Winners chosen in the September InterBoard Poetry Competition

Once again, none of the winning poems selected by judge George Szirtes in last month’s InterBoard Poetry Competition came from our Poetry Forum—but his choices and his comments are worth your while:

• In first place, Szirtes selected “We Burned Incense,” by Judy Swan, a dramatic monologue that “has a compulsive voice, takes risks with its reiterations in the second verse, tells a story without too much ‘telling.’”
• In second place, he chose Laurie Byro’s “The Secret Life,” an unrhymed sonnet that wears the poet’s slightly cryptic, resonant natural metaphors quite well.
• Szirtes arrived at a three-way tie in his third-place selection: “On Waking I Think of Winter” by Sarah Sloat, an untitled poem by Matt Moseman, and “Illegal #2” by Sergio Ortiz.
• He also offered comments on three poems he singled out for honorable mention: “Acquired Tastes” by Allen M. Weber, “Air Poem” by Divina, and “Bird-dog, Bird-dog” by Margaret Hemme.

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 and reading links for July - September IBPC judge George Szirtes
Background information and reading links for October - December IBPC judge Majid Naficy