Anecdotal but true
My latest collection Long-Haul Travellers has been shortlisted for the Roland Mathias Prize and yes, I'm quite pleased (at the very least you get a day out at the BBC's expense in Brecon, which is a nice town).
But the reason for the post is that it triggered a memory of Roland. He was a very eminent Welsh poet, prose writer and critic and towards the end of his life, I judged a poetry competition with him and Aeronwy Thomas, daughter of Dylan. We were quite a bit younger than him, and he had once been a headmaster and couldn't help still sounding like one, so the experience was educational but slightly intimidating for all his great courtesy; it felt like swapping opinions with some sage of the mountains. And he could do something I have never seen before or since. I've judged a lot of comps and people always ask "are they really anonymous - don't you recognise the writer's style even with the name missing?" And the answer is no, in most cases - I can't and nor can most judges I know. But this comp was specifically for Welsh writers in English (they called themselves Anglo-Welsh then but that's frowned on now) and Roland did, in fact, go through about 20 anonymous MSS and name each writer, from his own encyclopaedic knowledge of that writing scene ("this is X, he uses a campanalogical term here and his father was a bell-ringer, and this is Y, you can tell by her line breaks"). Never come across anyone else with that skill.
But the reason for the post is that it triggered a memory of Roland. He was a very eminent Welsh poet, prose writer and critic and towards the end of his life, I judged a poetry competition with him and Aeronwy Thomas, daughter of Dylan. We were quite a bit younger than him, and he had once been a headmaster and couldn't help still sounding like one, so the experience was educational but slightly intimidating for all his great courtesy; it felt like swapping opinions with some sage of the mountains. And he could do something I have never seen before or since. I've judged a lot of comps and people always ask "are they really anonymous - don't you recognise the writer's style even with the name missing?" And the answer is no, in most cases - I can't and nor can most judges I know. But this comp was specifically for Welsh writers in English (they called themselves Anglo-Welsh then but that's frowned on now) and Roland did, in fact, go through about 20 anonymous MSS and name each writer, from his own encyclopaedic knowledge of that writing scene ("this is X, he uses a campanalogical term here and his father was a bell-ringer, and this is Y, you can tell by her line breaks"). Never come across anyone else with that skill.