A Christmas contest from Realpoetik
Tuesday November 29, 2005
from Kirby Olson, current editor of Realpoetik, one of our favorite sources of email poems:
“After the snafu of last summer when I announced a short poem contest and immediately the board began to blast billions of messages I have wondered about the wisdom of announcing another contest. However Realpoetik does not accept poetry over the transom whatever a transom is except in the form of contest submissions so I think it’s time to hold another contest. This one will be based on Christmas -- the poems may be anti-Christmas or pro-Christmas but should in some way touch upon that topic. I will try to publish one each week as we lead up to the fabled holiday.
“It’s better if poems are shorter than 20 lines. Send your poems to the editor Kirby Olson at olsonjk@delhi.edu. The poems should be part of your message, and should be accompanied by a two or three-sentence biography. The biography part helps you to sell your products but also gives a sense of who you are and what you are doing. I offer a Christmas poem of my own to get readers into the mood and hopefully give you a sense of how you can depart from or rhyme with the editor’s poetics, and follow it with a sample bio.”
CHRISTMAS
When sleighbells bother neighbors because of their rollicking peal
Every gabled roof is strung with lights and snow
Inside by the hearth grandfather snores
As midgets in green prance in circles
Amidst the presents a lovely doll stares deadly at the ceiling
Choke that doll, and bang its head on the corner of the hearth;
There are miseries that only the ghosts feel as they walk among us
Noses crossed with soot and their boots as black as bitterness
Sleep my loved ones as the notes of Mozart filter in the window
Sly mothers know to pack their ears with wax upon reclining
So that the peals of their babies’ cries won’t lessen their celestial music within...
Triangles, pianos, tubas and bazookas;
Everything in pyjamas and costly mazurkas for the tiny berserkers
As Santa slides down the pole to inspect the Paradise of the workers.
Kirby Olson’s chapbook Waiting for the Apocalypse will shortly be out from PR Primeau’s Rhode Island press. Olson’s novel Temping (about an American academic’s tenure in Finland) is selling steadily and recently received a quite positive review from the librarian’s journal Booklist.
Related resources: Our library of links to poetry newsletters & mailing lists
“After the snafu of last summer when I announced a short poem contest and immediately the board began to blast billions of messages I have wondered about the wisdom of announcing another contest. However Realpoetik does not accept poetry over the transom whatever a transom is except in the form of contest submissions so I think it’s time to hold another contest. This one will be based on Christmas -- the poems may be anti-Christmas or pro-Christmas but should in some way touch upon that topic. I will try to publish one each week as we lead up to the fabled holiday.
“It’s better if poems are shorter than 20 lines. Send your poems to the editor Kirby Olson at olsonjk@delhi.edu. The poems should be part of your message, and should be accompanied by a two or three-sentence biography. The biography part helps you to sell your products but also gives a sense of who you are and what you are doing. I offer a Christmas poem of my own to get readers into the mood and hopefully give you a sense of how you can depart from or rhyme with the editor’s poetics, and follow it with a sample bio.”
CHRISTMAS
When sleighbells bother neighbors because of their rollicking peal
Every gabled roof is strung with lights and snow
Inside by the hearth grandfather snores
As midgets in green prance in circles
Amidst the presents a lovely doll stares deadly at the ceiling
Choke that doll, and bang its head on the corner of the hearth;
There are miseries that only the ghosts feel as they walk among us
Noses crossed with soot and their boots as black as bitterness
Sleep my loved ones as the notes of Mozart filter in the window
Sly mothers know to pack their ears with wax upon reclining
So that the peals of their babies’ cries won’t lessen their celestial music within...
Triangles, pianos, tubas and bazookas;
Everything in pyjamas and costly mazurkas for the tiny berserkers
As Santa slides down the pole to inspect the Paradise of the workers.
Kirby Olson’s chapbook Waiting for the Apocalypse will shortly be out from PR Primeau’s Rhode Island press. Olson’s novel Temping (about an American academic’s tenure in Finland) is selling steadily and recently received a quite positive review from the librarian’s journal Booklist.
Related resources: Our library of links to poetry newsletters & mailing lists
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