The InterBoard Poetry Competition Goes Another Round

We’ve just received the announcement of Tony Barnstone’s selection of winning poems from those submitted for the August IBPC — none of the entries from our Forum were chosen, but the winners are well worth your attention, and I think you’ll recognize some of the poets’ names:

• In first place, he chose “Tsunami Prelude,” by Brenda Levy Tate, an amazing mythic description of tsunami as animal force, “a great god tongue coming to lick the world clean of life.”
• He awarded second place to “Living in the Body of a Firefly” by Laurie Byro, a modern-day Romantic poem that prompted Barnstone to wonder “Who can really write a Romantic poem today and get away with it?” and to conclude “Something about this poem’s assured movement, its magical images, its tenderness, allows me to like it.”
• For third place, he selected “Surviving the Ugly” by Sandy Benitez, a “portrait of the ordinary grimness and griminess of military life, punctuated by moments of extraordinary stress,” whose just-right details, simplicity and psychological rightness take it out of the realm of topical cliche.

Barnstone also offered comments on three poems he selected for honorable mention: “How Soft Is the Blackness That Cannot Bring Me Joy” by Ellen Kombiyil, “If Men Wore Lip Paint” by Bernard Henrie and “Seiren Song” by Steve Parker.

Again this month, the Forum poets have not been very active in suggesting poems for IBPC entry, but at least one of the nominated poets from last month provided the required permission and information so that we could include that poem among our entries. The poems chosen to represent the About Poetry Forum in the October IBPC are:

• “Audrey Josephine” by Grayson Brice, a love poem formerly known as “Let Me See Your Toes” which is both prayer and lyrical command.
• “Mykonos 1973,” by Brian K. Lynch (BebopPoet), a wonderfully vivid memory poem recalling a would-be hipster’s visit to a very particular time and place, aptly designated by one reader as a piece of “contemporary archaeology.”
• “Requiem for a Dead Sparrow,” by Tim J. Brennan (68degrees), a seemingly small lyric that fills its central image with expanding ripples of resonance, selected by Poetry Guide Margy Snyder from the current Challenge #116.

More on the IBPC:
General information
Requirements for IBPC nominees
Anthology of the monthly IBPC winning poems
Archive of poems entered in the IBPC from our Poetry Forum
Background information, poem links and book-buying links for current IBPC judge Tony Barnstone