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 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 Portrait 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.

In the gallery, I didn’t ask directions, wanting instead to 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. But walking throughout the entire gallery over 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’être of the National Photographic Portrait Prize is closer to that of a promotion and is not taken seriously by the National Portrait Gallery. If they can’t find the space, or budget, to collect the winning portraits, how serious can they be? For the amount of taxpayers’ money they pay out for the prize, the National Portrait Gallery ought to have the rights to own the winning portraits on behalf of all Australia.

But as with 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. 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 know the subtleties of the photographer’s craft? And why wasn’t this particular judge disqualified—in fact, 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 thirty-second year and one of the most lucrative poetry prizes in Australia, is co-ordinated by the Hunter Writers 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, which costs $33 per poem, is:  “Employees and their immediate family members of Hunter Writers Centre are ineligible to enter.”

The Hunter Writers Centre is a non-profit organisation, 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 first prize has been won twice by one of their staff. This seems 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 rule is in order that the judges might judge the poems on their own merit and not be influenced by the names of well-known poets. As a judge, 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’d better give some extra attention to reading their poem a couple more times in case I missed something the first time. Most of us tend to do this with a work of art if we know who the author is. The blind submission process prevents this unfair “attention weighting”.

However, for some bewildering reason, this process is then abandoned in the shortlist and longlist stages of the contest. In 2013 the approximately twenty-seven shortlisted poems were identified by the name of both the author and the poem. Immediately lobbying began on some of the short-listed poets’ 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. The way certain poets acknowledge their fellow competitors and refer to the judges must be considered a base form of politicking.

So does judging the bulk of entries (and banking the submission fees) require blind objectivity, but judging the shortlist does not? Out of that twenty-seven or so shortlist, there will surely be well-known poets and unknown poets. What keeps the judges from making weighted preferences at this, the most critical stage of the contest?

I have received a few Arts Council grants in my time. The most memorable and enlightening rejection I have 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 the Greek poet C.P. 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 C.P. Cavafy’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 a good shot at getting some funding from my own country to get this important work recorded at last. After all, there have not been many good song-cycles written in English. This was, I felt, 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 ask why. After a heated discussion, a liaison officer, obviously exasperated with my tenacity, told me that what they were actually looking for in submissions was “innovative technology”—something that had not been specified at all in the grant application rules and guidelines.

I said, “So in that case, say, if Schubert had entered one of his classic song-cycles, Winterreise, for instance, you would have rejected that as well?”

“Yes,” said the disembodied voice.

Every one of these contests and competitions costs money to enter. Thousands of Australians are entering and spending their hard-earned dollars unaware that the odds are stacked against them.

Robert Adamson is the author of The Golden Bird, winner of the C.J. 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 shortlisted for the New South Wales and Queensland premiers’ awards. More significantly, it had also been shortlisted for the C.J. Dennis Prize for Poetry two years before, in 2007. 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 The Golden Bird there are 169 poems in a book of 293 pages. Of those poems, 141 (occupying 248 pages) have been previously published, including twenty-five poems published in The Goldfinches of Baghdad. Violation of Clause 8.3.

There are actually only twenty-eight new poems (occupying 45 pages) in The Golden Bird. The new poems comprise only 17 per cent of the book, which leaves 83 per cent of the work previously published. It doesn’t take a maths genius to see which is by far the larger percentage. Violation of Clause 23.

All poets who enter this award have to sign an agreement “accepting the judges’ decision as final” which effectively means no competitors can challenge the decision—even if the judges make an error or do not themselves adhere to the rules of the contest.

I contacted one of the judges and put my concerns to them on the phone. The reply was that they had discussed this at length amongst themselves and decided that the twenty-eight 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 recognise Robert’s achievement.” A candid reply to say the least. Nice to see that everyone is on a first-name basis over there.

Friends, the C.J. 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 Clause 8.3. End of story.

If Mr Adamson had wanted to submit a twenty-eight-poem chapbook, he could have done so. If the judges wanted to acknowledge Mr Adamson’s achievement, 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. A mere 17 per cent new work in a collection of previously published poetry does not constitute a “significant” selection of an eligible book, as required by Clause 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 Clause 8.3.

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 1950s? 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 3AW criticised the Nine 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 are about $1500 for thirty seconds, and for Billboard magazine, the home of the famous Billboard Top Forty, about $7000 for a full page.

The hard realistic conclusion is this: despite the lofty rhetoric of helping and offering patronage to artists, practically every major songwriting or poetry contest, Top Ten poll, radio station music chart, including the Top Forty, the Hall of Fame, X-Factor, Australian Idol, the Academy and Grammy Awards and assorted Best Of compilations 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 promote themselves, spin a more benevolent and less mercantile image, generate publicity, more customers and, indirectly, long-term business.