"Our modern prizes are rooted in the profane ground of sponsorship and publicity. And they have proved an effective advertisement for poetry. Witness the two-thousand-plus audiences for the Eliot readings at the Royal Festival Hall every January. The competitions themselves, however, need to be run on principles of good practice, with clear rules concerning declarations of interest, and transparency about the process. It’s not right to ask people to make careerchanging judgements without proper guidance. And how to pick the judges – for integrity or for celebrity? Those Athenian arbiters sitting in the front row preferring the Sophocles to the Euripides were chosen by lot." Maurice Riordan Poetry Review

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