Bracing Myself to Enter a Poetry Contest

Confession: I have entered fewer than five -- much fewer than five -- writing contests in my life. But I am planning on entering another soon. A poetry one, to be specific.

I don't enter them because I don't want someone to tell me what I sometimes fear: I am not all that good. Who wants to get their hopes up only to hear that they had no chance of winning? On top of that, this is my writing we are talking about. That stuff is important to me. I worked hard on them and they carry a lot of me in them.

But if a writer is going to move forward, someone else needs to be reading their work. I have submitted a couple things to literary journals without success (though one person did write me a full-length letter in response, which means it was good and they realized it), and I suppose I did get to present a couple stories at National Undergraduate Literature Conferences. Which is pretty cool. I also won regional awards for my editorials in college. My boss thinks I should submit my column next year for a journalism award, too.

Basically, I'm not a lost cause. Just a timid cause.

I don't think I've mentioned my column yet. It's called the Front Porch, and in it I relay small bits of happy news in a chatty way. If someone becomes an Eagle Scout, gets a scholarship, makes the dean's list, wins a snowmobile, needs volunteers, you get the idea, it goes into my column.

So I suppose this is a dual-purpose blog post (I didn't realize I forgot to write a post last week! Whoops). First, to tell you I am preparing myself to enter another contest, and second, to tell you I'm a columnist of sorts these days.

To read my Front Porch column, visit www.idahopress.com/heyipt/ and look for headlines saying Front Porch. I've gotten some negative feedback, but mostly the community seems to enjoy it.

As for which poem I am submitting, I'm not sure yet. I have reached out to a writer friend for some help, because the contest hasn't been around for more than a year. Without knowledge of what sort of poems they prefer, I'm at a loss. I'm thinking of entering my poem about Nisha, the Teddy Bear Buttons paragraph fiction (pretending it's prose poetry, which maybe it is), or this poem, which is called Relics.


There is a red, wooden swing
hanging from the lone chestnut tree
that shadows my front yard.
Rachel, the girl with naturally curly hair
who loves mustard yellow,
made it with a friend
before she left for Russia.
Moscow, where she learned to adore
matching scarves and hats,
old window frames,
and long train rides,
but not so much the food —
except for borscht (beet soup),
blini (pancakes),
and smetana (sour cream).

The red swing stayed with me;
I brought it in during the winter
to protect the wood from snow,
and in the summer,
my landlord’s two daughters played on it.
She also left me with a painting
of a rainstorm over a bridge that traverses a river,
beside which two people walk,
one in red and one in light blue.
Neither one is holding an umbrella,
but they don’t seem to be in a hurry
to escape the rain pelting the walkway.

Borscht

I'll let you know how it goes, no matter which one I end up going with. Cross your fingers for me.