Our Forum’s Envoys to the May IBPC

We are happy to say that the Forum poets really stepped up last month and nominated a bounty of good poems to be considered for entry in this month’s InterBoard Poetry Competition. Thank you all for helping winnow through the masses of poems posted on our Forum to find worthy entries. We’ve selected these three to represent our Forum:

• “The Woman in Room 808” by B. Lee Brown, a villanelle that uses its repeating rhymes to capture the obsessions of senility and the poignant circling of the caregiver.
• “The Beautiful Trouble” by T. Obatala (trkyounger), a parable that zooms in from Sun and Moon to the poet and his unfaithful lover, creating what one reader called “an absolute and determinate grace in sorrow.”
• “Fifty White Stones” by Tim J. Brennan (68degrees), another lovely and mythical poem that moves from the vast sky and the ground beneath to a single person “in this northern field... looking for signs.”

Luck in the judging to all three poets, and thanks to everyone who nominated poems or posted permissions. Because we can enter only three poems each month, we have flagged the other nominated poems and will consider them again next month when it is time to select our entries. In the meantime, keep those nominations coming! Whenever you see a great poem posted on our Forum, hop on over to the InterBoard Poetry Competition folder and nominate it!

We’ll be back to let you know when IBPC judge Bryan Appleyard has selected the winners for May.

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