Sphinx High Stripe Award
All poetry pamphlets submitted (in triplicate) for review in the Sphinx area of this website receive three written responses from reviewers. Each reviewer is also asked to give a stripe rating based on 4 criteria, as follows:
- Production quality (paper, covers, ‘feel’ and design of publication)
- Quality of the poetry.
- Coherence/ character/ identity (whatever!) of collection as a whole. It could have coherence in terms of deliberate fragmentation, if that was a central idea.
- Warmth of recommendation to other readers.
The three reviews are then edited into one document, with the amalgamated stripe rating in the form of a Sphinx logo bearing the appropriate number of stripes.
An annual announcement will award the pamphlet or pamphlets with the highest stripe ratings of the year with a Sphinx High Stripe Award.
In 2010 there were three High Stripers:
The Announced, Ruth Valentine, Ellipsis 1/ Sylph Editions 2009 (sold out and therefore now a collector's item)
No Panic Here, Mark Halliday, HappenStance 2009
Shadow, Alison Brackenbury, HappenStance, 2009
Here is the link to the blog which first announced it
http://www.happenstancepress.org/index.php?option=com_easyblog&view=entry&id=154&Itemid=52
and here is a link to the PBS article in which it is mentioned also http://www.poetrybooks.co.uk/poetry_portal/poetry_pamphlets_getting_their_stripes