Poetry competition rules: one in particular
 

"No entrant may win more than one prize"

Is there a good reason for this rule? If there is, I can't see it; the poems are judged on merit, after all.

If you submitted five poems, say, to a competition and the judge just happened to like two of them enough to give them a place, why shouldn't you be awarded 1st and 2nd prizes, or 2nd and 3rd if another poem was rated higher, or even 1st and 3rd?

If the above rule is followed, the judge is not being true to his or her original decision. After discovering the name of the author they would then presumably have to demote one of the poems in favour of one they liked less.

(When John Whitworth and I judged a comp together for two years we didn't include that rule... and someone did win two prizes one year, if my memory serves me correctly.)

Jayne

A judge's perception of merit is largely a product of her taste. Liking one poem by a given poet makes it probable she will like others. Another judge will favor a different poet's poems. True merit comes into play (if the judge has skill, she won't choose a bad poem), but so does luck. Making the judge choose a poem by a different poet for each prize puts each entrant slightly less at the mercy of this luck.

It seems a reasonable rule to me--but others' taste in rules will differ.

Max's reply makes sense to me. Judges aren't perfect - they have quirks and favorite approaches and styles just like the rest of us. Any time you appoint a judge, you are - to some extent - skewing the judging in advance in favor of one group or another, depending on the judge's predispositions. (I assume you's agree, Jayne, that any contest is a crap shoot - there is no "best" poem - it depends on the judge.) Limiting every entrant to one award is a logical step toward limiting the influence of the Judge's specific taste, of smoothing the contest.

In other words - what Max said. (I didn't realize, as I wrote this, how closely I paralleled his remarks.) You can judge contests I enter whenever you want, Max.

Just out of curiousity, Jayne - what prompted this?

Jayne, that rule certainly doesn't apply to the Flash 500 competition, where Martin Parker recently won two of the prizes, and before that there was a quarter when Melanie Branton won all three.

And where would Bazza, Chris, and sometimes even myself, be if multiple wins (admittedly pseudonymous) weren't allowed? Starving in the gutter, that's where!

I don't buy the "It helps to counterract the judge's own preference" argument. "Judged on their merits" should mean just that, and I don't think that "positive discrimination" is any more desirable in this context than elsewhere.

"Alea iacta est" and "Kto skazal 'A'..."
 

I agree with you, Jayne. If there is any hint that judges will choose based on style rather than merit, get better judges.

Wanting to limit entrants to one prize may be a good reason for a one-piece-per-participant rule but, as I see it, once you allow multiple entries, you have, in essence, allowed multiple prizes. Otherwise, you are not treating all entry fees equally.

-o-

Although I hear the siren song of Max and Michael's argument, I'm going to steer my ship in Wintaka's direction for now. If there's a one-prize-per-person limit, then there ought to be a one-entry-per-person limit as well. This applies particularly to contests that charge a fee. There's no justice in accepting multiple entries, collecting the multiple fees, then declaring some paid entries ineligible for any prize.

I see your point, but I must admit I felt very embarrassed the time I won all three prizes, as I felt that the judge concerned clearly had a bias towards my style and I was worried that other contestants would view me as a smug git for the rest of recorded time.

When I enter multiple entries, it's in the hope that one of them will catch the judge's eye, not in the hope of multiple prizes.

Wintake wrote "If there is any hint that judges will choose based on style rather than merit, get better judges."

I doubt that there are judges equally adept at assessing (say) Flarf, Wendy Cope, LangPo, Ginsburg, Prynne, comedy, haiku, Holub, Olds, etc. Putting up with judges' blind-spots is all part of the game. I think the one-prize limit helps in a PR sense at least. But I think it would be fairer if the entry fee money were returned to prizewinners for any extra poems of theirs that didn't/couldn't win.

Thanks for your thoughts on this Max, Michael, Brian, Colin, Chris, Melanie and Tim. Some very interesting points have been made!

Firstly, to answer Michael's question as to what prompted this: I've thought about it for years but I noticed that it's one of the rules in the ''Sonnet or Not'' comp, and I'm just intrigued that some competitions employ the rule and others don't, indicating that opinion is divided.

It's not a major issue with me (it hasn't ever stopped me entering a competition, for instance) but I have to say I prefer the rule not to be there!

Melanie, there's no need to feel embarrassed at winning three prizes. Well done! :D
All the entries that are selected by the judge ought to get the prizes, in my opinion. Rejecting a chosen poem after the identity of the poet is revealed just isn't fair on the entrant OR the judge and is usually done by the administrator(s):
"Sorry, you can't choose that one -- you'll have to pick another poem now, that you didn't like as much." Hmm... :rolleyes:

Chris makes an excellent case here (as did Colin, similarly): "There's no justice in accepting multiple entries, collecting the multiple fees, then declaring some paid entries ineligible for any prize."

And so does Tim, here: "I think it would be fairer if the entry fee money were returned to prizewinners for any extra poems of theirs that didn't/couldn't win."

I was going to make a further observation but I'll save it for later... this is enough for now!

Jayne,

Usually, such rules come about as a result of some past difficulty. It's easy to imagine the difficulty in this case, in fact, I have personal experience of a similar situation. One time, Kate sent off multiple entries to some state-wide competition. They asked for categories, so she just labeled them according to whatever category seemed to fit. They didn't announce the winners in advance... one was supposed to show up at the dinner. But it was a long drive, and at the last minute something came up... life gets in the way.

Long story short, we won in several categories, and weren't even there to accept the honors (thank goodness, in retrospect: it would have been embarrassing). The whole thing caused some small consternation... and a mutual decision to not send to such contests anymore. ;)

There *is* one rule I'd like to see more widespread: the judge should not know the winner. I remember a chapbook contest a few years back. Kate sent things off, and in the time between sending and the announcement we met the judge at some other event. He later wrote me a nice note, saying he recognized the poems, and had to disqualify me. Would that all judges were so honorable, and had his sense of ethics! The world might be a better place...

Best,

Bill

We must be using "style" differently, Wintaka. I don't see how a poem can have any merit that doesn't largely derive from the poet's style.

I'm drawn to Wallace Stevens's poems because of his style. To Larkin's because of his. Given their collected works and a bunch of other stuff I like less, and with two prizes to award, I'd choose two poems by the same poet. (Which one is irrelevant here.) That result would please me, but no more than the result of having to choose poems by more than one--and the second result, I think, would better reflect the merits of the batch from which I could choose.

Second thought: On the other hand, I would not like to choose poems by two poets if I were given only Stevens's poems and a bunch of stuff I hated. To use the one-prize-to-a-poet rule, a contest has to assume it will get worthy entries from at least as many poets as it has prizes.

I remember once being the judge of some small and unimportant contest, and when I sat down to read the entries it became apparent to me that all the best poems were by the same person (whom I did not know, but the style made it clear. Also the type! Remember that your type face can give you away!) Anyway, it somehow felt wrong to give the obviously best poet a clean sweep, so I gave him/her 2 prizes and gave the remainder to middling good poets. I suppose the ethics of this can be debated. :confused:

I have often wondered why the same person never shows up twice in the list of Nemerov finalists, but I suspect this is deliberate, and probably wise, where there are so many good entries and everyone is watching the results like a hawk.

"Novice poets don't have a style. Expert poets don't want one."
 

It may be a question of dimensions. Imagine someone, deliberately or subconsciously, writing in the style of Wallace Stevens or Philip Larkin. I'd expect most parodists, students and fans could create reasonable facsimiles, just as I'd expect the difference in quality to be obvious to any competent judge.

Exactly. For what it's worth, I've seen many contests, including one of the largest in North America, where none of the submissions were...retina-friendly...such that if the average Eratospherean did not sweep the podium I'd want the judges drug tested. That this doesn't happen more often causes me to wonder how many events have an unstated rule against multiple wins by one entrant. IMHO, that would be, at best, an oversight.

Best regards,

Colin

Ah, Gail, you've touched on the topic I alluded to at the end of post #9, and which I intended to come back to... that of being able to recognise not just the style of a poet but the actual presentation of the work, ie font, layout etc.

I know from judging several competitions that most people send multiple entries in one go and, though the poems may be very different in content, page after page looks almost identical! Same font and size, same justification, maybe with titles underlined or all in capitals, or whatever... often there's no mistaking that these x number of poems were submitted at the same time by the same person! It's easy-peasy for the judge if the "rule" that we're discussing is in force: just pick the best one and reject the rest.

Whenever I submit three poems to a competition in one envelope I fold one piece of paper in half, leave one unfolded and fold the other into three; use maybe Times New Roman for one, Ariel for another... you get my drift. My three poems look as if they are from three different people. Now, whether this has ever helped or not I don't know but I do it anyway! **

There is one elderly lady of my acquaintance and I swear I could identify one of her poems out of thousands, simply for the distinctive way they appear on the page. It's quite hard to be impartial when you know very well whose work you're looking at.

Bill mentioned a judge who disqualified his entry on the grounds that he recognised Bill's poems; it's one thing to have actually seen the poems before (most comps are for previously unpublished ones anyway), but another to simply recognise a poet by the look of the entry. I don't think a judge can fairly disqualify an entrant on those grounds.

** If my different-looking poems did happen to fool the judge and more than one was chosen to win, but he or she was later told they were by the same entrant and I was subsequently deprived of one of the prizes, how would I ever know, anyway? There's probably no point at all in resorting to this subterfuge, come to think of it! :D

Jayne

As more and more competitions encourage online entry, the fontiness becomes less of a fingerprint.

Are the rules of such a contest worth discussing? Winning or losing can't mean much. (Or can it? That might make an interesting topic for another thread.)

Best regards,
Max

WHAT? I'll have you know that when Bazza or Chris or Bill (or one of the others) wins and I don't, I have chronic indigestion for weeks. When one of them wins the top prize and I only get an ordinary win, I have chronic indigestion for days. And when one of my entries wins the top prize, but another gets only an HM, I have chronic indigestion for hours. I tell you, the pharmaceutical manufacturers are making far more out of my competitiion entries than I ever do.

"Fontiness" is cute, but I think "fontness" is more elegant.

But my real reason for posting is to point out that most competitions will still accept entries by mail as well, so there's no reason for Jayne to change her practices. I assume, Jayne, that each submission is also on very different but widely available stock, that you purchase them separately and far from home so that nothing can be traced to you, and that you wear gloves during the entire creative (the mailing, that is) process.

I use a somewhat different approach. All my entries look the same, but I sign them all A.E. Stallings. Hasn't worked yet, but I have hopes for the future. (I wonder if Sam Gwynn would have a broader appeal?)

I do all of those things, Michael, but I've hit on a much better ruse...

I've set a private investigator onto the judge to report back any dropping of litter, traffic violations, acts of vandalism or adultery, etc., and will use the evidence to blackmail him if I don't win.

Watch for news of my big prize(s) ;)

If that doesn't work, Jayne, don't forget that the services of my offshore company are always available for a modest fee. Just send your request to hitman@KneebreakersRUs.com

There's nothing wrong with your stomach, Brian (post #18). I was referring only to the sorts of contests Colin mentioned (#14), which make everyone ill.

This has been fun, guys (and Melanie, Gail and Ann), but there's no definitive answer to the question of whether or not that particular competition rule ought to be applied, just as there's no way of knowing for certain that it has been applied, even when it doesn't specifically say that it has...

(Heck, I think I know what I meant by that last sentence...! :confused:)

Let's just say that where "No entrant may win more than one prize" appears in the rules, most of us would actually be perfectly happy to end up with even ONE of the prizes.
Forget the ethics... (though I'll still wonder about that!)

Jayne