WinningWriters.com

Regarding the Winning Writers website, for a while I took only their free email newsletter listing poetry contests without entry fees. Curious, and so you don't have to, and so I have the info for the people who ask me, I finally subscribed to their Poetry Contest Insider, for which I pay $9.95 per quarter. This admits me to a well-organized database of more than 750(!) U.S. and U.K. poetry contests, both free and with entry fees.

Winning Writers sponsors its own 2 poetry contests, and "assists" in 3 more, all prominently offering top prizes in the unusually high and attractive $1500-$2000 range, and judged by their staff. One contest has no entry fee. The others do. As a premium subscriber I am permitted to see the prizewinning poems and the honorable mention poems. They tend to be lengthy and craft-free, in the way beginning poets' works are. And now I have a better sense of how the site and its staff support themselves, and who supports them: thousands of poets artificially hungry for artificial prizes.

Strange & Wonderful Literary Events

July in St. Louis, and I wouldn't leave the house except for the strangest and most wonderful literary events:

Writers win cash, Saturday, July 10. Why wait for a contest when you can get instant grat at the annual Throwdown--this year open to those reading original poetry, short-short fiction, and short-short memoir, two pages max. Or come just for the drama. $5 gets you in the door unless you're a member of the St. Louis WRITERS GUILD (NOT Poetry Center, sorry for the error) then it's free to get in; $10 fee to enter one of your works, $5 for additional works. The cash prizes (separate for poetry and prose) depend upon the number of entries. Judge (yours truly) is just as tough and buff as Simon Cowell. Saturday July 10th, 1-4 p.m. at The Focal Point, 2720 Sutton Boulevard, Maplewood, MO 63143.

See an antique press in action, Saturday, July 17: Join us for an exciting hybrid of poetry and printing. At two p.m. we’ll host readings of two St. Louis poets, Joe Sulier (of now-dead Get Born), and Richard Newman (of River Styx). While they read, steampunks will be setting up and printing a broadside of their finest works on antique presses. What’s more, you get one of these hand-printed works of art for the price of admission! $5 per person. Space is limited, so call & reserve your seat today. Saturday July 17th at 2 PM at The Firecracker Press, 2838 Cherokee Street, Saint Louis, MO 63118; Phone: (314) 776-7271.

Titles for Contest Entries

"Bake Sale" was the poem's working title; it's about bake sales. I wanted to enter it in a contest, but knew a title such as "Bake Sale" was a liability. That's because contests are run by organizations that like to appear serious, having boards and grantors to answer to. They' re reluctant to announce that a trivial-sounding book or poem -- good or not -- has taken their prize. Therefore, at great psychic expense to myself (just kidding), I sought another title that might sound better in a list of winners, finally settling on the title "Homemade."

I retitled another poem, "Soda in Bottles," as "Delight."

I retitled "Aunt Emily" as "Pure as the Driven."

You see the kind of thing I'm getting at.

Mark Twain/Mississippi-Themed Poetry or Prose

Chesterfield (MO) Arts seeks poets and prose writers to enter its writing contest. Deadline is April 16. Adults (over age 26) and youth (ages 16-25) can submit poetry or prose about Mark Twain, his fictional characters, the Mississippi Valley region. . . details are here. Entry fee $15.

Recently I judged an essay contest with a similar theme, run by a different organization. Only eight writers entered. After thinking about it, I think the theme is too well-worn to appeal to literary writers -- What HASN'T been written about Mark Twain and his world? And why bother to lift a pen when HIS writings are still the best? -- and casual or student writers wouldn't lift a pen if they had to read stuff before they wrote stuff. But let's hope I'm way off base and that you have written some literature that has just been waiting for its chance to shine.

The No-Contest Contest

Finally -- the "no-contest contest." Send poetry or personal essays with $15 "reading fee" and receive a critique from "S.," who offers editing services and a subscription-only e-newsletter. Yes, everybody who enters the non-contest gets a critique. Here's how it works, genuine quotations:

"Step 1 - You submit an entry and S. responds.
Step 2 - You can either keep your entry as is for the contest or revise it and resubmit for consideration in the contest before the contest deadline, August 31st. "

You now demand to know the details and the prizes. Forthwith:

"Deadline: August 31, 2009
Submit: Up to six double-spaced pages of prose or three poems. S. will respond to your work within two weeks of receiving it. [Apparently S. is not very busy.]
Entry Fee: Entry fee for subscribers is $15 and for non-subscribers it is $45 and includes a year’s subscription ($30 value) to [newsletter].

"The contest finalists will be judged by a guest editor to be announced in September and winners will be notified and published in [newsletter] (we require one time only rights) in the later fall. Winners receive a half-hour consult with S. about their writing and/or publishing questions."

This is the first "contest" I have seen OPENLY established and run by an individual for their own personal monetary profit. Others like it can't be far behind...it's one way for a writer to try to make a living.

Prize: $2500 and Publication in Esquire

Esquire
Short Story Contest
A prize of $2,500 and publication in Esquire will be given for a short story with the title “Twenty-Ten,” “An Insurrection,” or “Never, Ever Bring This Up Again.” The fiction editors will judge. Using the electronic submission system, submit a story of up to 4,000 words by August 1. There is no entry fee. Visit the Web site for complete guidelines.
Esquire, Short Story Contest, Hearst Communications, 300 West 57th Street, New York, NY 10019. Camille Perri,
Fiction Editor.
fictioneditor@hearst.com
www.esquire.com/fiction/fiction-contest

AND NO ENTRY FEE!

On Winning

Having entered 9 poetry contests this past spring I've placed in two of them and won the top prize from the Midwest Writing Center's regional competition -- for my "Apple Orchard" poem. They phoned me from Davenport, IA, yesterday, Saturday, and knock me over with a feather. I get $200 plus a special thing (a surprise) they send the regional winner. There's also a national winner. I chose, out of cowardice, not to enter the Center's national-level competition.

The other two honors:

• Third place, St. Louis Poetry Center members' contest

• Poetry in Motion, mine one of 15 poems selected to be printed on beautiful posters and placed on the are MetroLink trains. I had a poem selected in 2006 as well.
  

How do I feel? I'm happy; more so, I am honored. But it's odd -- the poems I sent that I thought were my best and most riotous are not among the winners. Ergo, I wonder: Is or is not the poet the best judge of his or her poetry?

Being a Fabulous Judge

Judging 23 poets was agony: There were 3 official prizes ($50, $25, $15), 4 poets who deserved those prizes, and 3 more poets quite impressive. But those "everybody wins" competitions are lame, so I did my job at Saturday's "Poetry Throwdown," arranged by the St. Louis Writers Guild, the first competition of its kind. I was the "fabulous judge," according to the Guild's p.r. Comedian Mike McGuire was the emcee, and Rebecca Carron, president of the Guild, organized the event. I hope there will be more. I'll compete.

I scored contestants on appearance (could the poet transcend it and become the spirit of poetry?), the poems (I also had hard copies to re-read), delivery, and audience response: not applause, but whether he or she could hit us in the heart, brain, or gut. First place went to Eliana Parnas, a 16-year-old who flawlessly and with good pacing read good poetry from handwritten sheets, twisting us around her little finger. Second place to Matt Freeman, who can mesmerize and lift a whole room. Third place to Marcel Toussaint, who got and held people's attention. This wasn't a "poetry slam" but a reading -- only not so "unplugged' and low-key. It was a show. The event was big fun and all St. Louis poets get props from me.

What Finally Drove Me to Enter a Poetry Contest

I'll admit up front that I want two things from contests. One is money. My car skidded and is in the shop. (On me, not a scratch. God protects writers.) But when the repairs totaled $4000 I asked myself, where else does a poet have a chance of getting money? So I'm a-going for the green. Knowing very well the odds are long: estimate is between 800 and 1200 to 1. BUT NOWADAYS THAT'S ABOUT THE SAME AS THE ODDS OF GETTING A JOB. (P.S.I already have a second job.)

Next, I want honorable mentions, something nice to put on apps for writers' colonies, grants and the like. We all know good work is not enough. Publication is not enough. Someone from the outside has to declare you special. A fiction writer I knew turned "second place" and "finalist for the Umpteenth Named-After-Famous Writer Award" into a resume so awesome people in a neighboring state were talking about her in hushed tones two years later. Of course it takes a fiction writer to do that.

Collateral benefit: getting the work revised, updated, and in order. Somebody stop me, please, if I try this again.

What's Really Wrong with Poetry Book Contests

Check out this essay by David Alpaugh, published Nov. 12, or just the excerpts below, if you've suspected there's something wrong with the exponentially growing number of poetry-book contests -- bet it'll articulate some of your uneasy feelings! Samples from the essay:

• "Today, a short search of the web turns up over 300 chapbook and full-collection competitions . . .Even if contests merely continue to escalate at the rate of five or six extra competitions per year, an astounding minimum of 50,000 poetry books will be published as distinguished award-winners by the end of this century!"

• "Before Emily Dickinson’s heap of 1,775 untitled poems could be competitive, she would have to discard 1,700 of them; give each of the remaining 75 a title; sort them into three thematic batches, each with a section title and epigraph; and come up with a catchy “umbrella” title (Wild Nights might be a hit with student-screeners)."

• "Poetry book contests privilege serious poems over humorous ones; pathos over wit; “sincerity” over virtuosity; they eschew satire and persona; and devalue variety in favor of consistency of theme, form, tone, and “voice.” A swerve into the ineffable in the last few lines of each poem will keep your work “open” and “risky” in conformance with current MFA workshop practice."

That last one might not be entirely accurate anymore; I sense from recent winners that "the ineffable" is old hat, and satire and wit are coming back.

Bedeviled

Lately I’ve been tempted to enter writing contests -- local or online. Ach! They are everywhere and are hard for me to resist! Just accompany that 250-word essay or couple of poems with that $10 or $15 "entry fee." Write that check, or give it up to Paypal, because…

PRIDE: The contest is so local/small/restricted that for me it is no contest at all, and my work will surely place, although odds are it will win.
GREED: I need the prize money. I’ll take $100, $50. Or $10.
GLUTTONY: I don’t care what it is or what it costs, I don’t care what I send or who is judging it or how low I’m stooping: I want prizes and I want them now.
SLOTH: If I win or place, it’s an easy gold star to add to my resume, and if not, at least entering the contest was easier than market research or having actual relationships or sending out stuff that might get rejected. Besides, I can only finish things if I’ve got a deadline. . .
ANGER: I’ll win one of these penny-ante writing contests if it’s the last thing I do.
LUST: Sure would like to get my hands on that [prize]!
ENVY: I never saw a prize that I didn’t deserve more than the actual winner did.

Pray for me!

A Goldmine Yahoo Group

This Yahoo group, Creative Writing Opps, posts calls for submissions, contest information and teaching jobs for writers of poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction. Check it out. Thanks to Alison Carrick for the tip.