This is the new and improved version of both the Periodic Poetry Contest and the Haiku Contest. From this point out, both contests will be combined into one massive contest for everyone to enjoy! And as such, each user is allowed to enter is both contests with separate entries if they so desire, effectively doubling the odds of winning. Each contest (One being general poetry and the other exclusively haiku) will have one winner every month. Every month, two winners (one from each contest shall be chosen and receive a merit for all their hard work. Show it off to your friends, gloat about it to your enemies! Tell your parents about it and confuse them! It's a win-win-win-win-win scenario, folks.
Rules
General Poetry Contest: - It must fit the theme if the month (same theme as the Haiku Contest). - It must be submitted by the deadline. - It cannot have inappropriate language in it. - It cannot be stolen (if you plagiarize, we will find you). - The poem must be created for this contest - A user cannot win twice in a row (though everyone is welcome to submit every month!) - Only one submission per user will be accepted
Once a month a winner will be chosen from all the received entries. To begin, the Moderation/Administration Team will act as judges and choose winners. Subject to change depending on how well things go. The winner will then make a comment on the ContestWinners profile to receive a merit. (Original idea by ubertuna, itemized rules by DragonMistress, modified by Devoidless)
Haiku Contest "A Haiku is a Japanese lyric verse form having three unrhymed lines of five, seven, and five syllables, traditionally invoking an aspect of nature or the seasons." Well, that said, here are the rules: - It must fit the theme of the month (same as General Poetry Contest) -The haiku must be original (no plagiarizing)! - It must be submitted before the deadline - It must be created for the contest (no using works previously written) - One submission per user - The same user cannot win twice in a row (but they are welcome to submit!)
Once a month a winner will be chosen from all the received entries. To begin, the Moderation/Administration Team will act as judges and choose winners. Subject to change depending on how well things go. The winner will then make a post on the ContestWinners profile to receive a merit. (Original idea and itemized rules by Maverick4, modified by Devoidless) First Themes The first themes to kick off this contest shall be: - The theme for the General Poetry contest this run is "Touch of Truth".
- The theme for the Haiku contest is "Broken Bond". Submitting an entry Since there are two separate contests, users are required to mention in the post which contest they wish to use the entry for. Any entry without this is subject to not being entered into either contest. Examples of how to clarify which contest an entry is for: -
This poem is for the General Poetry contest
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-This is for the Haiku contest
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I'd like to enter this for the General Poetry/Haiku contest
Remember, each user is allowed to join both contests!
Alright! Looking forward to seeing what you all can create! Good luck, and have fun with it!
A cold cobblestone street passes beneath my feet Tis a wary watchful eye The raven over me For that which I can not It is plain to he To see For that which I can not see Is the waning sea beside me But the sea I see is blasted and blimey As I try to put the past behind me I see but the see beside me The lines are written finely All in order and timely But woe is me for I lack the sea As I want of the But I still see blindly In the city In the city In the city As I still lack the sea beside me.
I've been sitting on this for who-knows-what reason. I finished it been done for a week now.
Colored pencils fall down The teacher slips and falls down Hollers all abound!
Use of the same words in the same position tend to take away from a poem and in this case it does. This is less black and white than the other haikus. I'm struggling to find the connection to black and white that isn't as tenuous as black and white color pencils or white chalk on a blackboard or a black kid pranking a white teacher.
Some claim the world is black and white And some, the other way. E. L. James saw middle ground, And wrote "Fifty Shades of Grey."
The title of the book suggests A new perspective, but, Turns out, the plot from start to stop Is teenage fan-fic smut.
The other way from black and white is shades of gray. The meter is in the last two lines of the first stanza. Interesting take on the theme.
Can you see it? There: Solus, it is nothing. Else, They define our world.
Ah, well everything is nothing with a twist. It is what it is because it's not what it's not as black is black and white is white.
Where did my prey go? Here one moment, gone the next. Hypnotizing horse.
Stars fall deep into midnight pools of ice. The snowy moon slices the night and white-hot frost spills free. Stars flow to embellish a world that swallows all sound and color.
There are a lot of images here, but I can't be sure what they all mean. I like the contrast of light and dark that is present throughout a wintry night.
Boast for the Blind
I, a soliloquy, and of relish joyousness Bare on to thee, with finesse and restlessness The spectrum of colors to whom it surpasses A blunt form of knowledge and all of it's classes
Veraciously brought enlightenment, true Figuratively, overwhelmingly: blue Humbly crackled of gestures to hue I bring you back and lecture, so due
God never gave you the ability of sight You cannot see and this, this isn't alright But don't leave your mind a feint at night For there is nothing to love but the light,
And everyone knows, it's all Black and White.
I don't know if the grandiloquence falling to colloquialism works for or against this poem. The breakdown of the bombast from the second to the third stanza is, arguably, the most interesting aspect of this poem, but I can't figure that it means anything. The last line seems to come out of nowhere.
The Two Ancestors
In this world of pain the colors give faith but without the ancestors the color will have not the answers.
The black gives darkness the light gives brightness with these two the world is in greatness.
Now you know let's go and bow and let them pass through.
This starts off well but the last stanza seems rushed and skips everything in the middle straight past the end. I'm left wondering what the full story is behind this. Why or how does the darkness and brightness result in greatness?
Day in, day out
Before dawn, I look at her I am in black and white. I leave and come back Perpetual cycle After dusk, I look at her.
I have never lived my life, but I get to look at her.
Our night minds are greatly different from our day minds. Whether or not this is actually depression related (like the Missy Higgins song) is up for debate. The fourth line in the first stanza seems unnecessary, though.
Theme: A Thin Line
I can see it in perfect 1d, Without the bold enlining, A line across the horizon That soothes my taste to the aligning.
While it's perfectly fine to make up a word for the rhyme if its meaning can be guessed, I'm not sure that word adds much to this poem. The wording seems awkward because it's trying to make it rhyme more than anything else.
Side note: As I understand it, it is saying "I can see the line./It's not a bold line./A line on the horizon./It's nice how it lines up!" The reinforcement of the idea of a "line" (2d, enligning, line, horizon, aligning) isn't thin but rather thick, so that does work against the poem as well.
----- Winners will be announced tomorrow after I figure some of the logistics.
Congratulations to Quirinus1 and jeol for their winning poem and haiku, respectively. Merits will have already been credited to your accounts, but please post your winning entries to ContestWinners.
The current theme is up and there are ten days left enter.
I saw A bird flying high Up In the air To see such a sight would be Strange Yet we ask the question, Why? Why do birds fly up and we stay down On this cold Hard ground?
There are some pending changes to how this "contest" works and there are changes that I have been and will be trying out. This includes the way themes are, what happens after rounds end, and possibly a new thread. There is still only one possible winner for each round (if there are enough entries), but there may be multiple merit awarded. Further details on this later, also on stuff like why this is even still open.
Judgement for last month's submissions will be up later this week. *Probably.*
The current theme is That Feeling When You Don't Want to Get Out of Bed. A "no crutch" rule is in effect. You cannot use the words "bed", "feeling", "don't want to", "get out", or "get up" in your entry. Synonyms are fine. Synecdoche is cool. Symbolism is A-OK. Or you can use other means, just not the specific words and phrases that are not allowed.
After observing the way themes and prompts are approached over the last year, I want to push further up against the boundaries and get people to step outside of their comfort zone. There's something about a themes that somehow limits the approach, not necessarily in the interpretation but the way the poem is constructed, like it's homework or some school assignment, a minimal effort for some questionably tangible reward. There's more quality per word in any entry in First Line Poetry from anyone. Can we get that over here? To be honest, I think FLP has always been a better way approach toward poetry than this thing.
Every time I sleep it creeps me out completely in the city now.
This haiku is a little too unspecific. It doesn't specify why the speaker is creeped out in the city. It just tells the reader that the speaker is creeped out when sleeping in the city. There is a beauty to it though, in that one could imagine all the horrors life in the city may have to offer. Was there a break-in? mugging? something that shouldn't have been seen?
I saw A bird flying high Up In the air To see such a sight would be Strange Yet we ask the question, Why? Why do birds fly up and we stay down On this cold Hard ground?
This can apply to anywhere, not just the city. The ground is hard in many places where birds can be found, somewhere well-traveled with compacted earth or just a rocky area. 'yet' used in this context means "in spite of that", which doesn't seem to be the right word to use here.
A cold cobblestone street passes beneath my feet Tis a wary watchful eye The raven over me For that which I can not It is plain to he To see For that which I can not see Is the waning sea beside me But the sea I see is blasted and blimey As I try to put the past behind me I see but the see beside me The lines are written finely All in order and timely But woe is me for I lack the sea As I want of the But I still see blindly In the city In the city In the city As I still lack the sea beside me.
I like the first line of the poem. It sets, or highlights, the tone for the rest of the poem. However, the wandering nature of the lines seems to lose the message of the poem. I can't figure what the raven has to do with it.
City of Dreams
The City of my dreams Is The City of Angels
I come from the north bearing my dreams and aspirations
Bringing only myself My pride and my savings
Its only a dream A dream that came from that city My City of Dreams LA
The message here is pretty clear. It's likely the speaker had dreams of becoming a celebrity in LA or at the very least, attaining dreams. The single-mindedness towards the goal is an interesting aspect.
Alrighty, you gotta dance with the one that brung ya, so to speak.
it annoyed me when mom would not leave me alone or leave the cold alone
but as the leafs fall i wish she hadn't
i toyed around with a middle verse for a little bit but I wanted to at least take a stab at being profound, without falling onto rhyme dependance, which destroys any semblance of rhythm and tone in my * poetry. But I didn't want to give it away too easily, so I just left it there; "hadn't" becomes what I can only describe as awkward, but I don't think it's too hard to understand.
This can apply to anywhere, not just the city. The ground is hard in many places where birds can be found, somewhere well-traveled with compacted earth or just a rocky area. 'yet' used in this context means "in spite of that", which doesn't seem to be the right word to use here.
Oh,I thought that was for a theme that you said. I thought it was "up".
it annoyed me when
mom would not leave me alone
or leave the cold alone
but as the leafs fall
i wish
she hadn't
The progression here is excellent, starting with a memory, a passage of time, and present thoughts. It is almost always too late to regret. Being stuck in bed sick out of your head isn't fun either. What I love about this is that the falling of leaves indicates a passing of time in different ways. It could mean approaching winter, growing older, growing weaker, or possibly growing closer to death and no longer having a parent there to look out for you. Nice job. You get a shiny.
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Other Notes:
From this round on, multiple merits may be awarded each round. The winner of each contest is guaranteed a merit. For there to be a winner, there must be at least three entries. Merits will also be given to all users who submit quality submissions, without regard to the number of entries. Even if you won the previous round, you may still earn a merit for the round that follows.
Quality is subjective. A little over three weeks is plenty time to to come up with an idea for a poem and polish it. Make it seamless. Make it intentional. Make it original. Make it read like ideas instead of a facsimile of words put together.
First time winners also get a shiny for their profile. Yes, a shiny! That's why this whatchamacallit is still alive. Well, it's not shiny shiny, but it's nice to look at as it's ultra-rare for now.
The current theme is Summer Dreaming/Some Are Dreaming. Take it as you will. There are no special restrictions.
Sun is shining
Us in the wind
Merry, Merry summer!
Me and friends enjoying it!
End of the day, wish we could play...
Really, there's another Summer dream tomorrow!
