Poetry Contest

Posted on March 17, 2007
Filed Under Poetry, Politics |

I entered the National Writers Union (Chapter 7) poetry competition this year, judged by Adrienne Rich. Got the announcement of the winners the other day. I didn’t win, but I didn’t expect to. Though I have won competitions over the years, whenever I enter a competition I take the attitude that it’s mostly a crapshoot. Not that the judging isn’t honest, at least sometimes — it’s just that there are so many contingencies. I was a reader for a couple of national competitions years ago & I know how many minor things can tip the decision one way or another.

Duemer’s Poetry Competition Formula: Take a contingency factor of 10 & multiply that by the number of poems entered in the competition, then divide by some factor representing the screeners’ & final judge’s integrity & acumen — say 9.5 for Ms. Rich & 1.5 for Jorie Graham — & you will have a number representing the chance of any given poem winning a competition. Or something like that.

The winner of the Writers Union competition was Luisa A. Igloria, for her poem “Descent.” (Here is the title poem of her most recent book.) Second place went to Hila Ratzabi, for “Seeing.” Her blog, which is mostly about knitting, is here. Melissa Tuckey placed third in the competition: her website looks to be under construction. I couldn’t find anything of substance online about one of the honorable mentions, Elisa Pulido, except that she seems to be a political activist in the Bay Area; but I found a poem in Rattle by Glen Morazzini, the other honorable mention. I wouldn’t attempt to make any broad generalizations about the winners, except this: they seem to be making their way within the American cultural economy. Like me. There were no real outsiders, but then outsiders don’t enter contests, even those sponsored by left-wing organizations like the Writers Union.

My congratulations to the winners. According to the contest guidelines, Igloria’s poem will appear in Poetry Flash, but I hope the other poets’ poems will become available online. Otherwise, one might think this was just a way for the Writers Union to raise a little cash from entry fees. At $5 a poem, if a thousand poems were entered — a conservative estimate — that’s $5000. Subtract the prize of $1000 & an honorarium to Adrienne Rich & you have a small but tidy profit. A web page with the winning poems would cost essentially nothing & would be a fair & decent way to reward the winners within the context of the cultural economy in which they work.