Mon 20 Apr 2020
Tacchi-Morris are thrilled to announce the winners of their Page is Printed Creative Writing Competition 2020…
Firstly, we would like to say a massive thank you to each and every person who entered this year’s competition and for everyone’s patience whilst awaiting the results. We have been very fortunate in the huge number of entries for both the Adult and Under 18’s categories and the judges were overwhelmed at the quality and high standard of entries. So thank you for all of the time, effort and dedication that all entrants have put into entering Page is Printed 2020.
Secondly, our most sincere congratulations and well done to 2020’s entrants. It takes a great deal of courage to get one’s thoughts onto paper and to share them with others; it can be a very daunting and intimate process, so thank you. The judges thoroughly enjoyed reading all of the entries. Although the Celebration Evening is yet to go ahead, we very much hope to get the opportunity to hear the entries read aloud in person at a later date. We will announce as soon as we think this may be an option.
And so, without further ado, it is time to announce the winners of our Page is Printed 2020: Creative Writing Competition…
Judges comments:
A beautifully described and deceptively powerful poem with great use of significant detail in evoking the speaker’s grandmother: ‘moth wing skin. She wore/rose talc and coral lipstick’, ‘my gran’s floral housedress/would stick to her frame, her clammy hand/reminding me of fat bullfrogs.’ Her presence in the ‘breakfast joint’ really lingers in the mind, I almost felt I’d seen her a few times sitting there myself! The use of lines of the song lyrics from ‘Que Sera’ works very well, giving another dimension to the grandmother’s presence and her outlook on life, and the final lines make for a poignant and understated ending: the love the speaker feels for the grandmother is palpable. A worthy winner!
‘The thought now of Coke at breakfast
disgusts me, and I drink instead
from the proffered pot.
I’ve stopped toasting each refill.
Que sera sera.’
OPEN PRIZE £100 – Dermochelys Coriacea by Christopher M. James
Judges comments:
An intriguing title but a quick google revealed it’s the Linnaean name for a leatherback sea-turtle and once I realised that, I really appreciated the precision and care with which you describe the amazing creature and the moving event of its emergence from the sea – lovely lines like ‘coming up on crutches/uneven morse surges on/Mayday sand’ to evoke the turtle’s motion up the beach. I like the way poem rewards the work you put into it and slowly unfolds its pictures and significance, a bit like the way the creature reveals itself out of the sea; the way you start the poem by referring to a different but related event; the sparseness of the punctuation; the control and shape of it on the page and that moving final couplet: ‘eyes streaming on skin rind/like an old, old child’s.’ It feels like a lot of work and craft has gone into this poem – another worthy winner!
UNDER 18s WINNERS
SOMERSET PRIZE (2x £25)
The Airlock by Eva Vincent
A Door Opens by Heather Cooke
OPEN PRIZE (3x £25)
First Flight by Lauren Bilton
She by Eilidh Gilfeather
If Life is a Corridor by William Salmon
A massive congratulations to all of our winners! We will be in touch individually with regards to the prizes.
If there’s one thing that we hope to achieve from this competition, it’s that we inspire creativity. We hope that entrants go away from this and continue to write, continue to enter competitions and continue to inspire others. We hope that all who entered had as much fun as we have for this year’s competition and that many will continue to enter the competition for year’s to come.
As a final comment, we are hoping to put together an anthology of this year’s entries. If anyone who entered has any objections to us including their work, please may you email: molly@tacchi-morris.com
Thank you,
All at TMAC.