Gillian Laker is a poet and writer of short fiction. She was Canterbury Festival Poet of the
Year 2013 and was shortlisted for the International Troubadour prize in 2012. Gillian’s
poems have been published in various anthologies, on the Guardian website and she was
featured poet in the 2014 summer edition of Envoi. She is currently working on Curious
Voices, a poetic response to the cabinets of curiosity at the Beaney House of Art &
Knowledge, and on a series of linked short stories spanning the hundred years since the First
World War. She won the 2014 SaveAs Writers’ ‘The Bigger Picture’ prose competition and
the International SaveAs Writers’ prose competitions for 2013 and 2015. She was poetry
judge for the SaveAs Writers’ Shakespeare-themed competition and a judge for the
Canterbury Festival Poet of the Year 2014.
Gillian says:
I am extremely excited to be asked to judge the SaveAs Writers’ ‘Writing the City’ poetry
competition, as this theme allows for such a diversity of response.
I wholeheartedly concur with my fellow judge Maria in a desire to see fresh uses of language.
Freshness is particularly important for poetry, since a poem must be capable of being read
repeatedly without losing its first appeal. I will be reading the entries many times in the same
way as I might listen to a piece of music. The ones that will be left standing at the end will be
those that haven’t become stale or faded into background noise. With luck I will find poems
that grow with each re-reading.
This year I will also be looking for poetry that resonates with the place in which it is set or
upon which it reflects; poems which might not work as well if relocated or redirected. I have
no preference for a particular form, provided that the words are not forced out of shape for
the sake of rhyme or meter. Nothing is more thrilling than a finely crafted sonnet where all
words chime; equally a free form or concrete poem can be wonderfully apt.
Finally, I know I can approach the judging process with a strategy and then be hit over the
head by writing which has to be applauded. So my last piece of advice is to write a poem that
is essential, one that cannot be left unwritten, which is both the least helpful and the best
advice there is. Good luck everyone - I look forward to reading your work.
Gillian Laker, May 2015