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 Poetry: June 01, 2005 Issue [#401] |
  Poetry This week: Edited by: John~Ashen   More Newsletters By This Editor   1. About this Newsletter 2. A Word from our Sponsor 3. Letter from the Editor 4. Editor's Picks 5. A Word from Writing.Com 6. Ask & Answer 7. Removal instructions  Poetry! It comes in all styles and meanings. Some poems express personal feelings; others demonstrate a particular pattern. Most of us write some combination in between. I'll be offering advice on different styles and pointing out techniques to improve your poems. Enjoy  --John~Ashen 
 Poetry Contests There are many reasons to run a poetry contest. One is philanthropy: you want to hand out gift points (GPs) to people. Another reason is advocacy: you want to promote certain forms or poetry writing in general. Still another reason is my favorite, fandom: you want to read a particular kind of poem and you want them to come to you. The philanthropists and some advocates will probably have loose, open contests. These have few rules and support many themes. The organizers are more interested in having you participate than what you write. They'll usually accept old items as well as those written recently. These types of contests can get 100 entries easily. Most advocate organizers will run a medium-level contest featuring a mild challenge. There will be rules like prompts or genre requirements, but not both. Your creativity won't be stifled, merely guided. The number of entries can quickly reach 50. Fandom contest runners will have more narrow, strict contests. They may demand you use a certain format and stick to the desired genre. These are challenges and won't generally get more than 20 entries. Some Contest Don'ts  Don't claim your contest is the biggest or best ever. It sounds pretentious and is most likely untrue. Let your contest be what it is. If it gets popular, it will do so without your declaring it so. Don't set a deadline too far out. One month is plenty long enough. Any more and your entrants will get bored waiting to get results. Most of your entrants will decide to enter in the first two weeks (when you're still advertising) and take only a few days to create something. Don't run a contest if you can't pay for prizes yourself. It's disingenuous to want to run something with your ideas and everyone else's money. If you can't afford it without donations, you should donate to someone else's similar contest. Don't extend a contest because of few entries. Unless there are one or two people begging for time extensions, no one else is going to enter. Bite the bullet and accept that your topic was not popular this month. Award everyone who entered and move on. Don't call your contest a "weekly" or "monthly" the first time you run it. If it's popular, it will naturally become a serial when you run it again.Tip For Parents I was browsing children's books in the store the other day, thinking of how my nieces were not likely to enjoy reading poetry. What kind would they read, I wondered. Probably something that rhymes and is whimsical or funny. It can't be long poetry, and should come with cartoon drawings. I had just thought these things when, lo and behold, sitting right in front of me on the shelf were the Shel Silverstein books. I flipped through a copy of Falling Up in amazement. It was just what I was looking for. Two others seemed to fit the bill also: A Light In the Attic and Where the Sidewalk Ends. Give them a chance if you've got kiddoes between 8 and 12. For 6-9, they'd still like it if you read the poems to them. I can't feature any of the poems here, but you can read them for free just like I did -- go to the bookstore and browse! 
Longer than my usual read but very good:
Up late and need a contest to enter?
Not bad after the initial oh...
A contest with a regular challenge
I searched for a poem about searching!
LPC, one of the more popular and longest-running contests
A nice short poetry format:
Long-running daily contest that occasionally takes poetry
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 John~Ashen wonders: Anyone got any hard questions for me? ** Image ID #541381 Unavailable **  Have a question or comment for the Editor? http://www.Writing.Com/main/newsletters.php?action=nli_form
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