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Joe Dolce
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Prize Fighting

I'll bet the hardest thing about prize fightin' is pickin' up yer teeth with a boxin' glove on. Kin Hubbard (American humorist and writer, 1868-1930).

Recently, I was invited to perform at the National Multicultural Festival, in Canberra. I decided to arrive early the day before the concert so I could finally go to the National Portrait Gallery which sponsors the annual National Photographic Portrait Prize. I had been following the Photographic Prize for a few years, entered it myself twice and was looking forward to seeing a collection of the winning and short-listed photographs at full size, certain that there would be a section of the gallery devoted to collecting these pieces and hoping to learn something about the kind of printing and framing that constituted winning entries. As a passionate amateur photographer, I, like so many others hoped one day to at least make the shortlist and be part of the annual touring program that the gallery sponsors.

Walking throughout the gallery, I didn’t ask directions, wanting to instead stumble on some of the great photos I had looked at many times on the gallery website. I couldn’t wait to see last year’s winner and some of the other pictures that I loved.

After walking throughout the entire gallery over the course of the next hour, I did not see a single photo from any of the recent entries – none of the winners - nor for that matter any photos whatsoever from any of the previous competitions.

When I asked about this at the front desk, I was informed that the gallery only collects photographs of ‘notable’ people, not the photos from the competition. Even the winning entry, which is awarded a $20,000 prize, is not purchased by the gallery, but returned to the photographer. Only images of ‘notable’ entertainers, politicians and statesmen grace the walls.

This suggested to me that the raison-d’etre of the National Photographic Portrait Prize is closer to that of a promotion and is not taken that seriously by the National Portrait Gallery. If they can’t even find the space, or budget, to collect the winning portraits, how serious can these winners be? In my opinion, National Portrait Gallery really ought to have the rights to own the winning portraits on behalf of all Australia for the amount of taxpayer’s money they pay out for the prize.

But like the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award, and many other competitions of this nature, it seems the rules can be redefined with impunity, when expedient for the folks sponsoring these events.

In just about every long-term credible national competition, under the glass of public accountability, there is a standard key clause in the rules that states that no member of staff or family of employees of the sponsoring organisation is allowed to participate.

Even the Lottery has this clause on every ticket you buy:

“Employees and the immediate families of the Promoter and its related bodies corporate are ineligible to enter.”

A recent winner of the National Photographic Portrait Prize is an extraordinary photographer, whom I have worked with many times. But the winning portrait, was of the ex-wife and mother of the two children of one of the three judges, who was also a respected artist and teacher - but not a photographer. I asked myself why was he chosen in the first place to be a judge of a high-end photography competition that charges entrants an entry fee? Wouldn’t it make more sense to have professional photographers, or previous winners at least, judge these submissions – people who knew the subtleties of the photographer’s craft? And why wasn’t this particular judge disqualified – or, more significantly, why didn’t he remove himself immediately - the moment it became known that one of his direct family members was included among the primary portraits in the final shortlist?

The Newcastle Poetry Prize – with a first prize worth $12,000, now in its 32nd year and one of the most lucrative poetry prizes in Australia, is coordinated by The Hunter Writer’s Centre. It has been won twice by one of the lecturers for the School of Humanities and Social Science, at the University of Newcastle.

The University of Newcastle also happens to be the Prize’s major sponsor.

One of the Conditions of Entry for the competition, which costs $33.- per poem, is that:

‘Employees and their immediate family members of Hunter Writers Centre are ineligible to enter.’

The Hunter Writer’s Centre is a non-profit organization - but the University of Newcastle charges their wards fees - 35,500 students at last count – and most certainly is a profit-making enterprise.

So why aren’t ‘employees and their immediate family’ of the major financial sponsor, the University of Newcastle, also ineligible? The major First Prize has been won twice by one of their lecturers. This seems to me to be a bit inbred.

It’s time to mention here the strange contradiction in what is known as the ‘blind’ submission. The Newcastle Poetry Prize is a blind submission contest: no identifying information about the writer is allowed on the poems submitted. This is done in order that the judges might judge the poems on their own merit and not be influenced by presence of the names of more well-known poets which might result in extra attention being given to re-reading these poems a few more times than usual, compared to the ones from unknown poets, as the former writers are known to be proven winners. You wouldn’t want to miss a proven winner because perhaps you might have been a bit tired going through those last 500 entries and perhaps weren’t focused. You might think: I know that poet is great so I better give some extra attention to reading their poem a couple more times in case I missed something the first time. I do this myself, if I know who the author is. The blind submission process prevents this unfair ‘attention weighting’ from happening.

However, for some bewildering reason, this process is then abandoned in the short-list and long-list stage of the contest. The approximately twenty-seven 2013 short-listed poems were identified by both name of author and poem. As soon as this was done, I noticed an immediate ‘lobbying’ going on some of the short-listed poet’s Facebook pages and websites: giving thanks for being selected, mentioning the other poets by name as being in their good company, and even worst, thanking the judges, by name, sometimes by first name only, for choosing them and placing them in such esteemed company. Certainly the way certain poets acknowledge their fellow competitors and refer to the judges must be considered a base form of politicking.

So what we now had was a contest between thirty people, all of whose identities were known to the judges.

In other words, judging the bulk of entries (and banking the bulk of the submission fees) requires blind objectivity but judging the shortlist does not? This to me is hypocritical – out of that twenty-seven or so shortlist, there will surely be the well-known poets and the unknown poets. What keeps the judges from possibly making the same weighted preferences at this, the most critical, stage of the contest?

I have received a few Arts Council grants in my time. But the most memorable and enlightening rejection I ever had came from the Australian Music Board of the Australia Council. I had submitted an original song-cycle of fifteen poems adapted from the work of Greek poet, CP Cavafy, titled, ‘When The Lips and the Skin Remember,’ sung in English and with the original Greek language poems recited during the instrumental sections. I had performed this work a few times and it had been well received. One time a very old man who knew CP Cafavy’s family back in Alexandria, came up to me after a show, grabbed my hands in his and told me with tearful eyes, ‘you have made my life.’ An unforgettable moment.

The respected translator of Cavafy’s poetry, Dr. Rae Dalven, a Greek scholar from New York, had been so moved by ‘When The Lips and the Skin Remember,’ that she took a copy of the score back to Greece to give to Cavafy’s living heir. I thought I had an excellent good shot at getting some funding from my own country to get this important work recorded at last. After all, there have never been very many good song-cycles written in the English language. This was a good one and a serious contribution. And also an Australian work.

A year later, when my grant application had been rejected, I rang the grant submission board to enquire why? After a heated discussion, a liason, obviously exasperated with my tenacity, told me that what they were actually looking for in submissions was ‘innovative technology’ – something that was not clarified or specified at all in the actual grant application rules and guidelines.

I said: ‘So in that case, say if Schubert had entered one of his classic songcycles, Winterreisse, for instance, does that mean that you would have rejected that as well.’

‘Yes,’ said the disembodied voice.

Folks, the inmates have taken over the asylum.

Every one of these contests and competitions cost money to enter. Thousands of Australian are entering and spending hard-earned dollars on somewhat matches with too many unstated grey areas. Are we in need of Hope so desperately?

Robert Adamson is the author of The Golden Bird, winner of the CJ Dennis Prize for Poetry, in the 2009 Victorian Premier's Literary Awards. His previous volume of poems, The Goldfinches of Baghdad, won the Age Book of the Year Award for poetry and was short-listed for the NSW and Queensland Premiers' Awards, and, more significantly, it was also shortlisted for the CJ Dennis Prize for Poetry two years ago in 2007.

I am curious as how 'The Golden Bird' was even deemed eligible for the prize. According to the published rules of the contest:

Clause 8.3 Books will not be eligible if a significant proportion has been previously published in book form.

Clause 23. This prize is offered for a significant selection of new work by a poet, published in a book.

In Mr. Adamson’s, The Golden Bird, there are 169 poems total in book comprising 293 pages. 141 of those poems have been previously published (248 pages) including 25 poems published in a previously short-listed collection for this very same award (2007),'The Goldfinches of Baghdad'. Violation of Rule 1.

There are actually only 28 new poems in 'The Golden Bird' (45 pages). The new poems comprise only 17% of the book, which leaves 83% of the work previously published. It doesn't take a math whiz to see which is the more significant percentage. Violation of Rule 2.

All poets who enter this award have to sign a clause 'accepting the judges decision as final' which effectively means no one inside the competition can challenge the decision - even if the judges make an error, or do not adhere to the rules themseves.

I contacted one of the judges and put my concerns to them on the phone. The reply was that they had discussed this in length amongst themselves and decided that the 28 new poems could be said to be the length of a ‘chapbook’ which would have made it eligible had it been submitted that way. Also, ‘we wanted to recognize Robert’s achievement.’

A candid reply to say the least. Robert. Good to see everyone is on a first name basis over there.

The CJ Dennis Prize for Poetry is given for a BOOK, not a chapter, and not a section, and therefore the book itself should have been disqualified by nature of the very first Rule 1 8.3. End of story.

If Mr. Adamson had wanted to submit a 28 poem chapbook, he should have done so. But this cut-n-paste collection was obviously primarily a publishing strategy to enable a handful of new poems to sell an entire compilation volume. So why is a National Funding body participating in this kind of publisher promotion?

If the judges wanted to acknowledge Mr. Adamson’s achievement, fine - they should have given him a Butt of Sack or something like that at the ‘Sorry, Not Selected Party’ afterwards; not grey-up the rules of a government-funded prize. 17% new work in a collection of previously published poetry does not constitute a ‘significant’ selection of an eligible book required by Rule 2 23. And even if it could be argued that it does (by some mathematically-challenged Arts Board solicitor), the book would still be disqualified by the first Rule.

How is so much drifting away from public accountability possible? Easy. No one notices and people generally do not ask difficult questions or even care.

Do not underestimate the role of advertising and the financial component in all contests and competitions. Remember the payola scandal of the 50s? The Letter of that fiasco is dead but the Spirit still lives. Radio station playlists, content and even personnel can be dictated by the whims of paying customers and sponsors.

For instance, in 1996, a top announcer for a top radio station criticized a television network causing it to withdraw up to $300,000 in advertising. He was fired. The estimated advertising rates for a typical Top Forty radio station in the USA is approx. $1500.- for a 30 sec ad and for Billboard Magazine, the home of the famous Billboard Top Forty, is approx. $7000 for a full page ad.

The hard realistic conclusion is this: despite lofty and noble rhetoric of helping and offering patronage to artists, practically every major songwriting or poetry contest, Top Ten Poll, radio station music chart, the Top Forty, the Hall of Fame, Australian Idol, X-Factor, the Academy and Grammy Awards and assorted Best Of compilation lists - are fundamentally creative advertising campaigns – for somebody!

In other words, if there is a contest or a poll, take a peek behind the Wizard-of-Oz curtain and you will find a business, or political party, or combination of both, that is using this hey-here-we-are-look-at-us glitter event to favourably promote themselves, spin a more benevolent and less mercantile image, generate publicity, more customers and, indirectly, long-term business.