The terza rima is an elegant form with attractively interwoven rhymes and the natural pattern of iambic pentameter to create its music. Reading aloud the competition entries gave a clear reminder of this musicality. Many poets chose to write the fourteen-line version, the terza rima sonnet, and its brevity, rhythms and the completeness of the final rhyming couplet added to the charm of the pieces.
There was a wide range of subject matter covered, with poems of landscape, humour, nostalgia, the natural world, of pain and fear, and some meta poems about the actual writing of poetry.
It was interesting to note which entries had gone the extra mile in their subject matter. Poems that transcended the simple description, or offered a new and exciting angle on a theme, engendered a reaction of – infinitely preferable to the more predictable treatments that make
