For the past three years, I have participated in Contemporary Verse 2’s 2-Day Poem Contest, which takes place over a weekend in April. On Friday at midnight, a list of 10 words are released. Participants must write a poem including all 10 words and submit by Sunday at midnight.
There’s a great sense of community surrounding the contest, with lots of poets chatting on Twitter, Instagram, and the Facebook event page. The contest organizers also send out encouraging emails throughout the weekend.
I was extra-excited for this year’s contest, which was judged by Lisa Richter (last year’s winner). I met Lisa at the 2017 Wild Writers Festival, and loved her book Closer to Where We Began. This year’s words were: pith, commodious, transpire, feckless, roric, coifs, rust, tub, frisson, and judge. A challenging list, to say the least.
24 hours into the contest, I had… nothing. I started fresh on Sunday morning and somehow managed to scrape something together (with encouragement and feedback from my friend Ashley Hynd) to submit.
On July 6th, I was delighted to receive an email informing me that I won Editor’s Choice! You can read my poem, “Self Portrait with Snacks,” and the other winners on the CV2 website and in the Winter issue (41.3) of CV2.
I highly recommend this contest! It’s a lot of fun and I’ll definitely be participating again in 2019.