In practical terms, it means you can’t just enter a great poem-you have to enter an excellent poem. Sure, a magazine has a limited number of poems they can accept for any given issue, but a contest usually names a single winner. The biggest difference between submitting to contests and submitting to journals or magazines is that you’re directly up against other entrants. And of course-because I can already hear distant outcries against brown-nosing or gaming the system-the end game here is actually improving your poetry, not just working the judges, thought I’d say that’s a win-win.
Many of these tips apply to poets submitting to magazines and journals and/or prose writers submitting to non-poetry contests, but the focus is for poets entering contests. The practice of judging contests has changed my practices in entering them, because now I understand what it’s like for the person reading what I submit-in that big ‘ole stack of competitors. It’s another thing entirely to read through a stack of 500 poems and choose the best 5 (or best 1). It’s one thing to read a handful of poems in a row, taking time to give thoughtful critique. There’s one glaring difference though: volume. I’d already been heavy into the critique world for years before I judged my first poetry contest, so I thought I knew what it’d be like to evaluate other people’s work.
#IWRITE CONTEST HOW TO#
I’ve judged many such contests over the years and won dozens, so today I’m going to offer some insight into what it’s like to judge them and how to increase your odds of winning them. There’s a decent amount of money to be made winning poetry contests – if you reach a point where you can consistently place.
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