Australian Bush Laureate Awards 2011 ???????

[keats]

The Laureates this year were shared around widely. Murray Hartin's beatifully produced book took out book of the year, Jim Brown took out Recorded track of the year with a heartfelt Bushfire Poem and Jack Drake took out CD of the year with his CD of Classics over some wonderful opposition. Here in lies the big problem and why the Laureate Awards are slowly becoming a farce and the crowds have dropped to a third. Now, I refuse personally to enter anything in these awards for personal reasons and beliefs, only performed there once and was not paid even though the Musicians told me they were and am now receiving nothing but complaints from poets and audience.
Why? Well with no disrespect to my great mate Jack Drake, and his winning CD of Classic Poems, it leaves us wondering where Original Poetry stands in the eyes of the judges. With opposition such as Marco Gliori, Murray Hartin, John Best, Peter Mace and Brad Maclean, it can't be said that there is no quality there. So the better CD won, I hear many say. Well I don't dispute this, but I do dispute that these Max Ellis Marketing/Jim Haynes hosted awards are keeping to their own rules.
Here is one of the conditions from their own official entry form

3. Album of the Year – for the best body of Australian rhymed verse recorded on CD (not cassette), released during the eligibility period. Content may be original or re-release.
If Album of the Year does NOT qualify as original verse (minimum 75% original content), another award will be presented for Album of the Year Original Verse.


Hmm, this is most interesting at a time when an ex-policeman has been hired to investigate a stuff up at the Golden Guitars involving Album Of The Year. Now these awards once held a lot of creedence, dragged a full house to the Town Hall each Festival and had almost every Poet in Australia jostling for an entry form. So why has our craft and it's so called 'Official Awards' (That have absolutely no input from the ABPA - to the point our president doesn't even get recognised for being in attendance) fallen free of any official scrutiny on it's own rules. It's not a free show, almost $30 a head, and it's contents of poetry is under 50% although anybody entering must have at least 75% poetry on their CDs. All song and dance and 'other show' advertising as well as a lot of in-house croney backslapping.

I do believe it is time to have a good look at wether or not these so called awards are a true representation of where we as an association, and we as Bush Poets are currently at, or currently headed. Is there an alternative? Do we let the Laureates just die the death they are heading for and take a lot of our reputation with it?

I don't know the answer but i feel this really is a subject which needs to be looked at and debated. If our State and National Comps were run like this all hell would break loose!!!

[swaggyjoe]

It would appear that all the appropriate 'disclaimers' are in place ...

Item 12 (General Rules) On page 2 of the Australian Bush Laureate Awards Information and Rules ...

Notwithstanding any of the above rules, all matters relating to the conduct of the Australian Bush Laureate Awards remain under the total control of the "organisers", Max Ellis Marketing or it's nominees.

The "organisers" will use their best endevours to ensure all requirements of nominations and conduct of the awards are met, but cannot be held responsible for any digression or non-compliance in any matter.

The the Australian Bush Laureate Awards is after all, a private 'venture' with nothing to do with the ABPA.

Joe (AKA Blokefred)

[keats]

Yes and how we know it!!!!!!

The the Australian Bush Laureate Awards is after all, a private 'venture' with nothing to do with the ABPA

Very relevant comment. A marketing exercise that is making our Original Writers look like puppets for the organisers who want to promote themselves. Disclaimers are an excuse, especially in this years debacle, to cover their laziness, lack of knowledge of who the public think should win, and overall to protect their profits, although they must be declining sharply.

So just how did a private 'venture' decide that they would be the lords and masters of Bush Poetry of which almost all entrants this year were ABPA members? Well good luck Max Ellis Marketing, for if our top poets withdraw their support, you will be left choosing between a stack of forth rate home-burnt CDs (where currently they are Professionally made products) probably containing mostly other poet's works. THIS, I am afraid, will set Bush Poetry back 10 years, so don't invoke your disclaimers to cover up your very poor efforts in what should be a rather straight forward endeavour. Your 5 judges (??well you have to send in 5 CDs or Books) had plenty of time to realise the winner wasn't original and therefore plenty of time to arrange an Original award. Enough of the excuses. Follow the rules you impose on all entrants, they pay you to enter, send you their product for judging and in the many weeks you have to judge and organise, you still come up with a money making variety show, where the Bush Poetry is almost, at times, insignificant.

No excuses please!!!

[Stephen Whiteside]

If I understand you correctly, the point you are making is that 'Book of the Year' was not 75% original verse, and therefore there should have been a separate award for 'Best Book - Original Verse'. Is that right?

[keats]

No Stephen, nothing to do with that. CD of the year went to a recording of traditional poems and in that case a separate award for original Cd of the year, according to their own rules, should have been awarded but wasn't. Please tetras original post. Book of the year should always be an original publication, although at one stage they did have a separate section for best compilation book of other. Peoples works which was ridiculous and was eventually discarded.

[Neville Briggs]

I am not qualified to say much about this subject, Keats , as I have never entered or attended and I have no knowledge of the rules or requirements of the Bush Laureates.

The only thing I am moved to say after reading the points you raise is that I get a heavy heart at the possibility that something we practice as the enjoyment of poetry for poetry sake is in danger of becoming self defeating.

Remember the big bush band movement of a few years ago, what became of that ?
Where's the bush bands like.. Redgum etc
Let's hope we are not headed down the same track. Burnt out by our own clamouring for some supposed celebrity success at the expense of all the ordinary folk who just want a bit of a hobby to enjoy with a few friends and supporters.

[keats]

I don't think that will happen Neville, as these awards have been going for many years. A lot of Professional Performance Poets have gained well through CD and book sales by winning these awards. And many of them are still our top performers. It is in recognition of producing quality poetry in a recorded or printed media form. It is the lack of accountability that I am concerned about and the fact that we have a private enterprise running our awards. This has no impact on our writers and non-performers. I, by choice, do not enter anything in the awards for my own reasons, but I feel that recognition of recorded and published works is important, especially given the money that our poets spend to produce these works.

I don't see awards as being detrimental to our craft, any more than having State and National written and performance awards. My beef is in the way they are being run at present and how they ignore their own rules. Also the fact that people have to pay almost $30 a head to get in and sit for three and a half hours waiting for the poets and the awards inbetween a glut of singers and back-slapping, self promoting people who seem to have no intentions of focusing on Poetry being the central point of our Poetry awards.

[keats]

Oh, and Neville, strangely enough, Hugh McDonald of Redgum who wrote Diamantina Drover amongst many other of their songs, now performs a Henry Lawson show at a lot of the festivals, so he's come over to the side of good!! lol Stephen Whiteside is working with him shortly, check out Stephen's post under 'Events'.

[keats]

Sorry Neville, under 'Member's Public Performances'

[Neville Briggs]

I checked that out Neil. Just a passing thought, I wonder how many of our contemporary bush poets will be celebrated in a hundred years time like ole Henry. I guess we will never know, we won't be here.