🍂 WAKE ME UP WHEN SEPTEMBER ENDS
A PoetrySoup Contest of Time, Memory, Loss, Transformation & Awakening
September ends.
But what does not end with it?
September is a threshold—the last warmth before cold, summer surrendering to autumn, beginnings moving inexorably toward endings.
For this contest, poets are invited to write about what September leaves behind.
Your poem may explore loss, love, aging, memory, regret, transformation, mortality, nostalgia, awakening, seasonal change, or simply the strange human experience of watching something end while knowing that something else is beginning.
But there is one important distinction:
THERE IS NO REQUIRED POETIC FORM
Write your poem in whatever form best serves your subject.
Free verse, sonnet, villanelle, pantoum, ghazal, ballad, ode, elegy, dramatic monologue, blank verse, prose poetry, experimental forms, and other traditional or contemporary structures are all welcome.
The form is your choice.
However, within the contest we are offering a special challenge for poets who want to attempt one of the oldest and most demanding poetic structures still in use:
THE SESTINA CHALLENGE
The sestina is a medieval poetic form originating in 12th-century Provence.
It is built around six recurring end-words.
Those six words return through six six-line stanzas according to a prescribed permutation, followed by a three-line envoi containing all six words.
The words return.
But ideally, their meanings change.
A word that means one thing in stanza one may carry an entirely different emotional or philosophical weight by stanza six.
That makes the sestina particularly appropriate for a contest called:
WAKE ME UP WHEN SEPTEMBER ENDS
Because September itself is about return, transition, repetition, memory, and change.
The Sestina Challenge is VOLUNTARY.
You do not have to write a sestina to enter the contest.
A poet writing free verse competes on exactly the same footing as a poet writing a sestina.
Choosing the sestina does not automatically earn additional points.
The sestina is simply an additional challenge for poets who want to test themselves against a difficult traditional form.
📜 CONTEST RULES
1. THEME
Your poem must meaningfully engage with the central idea of:
WAKE ME UP WHEN SEPTEMBER ENDS
You may interpret that idea literally, metaphorically, psychologically, spiritually, philosophically, romantically, humorously, or in any other way.
Possible subjects include:
- endings
- September
- autumn
- memory
- time
- aging
- loss
- love
- separation
- transformation
- mortality
- awakening
- nostalgia
- seasonal change
- childhood
- family
- relationships
- something ending while something else begins
Your poem does NOT have to mention September.
Interpret the title. Do not simply illustrate it.
2. POETIC FORM
Any poetic form is permitted.
Free verse is welcome
Traditional forms are welcome
Experimental forms are welcome
There is no required rhyme scheme, meter, stanza structure, or line count.
However, poets using a recognizable traditional form are encouraged to execute that form intentionally and skillfully.
The contest's featured optional challenge is the sestina.
3. THE SESTINA CHALLENGE
To qualify for the Sestina Challenge Award, the poem should substantially follow the traditional sestina structure:
- Six six-line stanzas
- Six recurring end-words
- The prescribed sestina end-word permutation
- A three-line envoi
- All six end-words appearing in the envoi
Creative variations are permitted, but judges will distinguish between intentional artistic variation and failure to understand or execute the form.
The winning sestina will not necessarily be the most technically rigid.
It will be the poem in which the form itself contributes most powerfully to the poem's meaning.
4. BLIND JUDGING REQUIREMENT
YOUR POEM TITLE MUST END WITH:
(DHR)
For example:
The House We Left Behind (DHR)
Six Words for September (DHR)
After the Last Warm Day (DHR)
The Things That Refused to End (DHR)
The (DHR) designation is required for blind judging.
It allows the contest organizer to identify contest submissions without revealing the poet's identity during evaluation.
DO NOT INCLUDE:
- Your name
- Your username
- Your biography
- A dedication identifying you
- An explanation of your poem
- Any other identifying information
The only identifying designation permitted in the title is:
(DHR)
IMPORTANT
The (DHR) must appear at the very end of your poem's title.
5. ORIGINALITY
All submissions must be the original work of the contestant.
No plagiarism
No AI-generated poems
No substantially AI-generated poems
The poem must represent the contestant's own creative work
Previously published work is permitted provided it is the contestant's original work and complies with PoetrySoup rules.
6. LENGTH
Recommended maximum: 60 lines.
There is no minimum line requirement.
The judges will value economy and purposeful construction over unnecessary length.
A shorter poem will not be penalized simply for being short.
7. LANGUAGE
English-language poetry only.
8. TITLE
Every poem must have its own title.
Do not simply use:
Wake Me Up When September Ends
as your poem's title.
Your title must end with:
(DHR)
🏆 JUDGING—100 POINTS
Every poem, regardless of form, will be judged using the same 100-point system.
1. ORIGINALITY & IMAGINATION—20 POINTS
Does the poem discover something unexpected?
Does it move beyond familiar autumn imagery and predictable emotional conclusions?
Does the poet create an individual imaginative world?
2. LANGUAGE & DICTION—20 POINTS
Precision of word choice
Freshness of imagery
Distinctive metaphor
Musicality
Economy
Does every important word earn its place?
3. EMOTIONAL POWER—15 POINTS
Does the poem make the reader feel rather than merely tell the reader what to feel?
Does its emotional force deepen as the poem progresses?
4. CRAFT & TECHNIQUE—15 POINTS
Lineation
Enjambment
Rhythm
Stanza construction
Sound
Syntax
Formal control
Does the poet demonstrate command of the chosen form?
5. DEPTH & COMPLEXITY—15 POINTS
Does the poem contain layers?
Does it resist an obvious interpretation?
Does it reward rereading?
Does something change or deepen beneath the surface?
6. RELATIONSHIP TO THE THEME—10 POINTS
How powerfully does the poem engage with endings, time, transition, memory, September, or awakening?
7. THE LAST DOOR—5 POINTS
Does the poem earn its ending?
Does the final passage transform what came before it?
Does the poem leave the reader somewhere different from where it began?
TOTAL: 100 POINTS
🥇 THE PODIUM
FIRST PLACE
👑 THE SEPTEMBER CROWN
Awarded to the poem receiving the highest overall score.
The September Crown honors the complete achievement: originality, language, emotional power, craftsmanship, depth, thematic resonance, and an ending that remains with the reader.
SECOND PLACE
🍂 THE AUTUMN LAUREL
Awarded to the poem receiving the second-highest overall score.
THIRD PLACE
⚖️ THE EQUINOX MEDAL
Awarded to the poem receiving the third-highest overall score.
✨ SIX SPECIAL LITERARY HONORS
These awards are independent of overall placement.
A poem may win a special honor and place in the top three.
A special award recognizes a particular poetic achievement that may not necessarily be reflected in the poem's overall numerical ranking.
I. THE SIX RETURNING WORDS
The Sestina Challenge Award
For the poet who transforms the demanding architecture of the sestina into something emotionally or intellectually necessary, demonstrating that repetition can create evolution rather than redundancy.
This is the contest's featured voluntary challenge.
II. THE LAST DOOR
The Final Line Award
For the poem whose final line or closing passage creates the most powerful sense of arrival, revelation, reversal, or lingering uncertainty.
III. THE AUTUMN NO ONE ELSE SAW
The Image Award
For the poet whose imagery makes the familiar strange again, discovering an original physical or sensory world rather than relying upon conventional autumn symbolism.
IV. THE VOICE THAT WOKE US
The Voice Award
For the poem possessing the most unmistakable and fully realized poetic voice—the rare voice that could not convincingly belong to anyone else.
V. WHAT SEPTEMBER TOOK WITH IT
The Emotional Revelation Award
For the poem that uncovers the most profound emotional truth, allowing revelation to emerge naturally through the poem rather than simply announcing its meaning.
VI. THE SLEEPER
The Sleeper Award
For the deceptively quiet poem whose power accumulates beneath the surface until, often only after a second or third reading, the full weight of the poem reveals itself.
🌿 WHAT THE JUDGES WILL BE LOOKING FOR
The strongest poems will probably not be the poems that simply describe September.
We are looking for poems that discover something inside September.
A father getting older
marriage changing
house emptied
child leaving
body becoming unfamiliar
love that survives its ending
memory that refuses to remain in the past
person who has slept through something important
A September that lasted forty years
Or perhaps something no one has thought of before
Surprise us.
🕯️ THE SESTINA BONUS CHALLENGE
For poets willing to undertake the additional challenge:
Choose six words that matter to your poem.
Then make those six words return again and again
But do not allow them to remain the same
Let context alter them
Let memory alter them
Let the speaker alter them
Let the reader alter them
By the final stanza, the six words should carry meanings they could not possibly have carried at the beginning.
The form should not feel like a mathematical exercise imposed upon the poem.
It should feel as though the poem needed those six returning words.
That is the challenge.
FINAL THOUGHT
September always ends
The leaves turn
The days shorten
The light changes
Something disappears
Something remains
Something begins
And sometimes we do not wake until the thing we thought would last forever is already gone.
WAKE ME UP WHEN SEPTEMBER ENDS
One poem
One ending
One awakening