The Judge of the Poetry Competition,

they say, is an expert on cheese. Obsessed with the stuff. He’s written several volumes about cheese, speaks at all the big cheese conventions, and has chastised other writers for being insufficiently concerned with cheese. This all came as something of a curveball to me. I’d never really thought too much about cheese, and certainly had very little to say on the subject in my own writing. I’d wanted to win this competition for a long time, so I traipsed down the aisles of Tesco, looking at all the cheeses, searching for inspiration. Nothing. I went home and told myself at least to give this thing a go. I wrote ‘Mozzarella’ at the top of a big blank sheet of paper. The paper stayed blank. After a few days the absence of inspiration began to weigh more heavily upon me. I sought out the more salubrious cheese establishments, spoke to the people behind the counter, looking intensely for the human element, the story behind the story. I came up with one or two ideas, but once again these failed to take shape on the page. They felt false, as though it was obvious that, unlike the the Judge of the Poetry Competition, cheese just wasn’t my thing. I quite liked a slice of mild edam, sure, but I didn’t have much else to say on the matter. Maybe next year, I told myself. There will be a different Judge of the Poetry Competition next year. Maybe next year will be my year – maybe the Judge of the Poetry Competition will be an aficionado of platypuses.

Joshua Seigal