The Poetry Society has betrayed poetry

Each year poets throughout the land wait breathlessly for the results of the National Poetry Competition and the latest winners’ anthology. We can gauge the state of our national literacy by these pages – which is why this year’s results left some of us spitting feathers. The first two prizes have been awarded not to poetry at all, but to prose, printed in central blocks on the page, evidently under the impression that this makes them something other than prose. 

The top gong went to Imogen Wade for The Time I was Mugged in New York City. The second, from Fawzia Muradali Kane, entitled Eric, contains numerous illiteracies. Both read like diary entries, interesting as self-expression or reportage. But poetry? 

There is a simple litmus test to tell poetry from prose. Write the words out in a continuum like a newspaper article. You’ll