Contest Woes

Let’s rest for a minute. I’ve spent the last day or so cleaning my office. I have no idea who came in and messed it up like that, but it’s better now, and I actually found some treasures that have been gone for so long I forgot I had them. Don’t sit there and smirk at me, you know what I’m talking about.

Since I’m dumping on you, I might as well continue. Have you entered any contests lately? The reason I’m asking is that I have spent the last week reading entries in two contests. In the first contest I am judging two categories, and they are poetry only groups. The last is a contest where prose was allowed with the poetry, but there were fewer entries. This isn’t the first time I’ve been asked to be a judge, and I am honored to be chosen. Now comes the big pause!

When judging I start with the format and contest rules or guidelines. If the contest says 56 characters and not more than 40 lines, why would a person send in a poem that covers two pages? Do you think that they figure that the poem is so well written or that it is such a wonderful and memorable work that the judge will swoon and say, “Let’s just throw the rules away, and give this person first place?” Maybe they don’t know how to use their word processor to find line length, and they think that the spaces between stanzas don’t count.

And what about the ones that have a paragraph written just before the poem telling why it was written, and what a wonderful story I’m about to read? And what about the poem about flowers and the sun rising that’s written in all capital letters, and I get the feeling that Little Red Riding Hood is sitting opposite me yelling at the top of her lungs?

Now you know why I drink decaffeinated coffee.

Deep Breath

Unfortunately at first read these things disqualify many poems and they go on the “NO” stack. There are other things that don’t disqualify an entry, but don’t always have a place in a serious contest, unless the rules specify otherwise.

Having everything centered on the page can be the mark of an amateur, but it can also be an important format for that individual poem, so I always take a look at format to see if it helps or hinders a poem. The poem that is shaped like a bird with the big space where the eye should be deserves no comment.

Some poems I’ve seen only prove to me that the poet was more concerned with getting something in to the contest to beat the deadline, and cared nothing about spelling, punctuation or form. It’s a shame.

Then there are the gems that come to the top of the pile, and I sit and have to turn my head to the wall, in the coffee shop, to hide the emotion I feel when reading a rare and beautiful poem. Those are why I continue to judge contests, and why it is such an honor for me to give that person an award.

If you are part of a writer’s group, encourage the writers to enter contests, and take some time to discuss what submission rules are, and what they mean. Help each other.

After all of that ranting I have no idea what poem to share with you today. Maybe this pantoum will calm us all down. Have a wonderful day, and I’ll see you here again soon.

Sacred Circle

As the medicine wheel turns
my soul walks the spokes.
Mysteries unfold to a seeking heart.
Years passing like shooting stars.

My soul walks the spokes,
while God’s hand turns the wheel.
Years passing like shooting stars
casting brief shadows on the wind.

While God’s hand turns the wheel,
mysteries unfold to a seeking heart,
casting brief shadows on the wind,
as the medicine wheel turns.

Robert W. Kimsey 2009

Memories of Rain

It’s been raining in the Blue Ridge. We haven’t been able to sit on the porch for a few days. Today the results of all that are plain, with the leaves so thick the cabin is once again surrounded by the forest.

On Saturday we took some visitors to the airport, and the drive through the Ocoee Gorge was slow and nerve racking with the fog on the road, and the water coming off the cliffs. On the way back the rain was intermittent, but the fog was still thick on the river. The kayakers who were coming in for the day were just gray shapes, there, then gone.

I don’t know why I’m sharing this with you. I guess, just to tell you that there are times that are brought to mind when the rain moves around me. Hiking in the woods as a boy, fishing the high mountains in a mist, almost unable to see the fly on the water in front of me, and special times with friends when I was a teenager in the city.

I wrote about one of those times a few years ago.

1964

The teachers called it the smoking lounge.
We knew it as the back of the gym,
open to the sky, gray brick to lean on.
You had to be pretty hard up to stand
in the rain for a Marlboro.
But we did.

Bad boys and girls and a few fools
that wanted to be, gathered in a ritual
of long draws, suck it up your nose,
run the gauntlet moments.
Acting like we didn’t care.
But we did.

It was the place where bad grades,
detention letters, and lost loves
could all be flipped away.
A burning butt containing hate and fear
crushed under a heel.
And we did.

All pretenders, frightened
that we would be the ones
to hold up the world.
Stories of your uncle, his brother and others
in a jungle bleeding so we could stand here
and cup our cigarettes from the rain,
just like they were doing, knowing
that next year we’d be there too.
Dying like they were.

And we did.


© Robert W. Kimsey
2005 Kentucky State Poetry Society

Welcome to the Mountains

A few weeks ago I attended a writer’s conference not far from my home in the Blue Ridge Mountains. We had a good attendance, for a rainy Saturday, with writers from three states.

One of my duties that morning was to speak for a few minutes on writer’s groups, and to invite local writers to come and see what we are doing in the Blue Ridge Poets and Writers. We meet at the Blue Ridge Mountain Arts Association in Blue Ridge Georgia once a month. With a membership of 15 writers we are doing pretty good. It is always a treat to hear new poems or a new chapter to a growing novel. The critique is gentle, and the help is valuable to those that want to tell their stories in poetry or prose.

Back to the conference. If I believed everything I had read, or comments I had heard recently, my talk that morning would have been very different. I would have said something like, “everybody that is over 50, forget about writing, go home, and have a great day.”

But, I know better. Looking around the room I could have named thirty people that have been writing most of their lives, and are published on a regular basis. My small group is made up of mature writers that win contests, speak in the schools, and write quietly on poetry collections or their next novel.

So, this blog is for everybody that wants to write, no matter what the age. I hope you will join me in sharing your joys and secrets about what you did when it didn’t go so well, and the words just wouldn’t materialize. I will share those things about my writing struggles, and those wonderful times when it all came together. It’s not about age. It’s about wanting to tell the stories.