The only thing worse than having your first book of poems come out the same year as Janet Frame's book of poems would be.... I can't think of anything.

I was just saying the same thing to my husband...those poor bastards up against Janet Frame, how can one compete with a ghost? It's a great legacy she's left us, she's a great writer, I can kind of understand it in a way but I feel sorry, too, for the other poets. I remember a long time ago my uncle's wife left him for another woman and he was beside himself. I was way too young to understand but I remember a conversation with my mother, long after the fact, where she said, how on earth could he cope with that? If it was another man, it would have been normal, he'd have found a way, but a woman? This feels a bit like that, I imagine, for the other poets on the list. Hard to just write off as you might a competition. It's just not your year...

Yes, how terrible to have one's poetry published in the same year as other good poetry. How crushing for the spirit! Good god, having an acknowledged major writer in the telent pool might actually attract attention to one's art form!

You really can't think of anything worse, Louise? Try harder.

Well, Louise. You might consider something worse is having your novel come out in the same year as one of Janet Frame's.

I understand Random House is publishing one in October.

I actually think its unfortunate that the the work of posthumous writers - albeit bloody good ones - should be put up against the work of living artists who might actually receive some financial benefit from the prominent award.

We all know that awards are highly politicised lotteries. Give Janet another posthumous honour instead (Dame Janet Frame sounds good), and give the money to the living poets to help them pay their bills and keep them writing in this vital form.

here here Matthew.

Still, does anyone expect anything surprising from the Montana's?

We all know awards are highly politicised lotteries? No, darling, we don't. Put a panel of judges together and you get arguments, horse trading and outcomes unpredictable to outsiders, but lotteries are random, which is another colour of cat altogether. And as for "politicised" - what, Frame won because her rep demanded it? The fix quietly went in? Give me a break.

Frame. Wrote. Good. Poems. Okay?

As to the posthumous thing, and the relative financial needs of living writers over the families of dead ones (Nigel Cox's children don't need to eat, is that it?) - I think you might be getting a little political on that one.

I'd also observe that Frame chose for this book to be published in this way. She happens to be dead now, yes. But why should that disqualify a book full of previously unpublished poems from competing with the rest of last year's output?

I should clarify my last post:

I thought The Year of the Bicycle the better book, overall. That's my opinion and obviously differs to the judges'.

It just feels to me that every year there are no surprises at the Montana's. Last year's outcome is an example - even Lifted, one of the best collections to come out of NZ poetry in years (excepting some of Geoff Cochrane's stuff and you never see him even shortlisted), couldn't knock Gee off the top spot. Gee is a marvellous writer, but for my money, Lifted was something special. Sometimes it just feels that these awards pay homage the way they're expected to.

And for the record, I'd love Cowboy Dog to win. Now that's a book with real poetry and life in it.

Bless you, Kirsten. I loved The Cowboy Dog too, and I agree with you on Gee vs Manhire for the overall fiction/poetry award last year. Which does rather invite the question, just what does a poetry book need to have to win over a novel? Something the Montana gods might think about for the future, maybe.

Matthew. My love. What can I say to you, except that you talk total bollocks. The purpose of the awards is to reward excellence, not to elevate the otherwise obscure. Whether they achieve that is another question... We can't exclude Nigel Cox from this discussion, because the Montana eligibility criteria are set in advance, and they have to cover all the books that might be entered for the awards. Meaning, in the current context, that there was no way to exclude Frame without excluding Cox as well.

And really, your notion that living poets need protection from the depredations of the overly talented dead is pretty insulting to them, don't you think?

On the subject of what former judges will tell you about awards panels... Montana judges sign confidentiality agreements. They shouldn't be telling you anything. But if they are, you'll know that a single stoppy judge can't derail anything. All they can do is piss the other judges off, and lose out two to one.

a. Awards don't help reward excellence necessarily; but the do help publishers sell copy.

b. I think that poetry is deserving of special attention.

c. I think that; given the position of Janet Frame in the culture of New Zealand, any judging panel would have had a hard time judging her work without a large degree of understandable sentiment coming into play.

d. I am taken.

a. You're quite right, but rewarding excellence is the theoretical goal, and believe it or not, most of the judges do seem to take that seriously.

b. I agree with you, but when "special attention" means "no Janet Frame", you're running an affirmative action policy for the obscure, and they won't necessarily thank you for it.

c. I think we possibly shouldn't try to read the judges' minds on this, given that you could take a hundred different routes to reach any given decision, and they can't tell us which one they actually took.

d. You've ruined me for other men.

Just to keep the er, balls rolling, you boys might like to have a look at Andrew Johnston's second to last blog on NZ Book Month. Very topical.
http://nzbookmonth.co.nz/blogs/andrew_johnston/archive/2007/07/18/1330.aspx

As an idea, his suggestion of a second lot of awards is excellent. How the practicalities would work I can't immediately imagine; which isn't to say it couldn't be done...

I go along with the Literature committee of the Nobel prize - dead people arnt considered.
That's the way it should be.

Actually, David, I don't think it's difficult to distinguish between a book which has been finished and committed to publication by its author, and one which has been assembled by others from a deceased author's unpublished manuscripts.

To distinguish in what sense, Fergus? If you mean that a book like The Goose Bath has very clearly been put together by minds' other than its authors, then I don't disagree. But my understanding is that Frame wanted it done that way, meaning that one has to consider the editors' contribution as a species of authorial device. In which case you can't put it in a different category from collections carefully organised by their authors: for reasons of her own, Frame did take care to have it organised this particular way.