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Blogs by Tami C Ryan
Competition 7/11/2004 8:54:28 AM
I hadn’t written anything here in quite a while, so I’d thought I’d come here to say hello to you; you know who you are… you, reading this right now. Hey! Hello! Hi ya! How ya be?
What’s new? Hmmm… let’s see…
I entered my first international poetry competition a few weeks ago. That, my friends, was an experience: I had to submit 25-35 poems, as it was a manuscript competition. I wasn’t so sure I had 25 or 35 “good” poems to enter, but when it came down to time to submit, I had difficulty eliminating a few. Now, that’s not to say that I believe all my work is good, I don’t. But when personal poetry is involved, the elimination process is difficult. Next time, I think I’ll choose the poems in advance and, then, let my friends decide. Nah, maybe that’s not such a good idea, considering the fact that the friends who know me well, don’t seem to have that same connection with poetry. OK, scrap that idea.
A word to the wise: check out the rules and details regarding submittal early – I did, but even as anal as I can be, I hadn’t read it clearly/closely/slowly enough. The competition required an entry fee in pounds, so at the eleventh hour, I was frantically trying to find an entity to transfer U.S. funds into pounds (and onto paper) so I could mail it. What an adventure, to say the least of it. After much searching and telephoning, I finally found a bank that could do it, but by then, I had e-mailed the moderator, and he gave the ok to send a cashier’s check in U.S. funds.
Then came time to mail it in. Another word to the wise? When entering an international competition, mail early – unless, of course, you want it to go via the absolute slowest snail in the lot and have it arrive in about a month, long after the deadline. Considering the fact that it was so close to deadline, I had to send it airmail; it cost me nearly eight dollars to mail it – Yikes!
So, half a paycheck later… my submittal surely has arrived at its destination and, now, I wait. Wait? For what? Shhhh… listen… I think I can hear them laughing all the way across the ocean…
Meanwhile, I have a competition going on right here: I want to be right here, writing, and everything in my apartment is strewn helter-skelter – I’m supposed to be painting. ‘Guess I’d better get going.
