Winning poems in the August InterBoard Poetry Competition

In her last month as IBPC judge, C.J. Sage has chosen three winning poems that reveal the myth-making aspects of poetry. As the Olympic athletes have returned to Greece this month, so the duo who wrote the first place “Penelope and the Bird Man,” Laurie Byro & Ivan Waters, have reinhabited the classic Greek myths of Odysseus, Icarus and Oedipus. The second place poem, “Conceptions” by Knut Skagen, makes a modern myth of a beach visit, the naming of flowers, and the stories parents tell their children. And Jim Zola’s third place “A Poem About Nothing” touches explicitly on the poet’s mythopoeia (“I create people / and give them lives”) amid refrains of naked naming lines.

Your nominations for our entries in the September IBPC are due by August 30. If you see a poem posted on the Forum that you feel is worthy to represent us in the competition, nominate it by posting it in the IBPC folder, and be sure to notify the poet whose work you have put forward, to give them a chance to supply the information & permissions we must have before we can include the poem among our entries.

Related resources:
About the IBPC
Requirements for IBPC nominees
Anthology of winning poems
Archive of poems entered from our Poetry Forum