Are Poetry Contests Worth Entering?
Most definitely. In fact, writing contests provide a major opportunity to get both yourself and your poetry well-known. Are Poetry Contests Worth Entering? The problem is finding a suitable contest. Most writers assume that all poetry contests are much the same. They have it firmly fixed in their minds that what all poetry contests are seeking, is poetry. Full stop. Now, as it happens, poetry is what they write too, so without further ado, they send off one or two of their poems to the contest concerned. If this is you, you’re simply wasting your time and money. True, all poetry contests do award prizes to poetry, but in most cases it’s extremely different poetry from the poetry you know and write. If I’m attracted by the prizes a poetry contest is offering, the first thing I do is to find out exactly what sort of a poetry contest it is. As I explain in my book, “Write Ways to WIN WRITING CONTESTS”, there are two distinct poetry divides: one between free verse and traditional verse, an
