In her second month as judge of the InterBoard Poetry Competition, Elena Karina Byrne has continued the theme she established in January, favoring poems that use layers of image and metaphor to move into the realm of the surreal, and noting at the outset that “This month’s winners, oddly enough, all have something to do with sound and song and the process of seeing. The subjects travel synaesthetically.”
- In first place, Byrne selected “Mondegreen” by Ray Sweatman, an exuberant surrealistic tumble of word-play she called “a wild, dark-humor ride in a rowboat on the ocean with no oars!”
- In second place, she chose “Virginia Sings Back To the Stones In Her Pockets” by Laurie Byro, a poem that does tell a story, but transforms it into myth, in which “the odd ‘details’ blur between dream and reality, where stones are ‘faithful as vowels,’ in the mouth of the imagination.”
- In third place, she named “—” by Eric Rhohenstein, describing it as a poem that “crosses its own tightrope in a ‘figurative corner’ of the mind.... a compelling example of how art averts its subject matter.”
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 Elena Karina Byrne
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