Contest

My poem won the poetry contest.  Actually, I suppose it is more appropriate to say I won the poetry contest with my poem.  I am to be rewarded for my poem’s selection by being asked to read it publicly to the same audience on the same day I will publicly read another poem.  The two poems are like night and day, oil and water, excitement and lethargy, apples and automobiles.

I had just read my silly, whimsical, borderline (?) bizarre poem aloud to the group when the contest organizer announced that I was the poetry contest winner.  I think the small group present must have collectively thought, “Has this woman lost her mind?  How could another poem written by this man be considered anything but chemically-induced fantasy?”   The winning poem was not read…will not be read…until the shindig on October 4.  So the other day’s audience will continue to wonder whether the organizer was mad…and when they hear my other poem read on that day, they will decide.

It’s more than mildly amusing to me that something I wrote quickly and with little editing and modification and review and revision…in a form I rarely write (poetry) won a contest.  My personal emphasis is fiction, especially short fiction, in narrative form.  I’ve not won prizes for that (though, to be honest, I’ve never entered contests with my narrative fiction), but I have won (one) for poetry.