Katharine C: BCA Poetry Reading Competition 2016

BCA (The British Cultural Association, with whom AWG shares our office space) holds an

President of BCA, Donald C

annual poetry reading competition. 

This year, eleven contestants competed, and included were the following poems:

• Still I rise, by Maya Angelou
• Porphyria's Lover, by Robert Browning 
• Ithaka by C P Cavafy (read in the english translation)
• Desolation Row by Bob Dylan
• SHE, from Cafe Comedy by Robert William Service 
• Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley
• The Ballade of Reading Gaol by Oscar Wilde (an excerpt)
• Daffodils by William Wordsworth
• The Laughing Heart by Charles Bukowski
• The Clock of Life by Robert H Smith

 

While the judges deliberated, several members - Wendy, Edwin and Bella - read poems
Hors Concours (out of competition).  Edwin read the Man from Snowy River;  Wendy read
Warning (When I am an old woman I shall wear purple With a red hat which doesnt go and doesnt suit ... But now we must have clothes that keep us dry) - a poem that has become familiar over the
last decade due to the founding of the Red Hat Society in 1998).  Bella read "Remember".  
 
The joint winners of the competition were Ithaka (read by Katharine C) and Desolation Row (read by Lawrence M;  Runners-up were Ozymandias (read by Anders L) and SHE, from Cafe Comedy (read
by Monique S).   

An interesting and fun time was had by all present.  Thanks go to the organisers within BCA and in particular Philippe M, Joyce C, Elsien G,  and the judges (Donald C, Katharine P, and Glynis T).