Poetry Writing Tips: Local Competitions

For many poets, finding a market can be difficult, particularly if you are new to the field of poetry writing. For beginners as well as advanced poets, local competitions can be a great way to hone your poetic skills and publicize your talent at the same time.

While local competitions sometimes offer little more incentive for competing than a pat on the back and a byline in the local newspaper, for a true poet the acknowledgment of their work is usually enough of a motivator to garner his or her participation.

Awards doled out in local competitions are often less competitively strived for than those perpetually coveted spaces in major literary journals or magazines, and the turnaround time for rejections or acceptances is usually much quicker. As such, local competitions can be a great motivator for the poet looking for a break from the tedium of the average submission process, and can be a wonderful way to boost a poet's self-esteem between rejections from The New Yorker.

Here are some tips for submitting your work to local competitions:

Write for the heart. I can't tell you how many local award-winning pieces I've read on the topic of a parent's death, working out a relationship with one's teenage child or overcoming some type of cancer. Use your judgment, but depending on the location and nature of the competition and on the character of the judge(s), your chances of winning or losing the award you desire could depend more on the content of your piece than on the quality of the writing. (It may go against the grain for some to "compromise" the integrity of his or her writing by "writing for the judge," but this can actually be a great writing exercise. I once earned $35 for a poem I wrote from a woman's perspective about "my" husband for True Romance magazine.)

Make the deadline. This may seem obvious at first, but I can't count the opportunities I've missed in local competitions because I've simply been too lazy to get my submissions together. If you hear of a competition you want to enter, it's better to enter early than it is to be scrambling at the deadline. Have a reserve of your work ready to go in case you find out about a competition with a quickly approaching deadline, and save a pre-formatted cover letter (if the competition so requires) on the hard drive of your computer so you don't have to dread typing up a new one every time you submit. This takes a load off your mind and saves a lot of time and energy that could be better expended on you work.

Write about current or local events. My two most recent successes in local competitions came in large part due to following this rule. In one local library competition in Delton, Mich., I won first place in my age group for a poem called, "Delton Sonnet III." In another very recent local competition, I again won first place in my age group for a poem called, "Heath Ledger's Dead," referencing the recently deceased popular actor. Writing about subjects your potential readers are readily familiar with can make your poetry stand out more than poetry that is overly literary or too heavily symbolic. Save those pieces for the literary journals.

Submit! Submit! Submit! This point cannot be emphasized enough: Submit your poetry to local competitions! I live in a major city in Southwest Michigan consisting of tens, maybe hundreds, of thousands inhabitants, and in the last local literary competition less than 700 entries were received. These 700 entries were a cumulative total, submitted for four different genres, multiple age groups, and not accounting for the fact that each individual resident could submit up to three original pieces in each age group. If your one excuse to yourself for not submitting is that you think you just aren't good enough, or that the competition is too fierce, the truth is that you never know until you try. I know literally dozens of writers who could easily contend for prizes in local literary competitions, but fail to do so because they simply don't try. Don't be one of those people - you're a writer!

I hope these tips will be helpful for you as you begin or continue your foray into the world of local literary competitions. May your ink run deep, your houses remain quiet, and your paper be gloriously stained with the overflow of words that pour from the fountains of your endless imagination!

Now, go submit!