Picador Prize Shortlist

http://www.picador.com/Latest/News/PicadorPoetryPrizeShortlist.aspx

One short poem by each poet is obviously not sufficient to make a proper judgement on who should, shouldn't, will or won't win the Picador Prize. On the other hand, it might be fun to see what one makes of them and their possibilities.
The standard issue consolation e-mail to those not selected said that they had had an 'overwhelming number of entries' that where 'of extremely high quality'. and then you look at the ten poems picked to represent the shortlist and then you check if the first e-mail really was from Picador.
Frankly, I'd have been tempted to abandon the competition rather than publish a book by the winner if this was the best they got in but I had little doubt about my winner on a first read through the poems and didn't change my mind on the second, so it's Gill Andrews for me, please, whose poem doesn't do a great deal that one hasn't seen done before but seems to me to achieve what was within the author's scope and do what it does quite nicely.
So, then I looked up Gill Andrews on the interweb to find out more and what I immediately found out was that, 'she....(went) to study for an MLitt in Poetry at St. Andrews University, working with Don Paterson, Robert Crawford and Kathleen Jamie.'

Oh, no, please, surely not the Don Paterson who judged the competition.

What did I say when this competition was announced? 'They want to give the prize to someone who can join their club.' There might not have been any need for a competition in the first place. Anyway's, here's Gill and it's hardly her fault she won.

http://www.happenstancepress.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=312:gill-andrews&catid=29:poets&Itemid=63

Best of luck to her in the dodgy world of poetry.