November Poetry Challenge Winners

The November Poetry Challenge elicited a number of interesting poems. Congratulations to all who entered for their creativity. And a special congratulations to the four winners.

The judge for the November Poetry Challenge was Maureen Tolman Flannery. She gave an honorable mention to Sheila Elliot for her prose poem.

Change

For a change, I thought I'd go east down that old road with a saint's name, so white-knuckled, I watched beams of light ice the top flanks of a dozen octagonal signs.  Night approaching.  Wipers snapping like mean little whips against the windshield's elusive steaming. For this change, I paid a price, watched the fading light descend into the blackest grey.

Change is not cheap.  It rattles in pockets like something about to break. It somersaults its way into the beggar's cup or echoes with the sound of a flat note as it lands in the open shell of the street musician's open guitar case.  "Keep the change," I tell the waiter, so noblesse oblige.  I keep those old school coins cold as the sacramental medals that once dangled beneath my ironed uniform blouse, though change does not always warm the heart.  Change can still bring you back to start, to home where slippers replace shoes and spare change is tossed into an old can and takes its place discreetly in that illusionary wealth.

~ Sheila Elliott

Third place goes to a poem the judge says is thoughtful and captures a memorable moment. It is by
Mary Cohutt.

Falling

Grandma, I’m so in love with this toy….

You can’t fall in love with things…… I said with my grown up tone

And then I saw

His lashes fall to cheek

His chin fall to chest

His toy fall from hand

I felt my 60 year guard fall……. and remembered myself

…and thought of …

A falling star wish and hopes for tomorrow

The long fall from Grace and sweetness of redemption

Cool water as it falls over moss covered rocks

The liquid gold fall of late day light

The happy foot crunch of yellowed fall leaves

Falling asleep on a sun scented pillow

…and I could feel my heart fall in love with this life….

I fell to my knees and lifted his chin

Cajoled his fallen lashes ‘till blue met blue

And I let three simple words fall from my lips

I was wrong

~ Mary Cohutt

The judge said the second place poem by Eileen Kimbrough was very clever. She liked the “on-target word play,”

Just Write Right

Will you have the right to write a will,

and the will to be right

when you write your will?

Will you do the right thing

within your rights?

Will you write about

your right to write your will?

This rite of passage falls right when

all that’s left is to write a will.

Just step to the right of must

and trust your guts,

no windy gust of musts.

I trust you’ll write

your will and your trust,

not too far to the left.

It’s right that it’s your right.

Just be sure it’s just.

And make it just right.

Write just. Write right. Just write.

~ Eileen Kimbrough

The  judge said that Lindsey Bellosa's poem, “Solace” the first place poem, “is a very moving poem, not at all bogged down by the desire to re-use or overuse a word.” I think you will agree.

Solace

Snowflakes, small and sharp as tears, float into the lake

as each small pain sharpens into future—

the sky has been pregnant with snow for days. 

I have bled for five days, less pregnant each one.

The leaves shed on the ground, so vibrant,

as I shed color too: exposed; becoming barren

as each stark tree.  Winter bares down with gray.

The sun gleams dimly on the lake, and the earth

and God turn dimly away from the situation.

Your soul, whatever it was, melts

and becomes only me. The snowflakes melt

into the lake; leaves disappear under blank snow.

There will be another like you; there will be new leaves

in spring.  But you vanish, as this season vanishes—

all like a dream, as summer seems a dream

in the dead of winter.

The snowflakes still catch the light

and I catch each sharp breath

glittering.  Life goes on, coldly,

and there is solace in that.

~ Lindsey Bellosa

All of these poems remain the property of the poets who wrote them.

Bios:

Lindsey Bellosa lives in Syracuse, NY.  She has an MA in Writing from the National University of Ireland, Galway and has poems published in both Irish and American journals: most recently The Comstock Review, The Galway Review, IthacaLit, Crannog, and The MOON Magazine.  Her first chapbook, The Hunger, was published with Willet Press in 2014.

Mary Cohutt is a Leasing Consultant in Western Massachusetts. She also has a small business called "The Good Daughter" in which she takes care of household paperwork/business for the elderly. She has two children and two grandchildren. In addition to writing, she enjoys gardening and reading.

Sheila Elliott's poetry can be found in the Illinois Women's Press Association's 2014 anthology of prose and poetry.  She is a regular contributor at Oak Park (IL) Writer's Group events, including their annual public reading in November.  Her poetry and prose can be found in their anthology, Keystrokes. 

Eileen Kimbrough is a graduate of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She has produced visual arts in many media and exhibited in art galleries, museums, colleges, and gift shops throughout Illinois. She has been employed as a graphic designer, editorial and fashion illustrator, receptionist, bookkeeper and salesperson.  Eileen has sold many copies of her self-published poetry book, Painting with Words, and contributed the poems and art for Wings for the Soul, published by a non-profit. Her stories and poems were published in Rivulets. She lives in Aurora with her husband, Bob Walker, innumerable books and artistic clutter.

A bio for Maureen Tolman Flannery can be found in the previous post.

Check back early in December for the next Poetry Challenge.

© Wilda Morris

November 2014 Poetry Challenge

A swell guy in the 1940s (my dad)

Maureen Tolman Flannery’s new book of poems, Navigating by Expectant Stars, was inspired by the contents of a box discovered after the deaths of her parents. The box contained old photos—and letters her parents wrote to each other in 1944 and 1945, while her father was in the military. The material in the letters and Flannery’s poetic imagination make for an interesting book.

Here is one of the poems:

swell

The slang descriptor of their times is swell.
Africans he is meeting are swell,
the guys in his flight crew are swell, as well.
The receipt of her letters, swell.

Her doctor’s assessment is everything’s swell.

Swell baby gifts are coming in the mail.
A gab-session with her friend is swell
and their talked-through hours do,
since she feels like a swell with the swell
of her belly telling her joy to the world.

And all the while she swells

with life she wants to tell him about,
swells with feelings of well-being
with love for the care of those there with her,
with the pride of a pregnant new wife
awaiting his next tour stateside.

~ Maureen Tolman Flannery

Flannery has used several poetic devices in this poem, including repetition, internal rhyme, alliteration and assonance. The word “swell” is not only the title; it is the heart and soul of the poem. Flannery has taken advantage of the fact that the word “swell” has several meanings. It was the most popular slang word of the time period in which the poem takes place, as well as an appropriate description for the life swelling within the “pregnant new wife."

Flannery also published what I call a “word” poem in a 1999 anthology, Intimate Kisses, edited by Wendy Maltz.

Honeymoon
 
You loved me well
well into the night
and I awoke,
still tangled up in you,
well into the morning
with the well-deep contentment
of a woman
well loved,
well rested,
well ready.
Well?

~ Maureen Tolman Flannery

In this poem of 34 words (not counting the title) the word “well” occurs eight times – it is almost ¼ of the poem. It doesn’t have eight different meanings, but it is used with at least four different definitions. There is, in my reading, another “well” suggested but not mentioned, adding to the subtlety of the poem.

You can read a brief biography of Flannery at http://www.puddinheadpress.com/Biography/MaureenFlannery.html.

Another poem centered on one word is "Crib" by Kay Ryan, which you can read on-line at http://www.mbird.com/2010/09/crib-by-kay-ryan/.

 

The November Challenge:

Pick a word that has several meanings. You may (or may not) want to use it as the title. Use the word in different ways in your poem.

Here are some possible words to consider: fall, simple, spring, sound, peach, pitch, hide, light, train, run, hand, play, order.

This being the day after Halloween and The Day of the Dead, I also thought of “grave.” The dictionaries will tell you that “grave” meaning “a burial place” comes from Indo-European via Old English. “Grave” meaning somber, on the other hand, is a Latinate word which came into English through the French language. Hence they are not actually the same word; they are two different words. For purposes of this challenge, that doesn’t matter. They sound the same and have somewhat different meanings, so poetically they would function like other multi-definition words.

In fact, if you prefer, pick a set of homophones, such as “byte,” “bite;” pear and pair;  or “do,” “dew,” and “due.” Although these are different words and are even spelled differently, they sound the same. Thus they provide the same possibility for repeating sounds and variety of meanings.

Submit only one poem. The deadline is November 15. Poems submitted after the November 15 deadline will not be considered. There is no charge to enter, so there are no monetary rewards; however winners are published on this blog. Please don’t stray far from “family-friendly” language.

Copyright on each poem is retained by the poet.

Poems published in books or on the Internet (including Facebook and other on-line social networks) are not eligible. If your poem has been published in a print periodical, you may submit it if you retain copyright, but please include publication data.

How to Submit Your Poem:

Send one poem only to wildamorris[at]ameritech[dot]net (substitute the @ sign for “at” and a . for “dot”) . Include a brief bio which can be printed with your poem, if you are a winner this month.

Submission of a poem gives permission for the poem to be posted on the blog if it is a winner, so be sure that you put your name (exactly as you would like it to appear if you do win) at the end of the poem. Poems may be pasted into an email or sent as an attachment. Please do not indent the poem or center it on the page. It helps if you submit the poem in the format used on the blog (Title and poem left-justified; title in bold (not all in capital letters); your name at the bottom of the poem). Also, please do not use spaces instead of commas in the middle of lines. I have no problem with poets using that technique; I sometimes do it myself. However I have difficulty getting the blog to accept and maintain extra spaces.

Poems shorter than 30 lines are generally preferred. Also, if lines are too long, they don’t fit in the blog format and have to be split, so you might be wise to use shorter lines.

 

© Wilda Morris

October 2014 Poetry Challenge Winner



Zinnias (Photo © Jenene Ravesloot)

 

The October Poetry Challenge was judged by Mary Jo Balistreri, whose poem was used as the prompt this month. She selected "Beautiful Things," by Jenene Ravesloot, who is winner for the second consecutive month.

Beautiful Things

Fresh-cut stiff stemmed zinnias straight from

the garden, dome-shaped yellow zinnias, multi-
colored zinnias, red zinnias with single rows
of petals, zinnias that some call “youth-and-old-
age,” zinnias and reflected sunlight stuck 
in a tall glass vase.

Remnants from the sea: blanched starfish, purple

sea fans, angel wings, broken sand dollars, and
a sectioned nautilus, all tucked into a white
crescent-shaped wall niche.

Vintage cotton pillowcases with cross-stitched
hand embroidered pink roses propped up on
the bed and a matching bureau scarf, stiffly
starched, draped on the maple bureau.

A collection of antique books: antiquarian
embossed leather books with gilt cover boards,
gilt spines, and gold leaf page edges, old poetry
books sitting in a glass bookcase.

Solar prints of Japanese red shield ferns, toothed

wood ferns, and Japanese painted ferns all glowing
like caught ghosts in simple black wood frames.
 
“Beautiful things, surround yourself with beautiful
things,” grandmother always said.

~ Jenene Ravesloot

Copyright on this poem is retained by Jenene Ravesloot. 

Here is what the judge said about this poem: "I chose 'Beautiful Things' because of the very specific lists, their engaging description that made me want to see them, maybe pick up one of those antiquarian embossed leather books, and all that because her Grandmother had always said, 'Beautiful things, surround yourself with beautiful things.' I loved that she began with zinnias, fresh cut from the garden, something so common we could all bring those inside with us."

 

Here is Jenene's grandmother who told her "surround yourself with beautiful things." She herself was beautiful, don't you think!

 

 Photo of Grandmother Opal supplied by Jenene Ravesloot.

 

Jenene Ravesloot is a member of the Poets’ Club of Chicago, Poets and Patrons of Chicago, The Illinois State Poetry Society and Virtual Arts Collective. Her poetry has been published in many journals online and in print. Jenene Ravesloot has published three books of poetry and regularly runs writing workshops at Chicago venues.

Mary Jo Balistreri has two full books of poetry, Joy in the Morning and gathering the harvest published by Bellowing Ark Press, a chapbook, Best Brothers, published by Tiger's Eye Press. She has recent or forthcoming work in Parabola, Grist, Plainsongs, The Tiger's Eye, Avocet, Crab Creek Review, The Heron's Nest, Acorn, and One Hundred Gourds. She has three pushcart nominations, and two Best of the Net. She was a poetry judge for Arizona Writers Association for two years. Mary Jo is one of the founders of Grace River Poets, an outreach for women's shelters, churches, and schools. Please visit her at maryjobalistreripoet.com.


Check back on November 1st or 2nd for the November Poetry Challenge. It might be your lucky month.

© Wilda Morris

 

October 2014 Poetry Challenge

Some of us have been fortunate to grow up surrounded and encouraged by grandparents, great-grandparents, aunts and uncles, even great-aunts and great-uncles, members of those generations before us who had learned a lot of life lessons and sometimes imparted their wisdom to us. I had the good fortune of growing up with my grandparents (pictured above). They were the source of much wisdom and inspiration. Aunts and uncles also contributed to my upbringing, and I learned important ideas and values from Sunday School teachers.

 

For many of us, members of an older generation added to whatever nurture and love we received from our parents and thus enriched our lives. Unfortunately some people learned negative lessons from members of previous generations. I heard a man say he joined a violent gang and entered the drug trade because an uncle who was a gang leader made it seem like the normal thing to do. He felt he had to do those things to prove his own worth to his family.

 

Mary Jo Balistreri wrote a beautiful poem about her relationship with Great-Grandmother and some of what she learned from her.

 

 

A Letter to Great-Gramma Belle

 

Your life stretched like the South Dakota plains

as you rode with your circuit preacher husband

through a shifting horizon.

When I knew you in your unpainted shack,

Grandpa was dead. Four of your seven children

lay beside him.

You were old and blind. I was ten.

 

I came to your house every day,

unraveled the strands of your long life.

On the threadbare rug in front of you,

I wrote your stories down, asked questions,

saw myself

as a writer.

When you tired you’d ask me to play the piano.

Untuned, with missing keys, it sounded awful

to my ear, but glorious to you.

             Keep playing you’d say,

so we struck a bargain: you’d continue to sift

through the past, and I’d bring music.

 

Sometimes, I’d come earlier to watch you

make sugar cookies, wondered how you could

bake without sight.

You taught me to see with my hands. If

the texture felt thin, it needed flour, too thick,

it needed milk. When the dough was ready

to shape you said to me

             Close your eyes. Let the dough sing to you.

 

You taught me how heat has different

smells as it rises. I learned to sense when the oven

was hot enough, when the cookies were done.

I was afraid to take them from the oven but you

knew your hot pads and trays, the magic

of not getting burned.

 

~ Mary Jo Balistreri

 

From Gathering the Harvest: Poems (Bellowing Ark Press, 2012), page 7. Copyright Mary Jo Balistreri.

 

 

As I read the poem, I can smell those cookies and hear the untuned piano. I sense that Great-Gramma Belle was teaching the ten-year-old Mary Jo more than just cookie-baking. Great-Gramma Belle’s advice to “Keep playing” the piano fell on fertile soil: Mary Jo became a concert pianist. And there is great wisdom in Great-Gramma Belle’s advice to a budding writer to “Let the dough sing to you.” Perhaps this is part of the seed-ground of Mary Jo’s impulse to write poetry, a craft which she took up while dealing with the loss of her grandson.  “The magic / of not getting burned” seems to me to be a strong metaphor that says more than it seems to say at first reading.

 

 

The October Poetry Challenge:

 

The challenge for October is to write a poem about learning from someone of an older generation. You may put your experience in a formal poem or in free verse. If you submit a formal poem, specify the form you have used in your email. An autobiographical poem is, perhaps, best in this case, but poetic license is permitted.

 

Submit only one poem. The deadline is October 15. Poems submitted after the October 15 deadline will not be considered. There is no charge to enter, so there are no monetary rewards; however winners are published on this blog. Please use “family-friendly” language.

 

Copyright on each poem is retained by the poet.

 

Poems published in books or on the Internet (including Facebook and other on-line social networks) are not eligible. If you poem has been published in a print periodical, you may submit it if you retain copyright, but please include publication data.

 

How to Submit Your Poem:

Send one poem only to wildamorris[at]ameritech[dot]net (substitute the @ sign for “at” and a . for “dot”) . Include a brief bio which can be printed with your poem, if you are a winner this month.

 

Submission of a poem gives permission for the poem to be posted on the blog if it is a winner, so be sure that you put your name (exactly as you would like it to appear if you do win) at the end of the poem. Poems may be pasted into an email or sent as an attachment. Please do not indent the poem or center it on the page. It helps if you submit the poem in the format used on the blog (Title and poem left-justified; title in bold (not all in capital letters); your name at the bottom of the poem). Also, please do not use spaces instead of commas in the middle of lines. I have no problem with poets using that technique; I sometimes do it myself. However I have difficulty getting the blog to accept and maintain extra spaces.

 

Poems shorter than 30 lines are preferred. Also, if lines are too long, they don’t fit in the blog format and have to be split, so you might prefer to use shorter lines.

 

 

© Wilda Morris

September 2014 - Winning List Poems

 

 

Photo Credit: Karin Addis

 

Wisconsin poet Janet Leahy picked the winners of the September challenge – a list poem. The first place poem is “Cats” by Jenene Ravesloot.

 

Cats      
 

A feral female cat with bulging pregnant sides,

an old grey tomcat with one torn ear and damaged

voice box that leaves him miming his meows at 6 a.m.,

a tortoiseshell tabby cat with crusted eyelids and runny

nose whose skinny neck still carries a pink leather collar

and the memory of some long ago mistress, a long-haired

once-white odd-eyed Persian cat with matted fur and broken

tail, a striped ginger-colored kitten that balances on

                                                                          the clothesline

and hisses at you before hitting the ground hard and dashing

for the white porcelain soup bowls of milk and dunked pieces

of bread you’ve put out, while your mother stands in the kitchen

behind the Irish lace curtains because she’s afraid of cats

and thinks they’re sneaky.             

                      

You begged and begged to feed these strays every morning

until your mother relented. Then you poured fresh milk into

the soup bowls, your grandmother’s best, and placed them on

the backyard stoop. You loved to watch the cats eat their

                                                                         breakfast

as greedily as you would soon eat yours. You loved their white

whiskers and chins dripping with milk, how they neatened

themselves, just like good children. 

 

~ Jenene Ravesloot 

 

Janet Leahy’s comments:  Cats of every stripe in this poem—details paint a picture of each one.  Love the story of the poet putting milk in her grandmother’s best white porcelain soup bowls, as her mother stands in the kitchen behind Irish lace curtains. A wonderful memory piece.

 

 



 

 

Second place goes to “Summer Green” by Peggy Trojan. 

 

Summer Green           

                                                                              

I relish the green riot of summer. 

 

Everyman’s greens—

Miles of corn stalks,

tree shaded roads,

hayfields everywhere anxious for mowing.

Black green of spruce with

cones growing seeds.

Shuddering aspens in wind.

Dependable maples,

delicate tamaracks, ferns in shadows,

and grass, of course. 

 

My garden greens—

Bright asparagus poking through mulch,

dark shiny cucumbers, chard, beans,

peas, spinach and feathery carrots.

Bold fans of rhubarb, whispy dill,

rough potato bushes,

and nameless weeds. 

 

Special greens—

pale hairless caterpillar,

inch big tree frog.

Iridescence of dragonfly wing,

emerald whir of hummingbird,

four leaf clovers, and frogs by the creek.

Rare visit of wondrous Luna,

and your eyes, inviting mischief,

above your Margarita. 

 

~ Peggy Trojan 

 

Janet Leahy’s comments on this poem: The list of summer greens in this poem is fanciful, the language precise and engaging:  hayfields anxious for mowing. Every line works to build the poem. The turn in the last line is a delight, a clever fun ending, the surprise here is well done!

 

 

Information about the winners and the September Judge:

 

 

Jenene Ravesloot is a member of the Poets’ Club of Chicago, Poets & Patrons, the Illinois State Poetry Society, and Virtual Arts Collective. Her poetry has been published in many journals online and in print. Jenene Ravesloot has published three books of poetry and regularly runs writing workshops at Chicago venues.

  

Peggy Trojan enjoys life in the north Wisconsin woods where she lives next to a trout stream. Although she had written occasionally throughout her life, she did not submit her poems for publication until she was seventy-seven.  Published in a wide variety of journals and anthologies:  Boston Literary Magazine, Naugatuck River Review, Echoes, Dust and Fire, Talking Stick, and to her delight, many others. 

 

Janet Leahy is well-known and admired among Wisconsin poets. She is a member of the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets, she has two collections of poetry, The Storm, Poems of War, Iraq and Not My Mother’s Classroom.  Her poems have been published in print and online journals including The Wisconsin Poets' Calendar, Wisconsin People and Ideas, Fox Cry Review, and Verse Wisconsin.  Her work also appears on the web sites such as Your Daily Poem and New Verse News. She has been a featured poetry reader at venues in Wisconsin and Chicago. 

 

The poets retain copyright on their own poems. 

Check back soon for the October Poetry Challenge.

 

© Wilda Morris

 

September 2014 Poetry Challenge - a list poem

Dappled Things

A “list poem” (sometimes called a “catalogue poem”) may be composed of only items in a cleverly designed list, or a list may constitute an important segment of a poem, but not be the entire poem.

List poems date back almost to the beginning of poetry.  Lists are common in the Psalms in the Bible. Look for instance at Psalm 15. The psalm begins with the question of who will abide in the tabernacle and dwell on God’s holy hill. The poet then proceeds to list the characteristics of such a person—one who walks uprightly, does righteous works, speaks the truth, and so on.

Another list poem expressing faith is “Pied Beauty” by Gerard Manley Hopkins, an English poet and Jesuit priest.

Pied Beauty

Glory be to God for dappled things –

   For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
      For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
   Landscape plotted and pieced – fold, fallow, and plough;
      And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;

   Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
      With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
                                Praise him.

Hopkins’ list of reasons for praise s quite interesting. When calling the reader to praise God, why has he picked out “dappled things” for special attention? Why does he move from such objects of the natural world as trout and finches’ wings, and then agricultural land (“Landscape plotted and pieced”) and even include the trades in which human beings participate, and the gear that goes with them, as works of God?

List poems may be about any subject.  In the fourth chapter of the Song of Solomon in the Bible, the narrator describes the lover (Song of Solomon 4:1-5, KJV).

Behold, thou art fair, my love; behold, thou art fair;

thou hast doves' eyes within thy locks:
thy hair is as a flock of goats,
that appear from mount Gilead.
Thy teeth are like a flock of sheep that are even shorn,
which came up from the washing;
whereof every one bear twins,
and none is barren among them.
Thy lips are like a thread of scarlet,
and thy speech is comely:
thy temples are like a piece of a pomegranate within thy locks.
Thy neck is like the tower of David builded for an armoury,
whereon there hang a thousand bucklers, all shields of mighty men.
Thy two breasts are like two young roes that are twins,
which feed among the lilies.
 
This description would not seem very flattering to a modern American woman! It does seem to have been a model for some English-language poets.  William Shakespeare wrote a humorous list poem, poking fun at classical poems describing a poet’s lover:

Sonnet 130

My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;

Coral is far more red than her lips’ red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damasked, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress when she walks treads on the ground.
     And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
     As any she belied with false compare.

In her Sonnets from the Portuguese, Elizabeth Barrett Browning used the list approach to express her love in Sonnet 43:

Sonnet 43

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of being and ideal grace.
I love thee to the level of every day’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.
 
~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning

 

Here are links to a few list poems on the Internet:

*Walt Whitman, “I Hear America Singing,” http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/175779.

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-boiling-water/ 
*Robert Herrick, “The Argument of His Book,” http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/176694.
*Rebecca Lindenbert, “Catalogue of Ephemera,” http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/243892.
*Serina Matteson, “Morning Sounds All Around,” http://templepoetry.blogspot.com/2009/02/catalog-poem-example.html.

September Poetry Challenge

The September poetry challenge is to write a list poem. The poem doesn’t have to be composed only of a list, but a list has to play a very significant role in the poem. Your poem may be free verse or a form, rhymed or unrhymed. If you use a form, specify the form when you submit it. The list should be constructed with intentionality, so that it is poetic, not just a haphazard list. Virtually any topic (no pornography or objectionable language, however).

Submit only one poem. The deadline is September 15. Poems submitted after the September 15 deadline will not be considered. There is no charge to enter, so there are no monetary rewards; however winners are published on this blog. Please use “family-friendly” language.

Copyright on each poem is retained by the poet.

Poems published in books or on the Internet (including Facebook and other on-line social networks) are not eligible. If you poem has been published in a periodical, you may submit it if you retain copyright, but please include publication data.

How to Submit Your Poem:

Send one poem only to wildamorris[at]ameritech[dot]net (substitute the @ sign for “at” and a . for “dot”). Be sure to provide your e-mail address. Include a brief bio which can be printed with your poem, if you are a winner this month.

Submission of a poem gives permission for the poem to be posted on the blog if it is a winner, so be sure that you put your name (exactly as you would like it to appear if you do win) at the end of the poem. Poems may be pasted into an email or sent as an attachment. Please do not indent the poem or center it on the page. It helps if you submit the poem in the format used on the blog (Title and poem left-justified; title in bold (not all in capital letters); your name at the bottom of the poem). Also, please do not use spaces instead of commas in the middle of lines. I have no problem with poets using that technique; I sometimes do it myself. However I have difficulty getting the blog to accept and maintain extra spaces.

 

© Wilda Morris