Haiku/Poetry Contest Planning

The 4th Annu­al Organ­ic Mechan­ic Haiku con­test is approach­ing. I’m try­ing to decide whether or not I should keep it strict­ly haiku, change it to a dirty lim­er­ick con­test, or make it a poet­ry con­test prop­er. What would you like?

I con­sid­ered mak­ing the prizes mon­e­tary this year, but I think I’ll stick with a book or some­thing groovy like this; and of course, the ubiq­ui­tous com­pi­la­tion CDs.

The con­test will run the month of April, since that is Nation­al Poet­ry Month, and I’m think­ing about ded­i­cat­ing the blog to poet­ry for that entire month. Since I’ve not writ­ten a poem, and only come up with a few appro­pri­ate sound­ing phras­es since then, per­haps reen­gag­ing in the world of poet­ry will relieve my com­pla­cen­cy.

In any case, I don’t think the haiku medi­um is work­ing as well any­more, the first year [now unfor­tu­nate­ly lost some­where in innu­mer­able redesigns and migra­tions] was amaz­ing. Dirty lim­er­icks might throw a bit of juice and rib­aldry back into the mix, but maybe it is time to grow up and only accept stuff that isn’t done only for the sake of being clever. Any input is wel­come.

20 thoughts on “Haiku/Poetry Contest Planning”

  1. maybe a seri­ous con­test and a dirty lim­m­er­ick con­test. you don’t need to award win­ners with gifts, IMHO; mix CDs would be good enough. Save your moolah.

  3. how about a song writ­ing con­test???

    🙂

    if not a song, i think all the oth­er ideas are quite fab.

  4. If I go with song­writ­ing, only you and phil and patrick will like­ly have entries. And entries would require an mp3 of the com­plet­ed tune. So no. 🙂

  5. i offi­cial­ly have 3 mp3’s of my stuff…recorded from a night i had too much to drink, but they’re mp3’s none the less. 🙂

    i know…i’m just try­ing to plug myself any pos­si­ble way i can. 🙂 it was worth a try.

  11. mau­ra, that song was excel­lent. great voice. now i got­ta come up with some­thing real­ly good! if only i could sing. i make neil young sound like an angel.

  13. I can’t con­tribute to the con­test I run. Also, I for­got the tune, like the big los­er I am.

    Oh, and Jeff, if I make it a stan­dard poet­ry con­test, any­thing will go. If it stays the haiku con­test then it won’t be 17 syl­la­bles but 7. 17 syl­la­bles are too many for Eng­lish haiku. Sev­en seems to bit a bit clos­er to the sim­plic­i­ty and min­i­mal­ism of true haiku.

  20. Ah, thanks, I must have been blind. Mau­ra, you’ve got a very good voice! It can car­ry a mes­sage with emo­tion.

    In the spir­it of attempt­ing not to be shy, I’ll offer a song I’m tin­ker­ing with. Adam, you can host it on your page if you want.

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