Best Poem and Best Collection 2014

The shortlists have been duly considered, there are no late entrants to be supplemented, and so I can now award my own very personal endorsements for the categories of Best Poem and Best Poetry Collection of 2014, plus the other equally unremunerative and thus uncoveted titles that are added as afterthoughts.

David Harsent read Fire: a song for Mistress Askew more gently than the poem might be asking for on The Echo Chamber yesterday afternoon but that is his way and it gave the poem a somewhat different aspect to how it seems to come off the page. That didn't affect my decision in either direction in making it the best poem of 2014 for me because the horror and the horror of its voyeurism had already made it an unforgettable poem from his Fire Songs.
The shortlisted Roddy Lumsden poem, considered at slightly greater length somewhere below here, might thus be considered a bit of an unlucky loser but the best poem of 2013 is included in his collection, Not All Honey, and that, along with several other tremendous poems is enough to make it my best collection of 2014. It's a generous book and has plenty in it where the linguistic artfulness is possibly beyond my appreciation but I much prefer to celebrate the good rather than worry too much about how much it's me that is holding me back in enjoying it even more than I do already.
The most deliberation was required in deciding which of the shortlist of two was my favourite novel. I thought Murakami must be a racing certainty at the time but anybody who has been reading The Saturday Nap will understand how uncertain racing certainties can be. Sarah Waters' The Paying Guests was such an impressively detailed account of psychology and period detail, a thriller and pot-boiler of such plausible accuracy, that I could hardly wait to get back to it. And I'm grateful that I was
lent a copy and glad that I found the time to read it when I had several other books to read in a busy, busy autumn. To be preferred ahead of one of Murakami's best is a tribute in itself.
The biggest field lined up for the best event category, in contrast to 2013 when I eventually chose Chic at Glastonbury which I only saw on telly and so really shouldn't have been admissable. The shortlist was brought down to four, all of which would have made worthy winners, but in the end, with a special mention for the Southern Countertenors, it does really have to be The Tallis Scholars in Portsmouth Cathedral with, amomg other things, their Song for Athene, the Jean Mouton and the pre-concert talk with the engaging Peter Phillips.
And, finally, perhaps the easiest decision is to make Cuarteto Casals, Haydn, Seven Last Words from the Cross (Harmonia Mundi) the best CD of the year. I have a lot of time for Haydn but not quite enough when there are many composers from earlier periods whose music I turn to before his but this disc was special from the first time I played it and it remains luminous and extraordinary every time I've played it since. It must be mainly in the musicianship, which I am not the least bit qualified to comment on, but possibly also in the acoustic of the recording or even in Haydn's insistence on bringing light, or defying darkness.
It has been a very good year. Thanks to all those mentioned above for making it so.