The Biggest Mistake New Poets Make on Their First Contest Entry
First-time contest entrants fail for a reason that has nothing to do with talent. A judge who has read a decade of first entries explains the one thing new poets get wrong, the fix that takes an hour, and the three signs your first entry is ready.
Every contest has a stack of first-time entries, and they fail for the same reason. It is not talent. It is not inexperience. It is a single mistake that almost every new poet makes and almost no experienced poet does.
The mistake is this: new poets write the poem they think a contest wants, instead of the poem they actually have. They write the contest poem.
What the contest poem looks like
You can spot a first entry in the first stanza. It is the poem that is trying to be a contest poem, which means it is trying to be impressive instead of true. The language is dressed up. The subject is important. The ending is meaningful. And the whole thing is a costume, because the poet is wearing the poem instead of writing it.
The contest poem has tells: the first line is a statement of purpose, the images are chosen for effect rather than accuracy, and the ending reaches for significance it has not earned. It is a poem that is trying to win, and trying is the first thing a judge sees.
The fix that takes an hour
The fix is not to write a better poem; it is to write a truer one. Here is the hour it takes.
First twenty minutes: read your poem out loud. Not to fix it, just to hear it. Mark every line that sounds like it is trying to be a poem rather than saying a thing. Those are the costume lines.
Next twenty minutes: cut the costume. Every line that is performing instead of saying, cut it. The poem gets shorter and truer at the same time. The lines you are afraid to cut are usually the ones that need to go.
Last twenty minutes: write the plain version. Take the poem's subject and say it in the plainest language you have. Not poetic language, plain. Then go back and keep only the lines that the plain version still needs. The poem that is left is the one that was always there.
The three signs your first entry is ready
Sign one: the first line is a detail, not a thesis. If the poem opens with a statement about the subject, it is not ready. If it opens with a thing, a person, a moment, it is.
Sign two: the poem has one idea, not three. A first entry that is trying to say everything is saying nothing. If the poem has more than one idea, cut until it has one.
Sign three: the ending is earned, not reached for. If the last line is a lesson, a meaning, a significance, it is reached for. If it is the thing the poem was always going to say, it is earned.
Where the first entry goes wrong
The trap is the poem that is trying to be good instead of true. A poem that is trying to be good sounds like every other poem that is trying to be good. A poem that is trying to be true sounds like the person who wrote it, and that is the only voice that wins.
If you want a first entry that is ready, the first thirty seconds post has the judge's scan, and the contest window is open when the poem is. The contest does not want a contest poem. It wants yours.
Keep reading
For the craft side, the contest-tips module covers the deeper method. The past winners is the page to read next, and the current window is where the work goes when it is done.
By Writory Editorial, for Writory.
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