Hey folks! I am pleased to announce February's poetry contest:
DREAMS, VISIONS, OR NIGHTMARES
What's It About?
Write a poem on any of the three aspects of the contest title, or a combination of those aspects. Pretty wide open, you say? Yep. That's the idea. But, it is a February contest, you say. Shouldn't it be about Valentine's Day? It can be, if you want it to be, though it doesn't have to be. Perhaps you met your dream, your vision, or your nightmare on February 14th. Or, you wake from a dream to find... but you all don't need my help on ideas. You have ideas bursting from your pores. So go write. So many directions to go... and only one poem entry to take you there.
I have decided to go with member votes to determine the winner of the contest. After the submission phase of the contest ends, all poems that have been submitted and meet the rules of entry will be posted in a thread in the Poetry Crit forum, and members will vote for their top three favorites. First-place votes get three points; second-place votes get two points; third-place votes get one point.
The poem with the most points wins.
The Prizes
Blarg will be donating (more info to come), and CDSinex has been kind enough to offer
A Zen Wave: Basho's Haiku and Zen by Robert Aitken. Mccardey has generously offered 2 books from the
Book Depository.
First-place winner will get first choice of prize, followed by second-place winner, etc.
Rules
- Entrants must be members of AW in good standing since at least January 12, 2012.
- One entry per member.
- Poems must be three hundred words or fewer.
- Poems must be sixty lines or fewer.
- There is no restriction or requirement on poetic form.
- Poems will be posted exactly as entered – except that they will all be posted in the same font. No graphic images will be permitted. Please make sure your spelling and formatting are exactly as you want them before you submit the poems. (Use Preview Post before you send). I will not proofread or edit the entries.
- All AW members in good standing since at least January 12, 2012, are eligible to vote.
- Entrants are permitted to vote for their own poems.
Entrants must vote to be eligible to win.
How to Enter
Using the board's private message function, send me your poems by
February 14, 2012 at 11:59 PM US Eastern (know your time zones).
I will post the poems together in a single thread in the Poetry Crit forum, and open the voting.
When I post the poems, I will assign the poems a number and use the title the author chooses (if you submit without a title, it will be creatively called
Untitled).
How to Vote
Once the poems are posted, send me your vote via PM – one vote per current AW member in good standing, also using the private message function.
The subject line of the PM should be:
VOTE: DREAMS, VISIONS, or NIGHTMARES Contest.
In the body of the message, include three votes in order, from first to third. List both the poem number and the title. For example:
9. Flying Pigs
2. Falling Stars
5. Beauty's Breath
Voting will close at
11:59PM US Eastern on February 29, 2012. Any votes received after that time will not count, even in your dreams.
I will then post complete results with vote totals for every entry, and announce the winner.
If you win, I'll need a mailing address. I'll either mail the prize to you myself or have it sent from an online distributor.
So get your vision clear, follow your dreams and avoid those nightmares. Ready, set, go!
Good luck!
