Yesterday saw the announcement of the winners in this year’s Neil Gunn writing competition – one of those small(ish) but important prose-and-poetry events that never seem to receive anywhere near the level of publicity they merit.
Given the long hours of labour, worry and redrafting that the entrants will have devoted to their efforts, competitions such as this ought to receive at least as much media coverage as their music or comedy equivalents, or some throwaway lower-division football match.
But it’s not to be and will probably remain that way, especially in the modern economic and artistic climate, where the quieter written arts are far from fashionable. Poetry, in particular, is one of the hardest of all literary crafts – journalism looks like a doddle in comparison.
The competition started in 1988 and is held every second year – this was the eleventh event. As the name indicates, it is a tribute to – and a posthumous continuation of – the work of the celebrated Scottish writer Neil M Gunn, 1891–1973. Gunn is regarded as one the most accomplished Scottish prose writers of the middle part of the last century, and remains well known through novels such as Morning Tide (1930), Highland River (1937 – itself winning an award, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize) and The Silver Darlings (1941).
The prize is organised by Charlotte Macarthur, the area libraries officer for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey and Lochaber, who has been involved since 2003. “The competition is worldwide for adults and in the Highland Council area for schools,” Macarthur says. The funding comes from a variety of sources: “mostly from Highland Council, plus in-kind from the Neil Gunn Trust, plus sponsorship, plus a very small entry fee from adults.”
The number of entries is impressive – Macarthur reckons it was around 342 this time – and the judging process takes around six weeks. This year's lead judge was the acclaimed writer Andrew Greig, with Murdo Grant as the other poetry judge. Ann Yule and Marilyn Ferguson worked on the stories, while the secondary school sections were overseen by Colin Ferguson of the Neil Gunn Trust and Joyce Watson of Highland Council. The primary school sections were judged by Alison Wilkie and Donnie Munro, both of the trust, and by Elizabeth Parker from the council.
Details of the prizewinners and sponsors can be found on the council website, and the winning entries in the adult poetry section are also available online. The theme of the competition this year was “A wrong turning”, taken from Gunn’s Highland River: “Our river took a wrong turning somewhere! But we haven't forgotten the source.”
The poetry award was shared between Cardiff-based Susan Richardson, for Isolate, and Donald Mackay who lives in Caithness (very appropriate, given that Gunn was Dunbeath-born), for Flambeaux.
Richardson is already well known as a writer and broadcaster – she is, for instance, one of the resident poets on Radio 4’s Saturday Live – and has published several volumes of poetry, most recently Where the Air is Rarefied (Cinnamon Press, 2011).
Mackay works as a teacher at Wick High School and is steadily building a reputation courtesy not only of his winning poem (which recalls time spent in what was then known as Zaire), but also Kept in the Dark (Mariscat Press, 2007) and last year’s Port Au Prince, a booklet of poems based on the Haitian earthquake.
(I must add that Mackay’s winning of the prize delighted me personally, as we have kept in touch for a mix of occasional walks, meals and literary discussions since first meeting at Aberdeen University around 1980. We don’t often see each other – years and even half-decades can pass – but there is no doubt that Mackay has worked hard for his poetic recognition. He is also very modest: it was, for instance, only two days before the Neil Gunn prize was awarded that I even knew he had entered, and then only courtesy of his wife Pauline.)
“I was struck by many fine poems and stories that were at once local and international,” Andrew Greig commented after the awards had been announced. “Entries came from Avoch to Oz, Perth to Portugal. Neil Gunn would approve.”
Overall, the standard of the completion was high across all the sections. “The schools entries promise for the future,” Greig said, “kids awarded alongside adults, and getting real money! This can shape a life. Creativity – making something new, to stand outside yourself – is a deep joy. Hard but liberating work.”
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