Poems representing our Forum in the October IBPC

Once again, we’ve selected poems by three long-time Poetry Forum regulars as our envoys to this month’s InterBoard Poetry Competition: one nominated by a Forum poet whose work has represented us in several past IBPCs (MarieRavina), one nominated by the poet who won third place last month (BillBrando), and one voted a recent winner in the Forum challenge. (If you’re looking for inspiration to start your next new poem, visit the Forum’s Workshop folder and join in the current challenge exercise -- it’s a great way to stretch those poetry-writing muscles.) Our October entries are:

• “White Wedding,” a haunting symbolist sea ceremony by Laurie Byro.
• “On Love and Song and Death,” another in the beautiful series of formal elegy poems (this one is a sestina) by Mitchell Geller (EDowson).
• “a good day to die” by Tim J. Brennan (68degrees), also an elegiac poem, this one formed on image and metaphor rather than rhyme and meter.

Kudos and luck in the judging to all three poets. We have a new judge this month -- E. Ethelbert Miller -- and we’ll be back both to post a brief profile of the judge and to report the results when he has selected the winning poems.

Please keep the nominations coming! Whenever you see a great poem posted on our Forum, no matter where it is, get over to the InterBoard Poetry Competition folder and nominate it! There are so many postings on the Forum that your Poetry Guides must rely on your help to sift out the worthy entries at the end of each month -- we cannot continue our participation in the IBPC without your help!