Freedom! Competition Winners

After much deliberation the jury, i.e. me, has reported back and I'm pleased to say that the winners are:

Prose:

Winner: Alan Green
Runner-Up: Old Pesky (and I took into account that he had slightly exceeded the word limit!)

Highly commended: Russian Doll and Kropotkin38

Poetry:

Winner: Lavadis

Runner up: Nicola 6

Highly commended: Sundays Child and Fatboy 74.

A special mention should go to Cavalcaderl whose entries went way beyond her normal standard and stood out for their special charm.

The standard was, as always, very high and whilst I had no difficulties in picking the poetry winner I found it very hard to choose between the four stand-out prose pieces.

For future competitions I should mention a few pointers:

Make sure that grammar and spelling are correct. Far too many entries contained spelling errors and when one is critically reading through a lot of entries it does make a difference.

Look to your first par. It makes a big impression. look at Alan Green's first sentence - it grips you. As does Lavadis's first verse. They leave you wanting more and that makes you dive into the piece.

In poetry, try and surprise the judge. The image chain is vital.

In prose, get in your twists. The winner's is a cracker although I love the two big cranks in Old Pesky's entry.

Be original - the naming of the characters in Russian Doll's entry is very clever and completely relevant to the story. Old Pesky's descriptive passages are superb.

I went through all of your entries very carefully and everyone got at least two reads so do be assured that you all got a fair crack of the whip!

Congratulations to you all on an excellent set of entries - and the next comp will be announced next week.

I think that pinda, in whose memory this competiton was held, would have been proud of you all.