The trouble with nomming...

[bodkin]

Does anybody else find it really hard to nom stuff? I'm always going:

"I like this but I bet IBPC won't..." or

"This is really clever but not the kind I enjoy..."

"A great poem except for..."

or similar. I wonder if first encountering poems in the context of critique attunes you to perceiving flaws in them.

Is there a dichotomy going on (over there, behind the bandstand)? e.g. we sort of want to nom in order to recognise the author, but we also want to nom in order to try and win the IBPC. As there is quie commonly a groundswell of "but the IBPC would never get this..." the two can be quite contradictory.

I also refrain from nomming sometimes when I see an author already has a nom, it seems counter productive to leave somevody competing with themselves for votes.

Ian

[Ros]

One reason for extending the period that people could choose from to nom (ie to the last few months) was to allow the posting of revisions in response to crit. I keep seeing poems that are almost wonderful, and probably will be in their final form, but not quite ready for nomming yet. Which is how it should be in a workshop.

But I'm not sure any of that answers your question.

I've been rather disappointed recently with the poems that have won the IBPC. Perhaps we're just not quite in synch with them. A US v British thing? A difference in tone?

[bodkin]

Before I quit Triggerfish I spent _ages_ arguing with the more bombastically opinionated editors of that about whether there was more than one "type" of poetry... They insisted not, but it was an observable fact that I hated all the poems they loved, and vice-verse.

[Ros]

Of course there are different sorts - though it's often a sliding scale rather than distinct categories.

[David]

I would say nom and be damned. It doesn't matter whether the IBPC gets it or not. What matters is whether it's a poem that speaks to us. I think trying to fit our poems into some sort of IBPC cookie-cutter shape is doomed to failure. Sooner or later, they will get something that we get, but - as we've said many times before - that really doesn't matter. An IBPC placing isn't even the icing on the cake. It's a more or less superfluous candle.

Hey, you quit Triggerfish?

[bodkin]

Oh yes, there was this one guy who was a total **** and in the end it wasn't worth the effort of avoiding / ignoring him...

[bodkin]

I fully agree with what you (David) say about nomming, so maybe we should reiterate that nomming is for us and IBPC just an interesting side-effect.

Maybe we should put all final selections in a forum, like the features?

Maybe we also need to say that the criterion is "you like it" not "technically perfect" or "an outstanding classic of the times"?

Ian

[David]

I fully agree with what you (David) say about nomming, so maybe we should reiterate that nomming is for us and IBPC just an interesting side-effect.

Maybe we should put all final selections in a forum, like the features?

Maybe we also need to say that the criterion is "you like it" not "technically perfect" or "an outstanding classic of the times"?

Ian

I agree. Let's not be too prissy about it. If you like it, give it a shout. Otherwise poor Ros is reduced to running around drumming up last minute enthusiasm again.