, or whether you can make the jump from one low wall to another. Nobody knows how or why you’d want to do it, you have to try very hard to maintain objectivity and you’re likely to end up lying on your back with no friends, covered in ice cream. That said, judgement and being judged is fairly central to any creative endeavor. When I talk to students at open days I try to put their minds at ease about the whole marking process. How can you assign a numerical grade to a work of art? It’s no different, I argue, to the reality of professional (or semi-professional or committed amateur) writing. Whether by an editor, an agent, a producer, a critic, a reader standing in a bookshop deciding what to buy: your work is going to be judged. Deal with it. (It now strikes me that this probab...