The latest from Poetic Republichttp://www.poeticrepublic.com/news/The 2012 prize has been extended into the creation of a unique collaborative eBook publication.  In addition to poems, the publication will feature the best comments left during the judging process. The other significant change this year is that comments (against the top 4 poems in a group of 12) have been made compulsory. This should improve the quality of ratings, give participants much more feedback and give participants a clear idea how far their poems have progressed. Raising funds for this year’s event was a tough though worthwhile process. We thank Arts Council England for supporting the development of the event for a second year. Over half the budgeted income is planned to come from entry fees. The entry fee of £7 is the price of a cinema ticket in the UK yet allows participation in a fascinating event over several months. Entering the competition is hands on support for the development of an innovative idea. Enter online: Poetry Competition 2012http://www.poeticrepublic.com/news/12/poetic-republic-poetry-prize-2012-is-open-for-entries/Mon, 30 January 2012 15:53:06 UTCThe winner of the MAG Poetry Prize 2011 is Francesca McMahon with her poem Ruby and Me at Baby Clinic. That Francesca’s poem should once again be selected by the community is extraordinary (Francesca also won the prize in 2010 and 2009). People may be surprised that the same poet could win three times. So are we. Next year, however, there will be a different winner - Francesca has announced her ‘retirement’ from the MAG Poetry Prize! The reaction to the competition was extremely positive: “I do think that the competition is fantastic in its approach,” “I think the peer assessment is brilliant and really marks the competition out from others,” “I have thoroughly enjoyed reading the excellent poems sent in by other people - many of which took my breath away.” But there were reservations: “I was very surprised that some really good poems didn't make it through to the final 12.” Where participants referred to specific poems, generally these poems had come close to the shortlist. It is in the nature of the process that most people will have read a poem (or more than one poem) that they think should have been on the shortlist but wasn’t. Opinion will always be divided. On the positive side, it may be that we can learn the most from poems that other people rate highly but which we would otherwise have passed over more quickly. This year, even more than last year, there were simply too many excellent poems for a shortlist of 12 to accommodate. Going forward, finding ways to give recognition to a wider group of poems is surely a priority. More than 1,500 comments were left during the judging process this year – a significant increase on last year.    There were 1,015 poems this year (up from 591 poems last year). The reach of the prize broadened with entries being received from 36 countries. £1,015 was raised for MAG – one pound per entry. The focus going forward will be on improving processes to generate constructive feedback on each other’s writing, whilst at the same time identifying and recognising excellence in writing. This year’s participants offered some great thoughts and ideas on the process and these will guide further development of the event. We continue in the spirit of learning, confident there is much left to learn. Thank you to everyone who took part in or supported the MAG Poetry Prize 2011. Read all about the winning and shortlisted poets.http://www.poeticrepublic.com/news/11/francesca-mcmahon-wins-mag-poetry-prize-2011/Sun, 24 July 2011 20:22:13 UTCWhen the State of the Arts 2011 conference (London, 10th February) appeared on the Twitter radar a few weeks ago I eagerly snapped up one of the last remaining places. It was an extraordinary gathering of delegates. Most industry meet-ups have a very obvious focus but at the State of The Arts 2011 the sheer diversity of interests (from the quasi-humanitarian to the purely egotistical, from the traditional to the cutting-edge, from the subsidised to the profit-making, and somewhere amongst it all, education and health) was quickly apparent. So too was the absolute passion of the attendees for what they do. The best sessions were those where the panellists brought and shared specific knowledge about what they are working on. Rethinking cultural philanthropy was excellent. The points made by Erica Whyman (Chief Executive, Northern Stage) being particularly incisive. Ironically, I only saw this session for the first time on video a few days after the conference itself. I have watched the video twice. Thank you to the RSA and the Arts Council England for organising this great conference and making videos of all the sessions and also the Flash Conference freely available to everyone. Elsewhere in London on 17th February, Arts & Business – Frontline Funding Symposium 2011 was, from all accounts, inspirational. Certainly the Audio Boo Lunchtime and End of Day interviews are good fun and contain some valuable points. And in Tokyo (12th to 13th February), the British Council organised the Digital Creative Conference Fumihiko Sumitomo starts the final panel Thinking about the future of digital art by quoting Fumio Nanjo (Director, Mori Art Museum) from an earlier session: “As a result of new technology emerging, ‘art’ cannot maintain its autonomous sphere. Art is disappearing, everyone is becoming creative and we have to respond to this new trend.” These two latter conferences I followed via Twitter. Turning the clock back a little, I was fortunate enough to attend Future Democracy ’10 (London, 2nd December 2010). The keynote speaker was Steve Thompson, Institute of Digital Innovation, University of Teesside. That it was an inspired choice became clear as the day unfolded, his “alternative perspective” somehow illuminating the other later sessions which were of more direct interest to me. In the Apps for Democracy workshop Jonathan Simmons talked about Public Zone’s app for connecting MPs to their constituents. A product not quite there yet, but which was close enough to make me feel a real thrill of impending change. Iris Lapinski, CDI Europe talked about the equally fascinating though quite different Apps for Good initiative. Gez Smith from Delib discussed the government initiative Your Freedom which generated 14,000 ideas (across the whole spectrum of public concerns) and 95,000 comments (considered to be of mixed quality!). Straight away I was struck by the thought that whilst the approach of Your Freedom, in terms of soliciting and evaluating ideas, was completely different to the MAG Poetry Prize, something very similar was going on. This year the MAG Poetry Prize generated 600 poems and 700 comments. In the mysteriously named Workshop B: Large-scale online debate, Hans Hagedorn talked about the Citizens’ Forum Project in Germany. Here, across 25 regions, 10,000 citizens will be recruited with a view to generating a set of critically thought out ideas to be put forward and fed into public policy-making. Hans Hagedorn and Anna Wohlfarth described in detail the processes for telephone recruitment (constructed to create a “random” sample by age, gender and education), challenge selection, group moderation and idea condensation. Each of the 25 regions has its own media budget. The scale of the project is jaw-dropping. The project kicks off in earnest in March and I can’t wait to see how this develops. It is interesting to consider Your Freedom, the Citizen’s Forum and the MAG Poetry Prize together. All three are a call for ideas followed by an evaluation of these ideas. In the case of Your Freedom, the organizer arranges for a professional team to evaluate and filter the ideas. In the case of the Citizens’ Forum the idea generation and evaluation is a rolling process carried out by the participants. The participants are responsible for the final outcome although the unfolding of the process is guided by a team of professionals. In the MAG Poetry Prize the participants submit and evaluate poems through a system of anonymous peer review. The rules are set in advance and the outcome is whatever the outcome is. Future-Democracy ’10 took place in the circumstances of severe winter weather and many people were unable to attend. I was one of the lucky ones to make it and would like to thank Headstar and Dan Jellinek for organising another very stimulating event. Some of the highlights are available on video thanks to Catch 21.   Peter Hartey Founder, Poetic Republic  http://www.poeticrepublic.com/news/10/state-of-the-arts-2011-and-future-democracy-a10/Mon, 21 February 2011 14:44:59 UTCThe events team at leading landmine charity Mines Advisory Group (MAG), which the competition raises funds for, didn’t quite know what to say. Organiser of the MAG Poetry Competition, Peter Hartey, was plainly surprised at the result. But the result was clear – Essex-based poet Francesca McMahon had, for the second year running, won the MAG Poetry Prize. “The MAG Poetry Competition is an anonymous peer review system. By the end of the competition the shortlisted poems have been read over 200 times. That Francesca has won for a second time is remarkable,” said Peter. “I would love to know if anyone judging recognised Honey Traps, Francesca’s winning poem this year, as being by the same author as Thirteenth Birthday, the winning entry from last year,” Peter added. The increased number of entries this year (591 up from 310), coupled with the anonymity of the judging process, makes the winning result even more significant. It also means that the amount of money raised to support MAG’s lifesaving work clearing deadly remnants of conflict for the benefit of communities worldwide has risen to £591 – one pound for every entry. This year the worldwide reach of the democratic competition also grew with poems being entered from 27 different countries including Australia, Bangladesh, Canada, Croatia, Hong Kong, India, Singapore, Uganda and the USA. Commenting on her second win Francesca McMahon said: “I only entered the competition again this year because I enjoyed the judging process so much last year. I think the opportunity to judge other poems is invaluable in helping writers to see what works. “Honey Traps is really about time,” Francesca explained.  “I wrote it because I see people rushing through life, eager to get to the future, without considering that the years they are rushing through might turn out to be the best ones,” she said. Cheryl Carman, whose poem was one of the final 12 chosen by entrants, said that the competition had been a “really enjoyable experience.”  “The democratic nature of the competition is brilliant in itself and so refreshing,” she added.http://www.poeticrepublic.com/news/9/surprise-winner-in-innovative-mag-poetry-competition/Mon, 19 July 2010 10:39:31 UTCCan a creative writing competition (the MAG poetry competition) solve one of the central problems of e-democracy? First of all, if we're a little shaky on what the term e-democracy means (probably most of us) we can clear this up by reviewing (selectively) the discussion topics at the Future-Democracy '09 conference, 25th November 2009, London, UK. The keynote speech by Will Straw, Editor, Left Foot Forward, focussed on blogs. In a nutshell, anyone can set up a blog and become a kind of self-styled online newspaper. The process has taken off more in the USA than in the UK, probably because the USA has no real national newspapers, unlike the UK situation. In the USA, this leaves more space for the small players to move into. Anyway, bloggers can actually create and break news. Next up was a speaker from Italy, Guglielmo Celata, who talked about a remarkable website Openpolis which collects information on about 130,000 politicians in Italy and makes it available to the public in an easy to search format. For Guglielmo, the central notions of e-democracy are openness and transparency. The session on engaging young people in e-democracy saw Tom Lodziak talk about the UK Youth Parliament and Becky Allen from the Hansard Society talk about Heads Up. Both websites aim at generating discussion from young people about current issues. The Heads Up initiative focuses on having a defined outout - a set of ideas and conclusions that can be fed into government policy-making forums. Jo Woolf talked about Channel 4's Battlefront which is a site promoting young people's campaigns. The morning finished with Catherine Howe, Operations Director, Public-i, talking about the challenge of bringing the sheer volume of discussion (noise) that Social Media (Facebook and Twitter) can generate into a useful output. For the moment the social web resembles the Wild West and a Facebook group with 1million members doesn't constitute a refined decision-making process that will drive society forward. The afternoon was organised into a series of concomitant workshops. You couldn't go to everything. The highlight here (from a press perspective) was probably the workshop on the future of electronic petitions. The UK government is making e-petitions compulsory for all local councils in the UK. I opted out of this session but fortunately the good people at the BBC were vigilant and covered this in full BBC coverage of e-petitions. So, what are the key threads running through e-democracy? And where does the MAG poetry competition fit in? The first key thread is transparency. The web is increasing transparency. More information is becoming available and this information is being rapidly disseminated to anyone who is in a position to absord rapidly disseminated information. This process is going ahead whether people like it or not. In this context the MAG poetry competition sits confortably but this isn't the rub. The second key thread, that comes up over and over, is participation. The web is giving more and more people the opportunity to have a voice. But the problem for e-democracy is that few, if any, mechanisms exist to translate these voices into a source of constructive decision-making. E-petitions certainly represent one way forward. In this second context, the MAG poetry competition has developed its own unique mechanism to convert the opinions of the participating poets into an effective decision - the choice of winner. Interestingly this is achieved without discussion. There is no online debate over which poem is the best poem. The 2010 MAG poetry competition incorporates further innovation in that participants will be able to leave comments during the judging process - but these comments will only be published after the winners have been announced. Whether this has wider implications for e-democracy time will tell. E-democracy, however, looks to be having an impact on poetry competitions. Thank you to Dan Jellinek, Event Chair, Future Democracy 09 for putting together such a varied and fascinating group of speakers which stimulated so many thoughts and ideas.   Peter Hartey Organizer, MAG Poetry Prize                                                                                                                     http://www.poeticrepublic.com/news/8/poetry-competitions-and-e-democracy-in-the-uk/Sun, 7 February 2010 14:46:16 UTCSee homepage for details.http://www.poeticrepublic.com/news/6/francesca-mcmahon-wins-mag-poetry-prize-2009/Mon, 10 August 2009 09:33:38 UTCMAG's emergency response project for Gaza is contributing to the post-conflict reconstruction efforts by ensuring as safe an environment as possible for the local population and development agencies.Latest activities (7-13 February)MAG staff undertook nine tasks during the week including assessment of schools, buildings and agricultural landIn Gaza City a Hellfire Nitro tank was removed after a report was received from OxfamUNRWA reported an item at Tal el Hawa School on assessment MAG's Technical staff identified wedges of smoke generating incendiary (white phosphorous) projectiles. These were immediately removed and stored safelyA reconnaissance visit was completed before removing the nose cone of an air dropped High Explosive (HE) bomb. After which the MAG technical team verified the absence of a nose fuse on the bomb, which indicated that it is safe to transport. The technical team also completed a visual search around the building on request of the owner during which no further items were identifiedAn item of UXO was identified after MAG responded to a request from ICRC The item is approximately six metres below the surface and in an orange grove. The location was marked and the item will moved at a later date when appropriate equipment is availableMAG Technical staff conducted a number of assessments in and around several houses and buildings, verifying that they were safe to enter with no contamination by UXOArrangements for a MAG office and staff accommodation were completed and an office has been establishedThe following MAG personnel are now working on the project:Technical Director who is the Operations Manager for the projectSeven UXO techniciansOne qualified paramedicProgramme OfficerOne Community Liaison Manager and one UXO technician are also due to arrive in Jerusalem on 15 February MAG would like to express its gratitude to the following donors for supporting to the Gaza emergency response project: Department for International Development (UK); United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA).The above is taken directly from the MAG website. To find out more about MAG's work please visit their website:www.maginternational.orghttp://www.poeticrepublic.com/news/5/mag-responds-to-gaza-crisis/Fri, 13 February 2009 20:02:04 UTCYes, we were just blown away to be awarded Manchester Evening News "Site of the Week" just in time for Christmas. An unexpected present! Poetry had another Christmas present in the UK with two versions of the Leonard Cohen song "Hallelujah" fighting for the Christmas number one position in the charts. Predictably the X Factor winner Alexandra Burke hit the top position leaving the classic Jeff Buckley version in second place. Leonard Cohen's own version was also in the charts at position 36.It is interesting to note that Leonard Cohen says he wrote over eighty verses for the song before arriving at the final five verses. It reminds me of a poetry workshop given by David Harsent at the Poetry School in London where he was keen to point out that "all writing is about re-writing."Posted By Peter Harteyhttp://www.poeticrepublic.com/news/4/awarded-asite-of-the-weeka-/Mon, 29 December 2008 23:03:40 UTCYes, MAG (Mines Advisory Group) is holding an online Celebrity Shoe Auction. Shoes from Tony Blair, Dame Shirley Bassey, Greg Rusedski, Barbara Bach, Jarvis Cocker, Ian Hislop, Geri Halliwell, Lulu, Theo Walcott and many more... Check out... there must be some poetry somewhere amongst all these shoes! http://www.poeticrepublic.com/news/3/celebrity-shoes/Sat, 29 November 2008 15:00:23 UTCPOETRY COMPETITION IN AID OF LANDMINE CHARITY With landmines still threatening the lives and security of thousands around the world, a UK-based poetry group is looking to use creative writing as a way of raising funds for life-saving humanitarian work. Peter Hartey, who pioneered the Manchester poetry forum ‘Poetic Republic', has launched an ambitious online poetry competition with proceeds going to the aid of the UK landmine charity, MAG (Mines Advisory Group). The competition will enable aspiring and established poets from across the globe to submit their on-line entries for the MAG Poetry Prize with proceeds going towards clearance and development work in countries affected by landmines and unexploded ordnance. The prize fund accumulates at the rate of £2 per entry up to a maximum of £10,000.  This knockout competition will be run in a unique way with poets themselves judging the entries of their fellow participants rather than a panel of judges. "The winning poems will not reflect the taste of one or two individuals but rather the wider group" said competition organizer Peter Hartey.  "This is truly an online poetry contest that harnesses the huge judging potential that the pool of entrants represents," says Peter. "Whilst it is a "competition", more importantly, it's a fun and creative way for people to learn from their fellow poets." "Landmines still kill and maim thousands of people across the globe," said MAG Chief Executive Lou McGrath. "We are extremely impressed with the efforts of Peter and Poetic Republic and grateful for these much needed funds for our clearance work." The closing date for the competition is 30th April 2009.   MAG is a neutral and impartial humanitarian organisation clearing the remnants of conflict for the benefit of communities worldwide. MAG is co-laureate of the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize, awarded for its work with the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL), which culminated in the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty - the international agreement that bans antipersonnel landmines.  Poetic Republic is a Manchester based not-for-profit organisation dedicated to the promotion of the poetic arts and humanitarian causes.    http://www.poeticrepublic.com/news/2/press-release/Thu, 20 November 2008 20:14:02 UTCPoetic Republic was launched in the Committee Room of Manchester's striking neoclassical circular Central Library on Wednesday 9th July at 6.00pm. 12 of Manchester's finest poets read/performed - including a Canadian and an Australian poet! A great presentation was given by the Head of Operations from the humanitarian organisation MAG (Mines Advisory Group). The event was timed to be included as part of the Not Part Of Festival 2008, with the actual launch of the site to follow shortly after...http://www.poeticrepublic.com/news/1/launch-event-9th-july-2008/Fri, 17 October 2008 16:05:42 UTC