Results of the Norman MacCaig Poetry Competition

The winners of the Norman MacCaig Poetry Competition were announced in Lochinver at 8pm on Tuesday 9 November, during the Norman MacCaig Centenary Celebration in Assynt. The overall winner is Pippa Little (1), for the poem ‘Coalend Hill Farm 1962’. All the poems are on the competition page.

Pippa Little said, ‘I'm delighted to have won and feel honoured to be part of the celebrations surrounding Norman MacCaig's centenary as his poetry is very special to me.’

The two judges were Alan Riach, Professor of Scottish Literature at Glasgow University, and Alexander (Sandy) Moffat, former head of painting at the Glasgow School of Art (2).

Professor Alan Riach said, “Judging the Norman MacCaig poetry competition was a pleasure. Competition is hardly the word, though: the finest poems are all complementary to, and different from, each other. We read them completely anonymously and judged them on what we took to be their intrinsic merits, and I'm grateful for having had the opportunity to do so. What a range of things poetry can do! I think Mr MacCaig himself would have approved.

“So many poems were so evidently the work of self-determined, individual voices, taking the poems in unexpected directions and exploring areas of what language can do that I could not have predicted. Some were inevitably a bit more under the influence - and the influence of major poets, such as MacCaig, is not always a bad thing. But it is almost impossible to emulate a major poet: you always end up showing that derivation. However, you are always in the process of learning from such a poet, and there is so much to learn. Perhaps with MacCaig there are two things, predominantly, that the winning poems demonstrate in their own terms: precise observation of actual things, and an acute sensitivity to the resources - and limitations - of language itself. You are sensitised, made aware of the strength and capability, and the vulnerability, of language and of people, in different circumstances and situations.”

Second prize went to Nancy Campbell, for ‘The Night Hunter, Upernavik’.
Third prize went to Angus D H Ogilvy for ‘Wetlands’.
Other highly commended poems were as follows:
•    ‘Calling the Kettle Black, Nevada’ by Jennifer Footman;
•    ’Lochinver Harbour’ by Jane Aldous;
•    ’The Lewis Herring Girl’ and ‘The Tin Whistle’ by Michael A Mackay;
•    ’The Museum of Tiny Shoes’ by Barry Taylor;
•    ’Glen Nant’ and ‘Pennygown, Isle of Mull’ by Lorn Macintyre;
•    ’Makkin’ by Stephanie Green;
•    ’On a Shoulder of Canisp’ by Rhoda Michael;
•    ’The Screen (after Arthur Melville)’ by Ruth Aylett.

Pippa Little gave a poetry reading with Glasgow Makar Liz Lochhead on Friday 12 November at 5pm, in Lochinver Community Room. Earlier, at 2pm, Alan Taylor gave an introduction to MacCaig’s poetry, called Norman Conquest.

The winners of first, second and third prizes readtheir poems at the Centenary Ceilidh at 8pm on Friday 12 November in Lochinver Village Hall.

The winning poems are all at www.topleftcorner.org/competition.asp

The centenary of Scottish poet Norman MacCaig (1910-96) is being celebrated in the remote north-west Highland community of Assynt with a week of talks, readings, film showings, art exhibitions, guided walks and ceilidhs. MacCaig spent many summers in Assynt and wrote much of his best loved poetry inspired by Assynt, which he called ‘this most beautiful corner of the land’ in his long poem ‘A Man in Assynt’.

NOTES
(1) Pippa Little was born in Tanzania and grew up in St Andrews. She has a PhD in contemporary women's poetry from University of London, an Eric Gregory Award, a Northern Arts award, the Andrew Waterhouse Award and the Biscuit International Poetry Prize. She has published two pamphlets : Edges (Ampersand Press) and Spar Box (Vane Women) which was a PBS Choice and her first full collection Foray was published by Biscuit in 2009. Overwintering will be published by Oxford Poets, Carcanet, in 2012. She lives in Northumberland with husband, three sons and a labrador.

(2) Alexander Moffat, one of Scotland's most significant modern artists and art teachers, was until his retirement Head of Painting at Glasgow School of Art. Alan Riach is Professor of Scottish Literature at Glasgow University and the author of five books of poetry, the most recent being Homecoming: New Poems 2001-2009. When Arts of Resistance by Alexander Mofatt and Alan Riach was first published it was hailed by the Times Literary Supplement as 'a landmark book' and it has gathered praise from a multitude of critics in the last two years. It is a unique study of modern Scottish poetry and painting, centred on the traditions of portraiture and landscape painting, and the poets from Hugh MacDiarmid to Norman MacCaig, Sorley MacLean, George Mackay Brown, Iain Crichton Smith, Edwin Morgan and Liz Lochhead. From the late nineteenth century to the early twenty-first century, the book tells the story of Scotland's political history through the deep and personal encounter of the arts in society, and especially the way artists and poets have responded to people in their particular locations, their favoured places, their local attachments, from William McTaggart to Will MacLean. Structured as a dialogue between an artist and a poet, both teachers, the book is characteristically accessible and invites an engaged response. It was begun in lectures given in China in 2004, developed in a further series of lectures at the National Galleries of Scotland in Edinburgh, and written with over 100 illustrations.

(3) The Norman MacCaig Poetry Competition is organised by Top Left Corner and sponsored by Hi-Arts.