What about a rhyme royal? Two stanzas, 14 lines in iambics, rhymed couplet at the end. Technically not a sonnet, but what today is technically a sonnet?

Hi Tim - just send it in: our Distinguished Guest will decide if s/he likes it as a finalist. --Alex

The 2014 Sonnet Bake-off Submissions are now closed. Thank you to everyone who submitted. 150 submitted in all. Good luck to all!

Stay tuned for the event proper with the post of finalists and the corresponding comments, starting May 9, 2014 ... and be sure to join in!

Cheers,
...Alex

I'm sure this will be discussed ad nauseam in the coming weeks...but a rhyme royal is not a sonnet for several reasons. One of which is because, frankly, it's a rhyme royal (in terms of rhyme scheme and structure etc.), and secondly because it doesn't typically have a volta.

Not all "fourteeners" are sonnets...but admittedly the discussion of what is a sonnet has been done to death, and will inexorably continue for every bakeoff to come.

As a traditionalist, I wouldn't insist, but a rhyme royal in two stanzas could very well have a volta--a high-voltage volta--set up by the two septets instead of an octet and a sextet. The difference between a Petrarchan and a Shakespearen sonnet seems more radical to me than the difference between a Shakespearean sonnet and a two-stanza rhyme royal. The latter are close siblings, while the former are European cousins.

The problem with this is that entirely different sonnets may well have the same title. For instance, I've written sonnets named "Epistemology," "Fair is Fair," "Far Away," and "First and Last Time," to pick 4 from an alphabetized list. It doesn't seem at all unlikely that some other poet has recently used those titles.

I hesistate to make any complaint, as the event has gone well. But Mike has a point, and I have one to add. If a poet keeps an online curriculum vitae, then ALL of that poet's published titles will be googleable, even if the poems themselves are not.

I didn't enter last year since I didn't have a suitable unpublished sonnet. I was pleased that previously published sonnets were allowed this year, but was surprised to learn (in my case after the event) that the rules had been changed to prohibit Googleable entries. It seems to me that the one negates the other.

It doesn't really matter if members look up the entries, since the important thing is the judge's decision not the popular vote.

I'm judging a poetry competition at the moment which allows both published and unpublished entries and judging is anonymous. Here's my solution to the Google problem: I haven't tried to look them up. Any honest judge would do the same.

I miss the old days when the only real requirement was that a poem had previously been workshopped on Erato.

Oh I'm so glad to hear that. Mine was disqualified then. I shall know better next time to ignore what they SAY and watch what they DO.

Did I miss the decision?
 

never mind