A Bloem or a Plog?

Warwick Fraser-Coombe's cover for Interzone 218

“Poems must not exceed 40 lines and must be
typed on one side of A4 white paper with no illustrations.”
All typical demands in the rules of poetry competitions
that assume all poems are linear sets of lines of text.
I’m no expert but where’s the space for creativity?

My own attempts at the form are published rarely
but two of the three that escaped my hard drive
exceeded forty lines while not exactly wordy.
Nor did those two conform to strict rules of linearity
though In the Wake of Dreams seemed pretty conventional.

Towards Darwin, as a Physics World two page spread,
made £40 and a paid and published poet of me.
Then later the SF Poetry Association selected the
straight text version for that year’s Rhysling Anthology
so its physics was fine. I’m less sure about its poetic quality.

David Gentry's Voodoo Doll cover for issue 3 of Black Static

For Economies of Scale I used a matrix format
and while that suited the webzine Aphelion
its 54 lines, at 2.9 words each, foundered
in that ocean of electrons. Probably fitting, considering
and it too would not have suited any competition.

‘A4 white paper’ who can complain, but an American.
‘typed on one side’, I’ve no real objection.
‘no illustrations’ but words are used to shape
thought both metaphorically and literally
so it seems a pity to put that quite so bluntly.

So let’s propose a new set of competition rules,
and let’s be creative and let’s be cynical
because the former is fun and the latter is funny
and, when charging for entry, they can request extra
money wherever a choice permits that option.

The 5th of 6 covers Adam Tredowski produced for Interzone in 2009

Let Americans enter using paper size ‘letter’.
Ignore its cream color just count up the dollars.
40 line limits are far too short when each epic page
ups total income and five lines in is often the place
where judges judge reading on is simply a waste.

What is the reason to ban illustration
when all is fee paying at £5 per page, or part
thereof? And as long as they are integral with,
and to, the text and hence seem to rhyme well,
why not while the judges’ decision remains final?

As for my own stuff; its rhymes are dodgy, and its metre’s off
and my typical line count is more than enough
so competitions are not for me though occasionally
I have been enticed, admittedly only when entry is free.
So my oeuvre is generally unknown, unpublished and unread
and this is the evidence that that’s for the best.

Cover for Crimewave 9: Transgressions

This bloggerel bought to Incwriters via the good offices of TTA Press, publishers of Interzone, Black Static and Crimewave. There are e reader versions of them all at Fictionwise. All three are fiction magazines containing original short stories. Between them they contain around 80 stories per year and that may well make TTA the UK’s biggest publisher of new short stories. Interzone is now in its 28^th year, Black Static in its 3^rd and Crimewave its 11^th. None feature poetry.

Those of you with the technology, MP3 players, can listen to podcasts of stories from all three by downloading them for free from the Transmissions from Beyond website or iTunes. If you like them we hope you’ll try buying the magazines. An awful lot of now successful authors, and some artists, started their careers within the pages of Interzone and Black Static’s predecessor, The Third Alternative. So supporting TTA is entertaining and helps bring new authors confidence, agents and publishing deals.

I’m Roy Gray and my job is to get publicity, find advertising and sell TTA magazines at events like Odyssey, WHC 2010, Fantasycon, Independent Publisher Fairs and Alt.Fiction.

TTA also have a short fiction reviews website, The Fix, which does cover poetry but, at time of blogging, it is in archive form and I can’t say when new material will be added. However if The Fix site is news to you then there is plenty there to keep you occupied until its revival.

Plus we are on Twitter and Facebook. Look in, when you have a moment.