What to Submit?
PLEASE STUDY THE RULES (not hard)
I'm usually not a fan of "Designer" poems, but this looked like an interesting challenge. It's a form invented by Terrance Hayes called "Golden Shovel", because it borrows words from classic &or previously written poems and incorporates them into your own write. The process is to take a line or lines from the old poem and each word becomes the last word of each line you write and...the quantity of words will, therefore, equate to the number of lines in your poem. For example, if the choosen line is "Mary had a lamb", your poem would be 4 lines long with "Mary" ending line one, "had" ending line two etc. I will provide choices that you must choose from for your poem. RULES PLEASE
TITLE YOUR POEM GOLDEN SHOVEL (YOU CAN CHANGE AFTER JUDGING)
CREDIT THE ORIGINAL POET & POEM AFTER YOUR OWN POEM
SUBMIT YOUR POEM FORM AS VERSE
DO NOT DOUBLE SPACE
DO NOT CENTER
BELOW ARE YOUR CHOICES FROM THE GOLDEN SHOVEL
(So you see, if you choose Lord Byron's, it will be 21 lines long with line 1 ending with "she", line 2 ending with "walks" etc)
She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that’s best of dark and bright
Lord Byron – She Walks in Beauty
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.
A.E. Housman – Loveliest of Trees
Tiger Tiger, burning bright,
In the forests of the night;
What immortal hand or eye,
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
William Blake – The Tiger
Our sincerest laughter
With some pain is fraught;
Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.
Percy Bysshe Shelly – To a Skylark
Be not the first by whom the new is tried,
Nor yet the last to lay the old aside.
Alexander Pope – An Essay on Criticism
Preparing Your Entry
Submit one copy of your poem online. Format your poem. Please make your entry easy to read — no illustrations or fancy fonts.
English Language
Poems should be in English. Poems translated from other languages are not eligible, unless you wrote both the original poem and the translation.
A Note to Poetry Contestants
You are welcome to enter this contest, whether or not you won a prize in one of my previous contests.