{"id":6592,"date":"2026-09-03T15:42:39","date_gmt":"2026-09-03T05:12:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/?p=6592"},"modified":"2026-09-03T15:43:45","modified_gmt":"2026-09-03T05:13:45","slug":"announcement-paul-dignam-wins-the-july-wwwc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/2026\/09\/announcement-paul-dignam-wins-the-july-wwwc\/","title":{"rendered":"ANNOUNCEMENT: Paul Dignam wins the July WWWC!"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We’re pleased to announce the winner of the July WWWC: Paul Dignam! Responding to the prompt ‘drawing a line’, Paul’s poem follows its own line of thought, letting the prompt weave its own story.<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

Read his winning entry below.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Drawing a Line<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Flax was linen<\/em> in latin,
whence came the thread that tied,
the fabric that\u2019s stunning white, but can be dyed,
and the string that, stretched tight and chalk-dusted,
marked a builder\u2019s line,
a limit or a boundary,
and those first lines in the sand:
of possession, power and control.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thence to geometry,
where a line has length but no breadth,
though technically I think an
interval has a beginning and an end,
a ray goes just one way and
a line goes forever, however far that is.
The horizon line is
that where sky meets sea,
and vanishes to infinity;
but a plumb line is up and down,
made by gravity, for certainty:
You need to get it right or
the cupboard doors won\u2019t fit,
gutters will choke with leaves and
rain will come in under the eaves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But when is life ever \u2018straight\u2019?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are lines learnt and lost,
when you hadn\u2019t toed the line,
the hundred lines of detention after school;
the broken lines of dipped pen and ink,
the pencil scrawl, the bold lines of font and point,
the lines that made you think;
You can read the lines, and some can read between them,
though some can\u2019t, even when they\u2019ve seen the same words,
thought they spoke the same language:
so much for \u2018a common tongue\u2019,
but they\u2019d already signed,
on the bottom line.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Join a line for a bus, or a benefit,
food or a festival,
some might choose a concert,
and line up for a band on their wrist,
but others were chosen, once,
and tattooed and ticked off a list,
line after line after line.
We thought we\u2019d never cross that line again.
Wrong.\u00a0Again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the drawing class she taught us
not to hold the pencil like a writing pen,
not to grip so tight:
more of the elbow and the shoulder, thus \u2013
and let the line be drawn, flowing, from the paper.
It\u2019s easier with ink but irrevocable:
you have to stand by what you\u2019ve said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You have to encase your object or your scene within a box,
Define your scope,
measure space and proportion and
discern perspective and a viewing point,
and where to look for the light;
to learn about negative space,
(that that which isn\u2019t there helps define what is)
and to know you\u2019ll make mistakes and have to live with them:
I hadn\u2019t realised I\u2019d signed up for
ethics and life skills on a
series of Saturday afternoons in spring.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the morning on the beach the shore\u2019s swept clean,
and the tide has left the story of its receding,
in ripples of grains, not lines in the sand:
those are the ones that I like best.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sometimes there are fine lines to be drawn,
Sometimes the line is very clear.
Life and art.
Practice with a pencil, practice with your heart.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We’re pleased to announce the winner of the July WWWC: Paul Dignam! Responding to the prompt ‘drawing a line’, Paul’s poem follows its own line of thought, letting the prompt weave its own story. Read his winning entry below.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"Paul Dignam is the July 2026 WWWC winner with his poem 'Drawing a Line'.","jetpack_seo_html_title":"Paul Dignam wins the July WWWC","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_seo_schema_type":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[942],"tags":[988,946],"class_list":["post-6592","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-wwwc","tag-poem","tag-wwwc"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4v1Of-1Ik","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6592","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6592"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6592\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6597,"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6592\/revisions\/6597"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6592"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6592"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6592"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}