Our Forum’s envoys to the July IBPC

We’ve selected three very fine poems as our Forum’s entries in this month’s InterBoard Poetry Competition -- all by poets whose work has risen to the top of the Forum pool to represent our community in previous competitions:

• “In the Flames” by Julie Mazza (TornScorpio), a vivid poem-story cited by its readers for its graceful conversational flow & “daring individuality.”
• “Witless” by Guy Kettelhack (GuyBlakeKett), an agile contruction of four-line stanzas packed with internal rhymes & nominated as “exceptional” by Forum poet rhymster.
• “Moratorium” by J.S. Lange (Runatyr), a crisp satirical parable that stood out as the spectacular winner of the Forum’s recent challenge exercise based on these lines from Jeffrey McDaniel’s “The Quiet World”:
  
  In an effort to get people to look
  into each other’s eyes more,
  the government has decided to allot
  each person exactly one hundred
  and sixty-seven words, per day.
  
  When the phone rings, I put it
  to my ear without saying hello.

We have not yet received IBPC judge David Biespiel’s choices of the June winners, nor have we been given the name of the new judge whose term begins with this July competition. But just as soon as we receive these announcements, we’ll be back to post them. Kudos & luck in the judging to all our poets, and thanks to everyone who nominated poems or posted permissions.

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