You Have to Enter to Win

Contests, contests … there’s no shortage of opportunities for poets to reach for the gold ring, from state poetry associations to university writing programs to online journals. One place to look for contests is the Classifieds section of the Poets & Writers website; another is Winning Writers’ Best Free Literary Contests.

Not all contests are created equal, though. One that’s especially prestigious is Britain’s Bridport Prize, which awards a first prize of £5,000. If you have a strong poem that’s fewer than 42 lines long, plus £8 for the entry fee, submit it here by May 31. And best of British luck.

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On Paper, Online

Lots of published poems lead a cyber life online, but not all print journals post all the pieces they publish. Here’s the text of one of my poems, which appeared in the Summer 2013 issue of Third Wednesday:

 Made Out of Song

I wanted to be made out of the song that was in your head

the cape of music loose around your shoulders
white hot with harmony
fingers drumming on the car roof
blazing down the skyway in the
old Plymouth

You would sing me into sleep
drifting into the song
dreaming into it
waking into some kind of beat

Sometimes you sang “froggie went a’courting”
sometimes old English ballads
sometimes the anger song, a song I recognized

I remember the words

***

Wherever the music went, you went with it, or you took it when you
left, or the song in your head went silent

I would climb the chokecherry tree and sit
where the big branch
angled out of the trunk
folded in a lazy V
reading a book

listening for a song that might have been in my head
if not in yours

wanting wings like the birds who ate the berries and sang like
they were made out of song

© 2013, Sally Zakariya