The Nemerov has, er, competition from this new UK one:
http://www.sonnetcompetition.com/index.html

Entries are invited from anywhere. Don Patterson is among the judges.

£1400 (min) First Prize (about US$2750)
Closing 31 October 2007
Entry fee £7 per sonnet, or £14 per three.
Online entry is possible.

Published work is OK as long as you’ve never received any kind of payment (fee or prize) for it.

They’re "looking for innovation more than imitation". "If it has 14 lines (however long or short each line may be), we will call it a sonnet." Let’s not get into an argument here about that ;) .



[This message has been edited by Henry Quince (edited February 01, 2007).]

Thanks Henry.


I think

Janet

I'm afraid I'm not in on the jokes. I don't understand the slights both Henry and Janet have made regarding this competition. Could you let an outsider in on the scorn?

Best,
Marcia

Thanks, Henry.

But no thanks.

£7 per sonnet!

That is nearly $20 AUS!

I can get a week's supply of flathead fillets for that!

Priorities.

But Mark, look at it as an investment. A $2750 prize is a pretty good return on your money !

Marcia,
It's the "Trust me--I'm a judge/doctor/whatever" aspect that prompted our mirth--not scorn.
Best,
Janet

But Wendy, for only $2 AUS I can invest in a state lottery which could win me $2,000,000.

This gamble (in what amounts to another lottery, really) of nearly ten times the outlay can only deliver a possible $2750.

Anyway, there is only one real competition for poetry - the time race.

Can we write a poem that can LAST - more than a decade, that is.

And a win in any other poetry competition can't guarantee that.

Ah, yes. A poem that lasts. Priceless.

You know, £7 really is expensive to enter a competition. In fact, it's the most expensive one I've ever seen in the UK. The two major UK poetry contests - the National and the Arvon - cost £5 and £6 respectively, and the first prize in each is £5000.

The Neverov contest (so I believe) attracts something like 3000 entries.

If the same sonnet-contest-folk enter this one, that would be 3000 x £7 = £21,000.

Take out the first prize of £1400 = £19,600.

A good little earner, it would seem.

Sorry, Janet. I don't know what you are talking about. The contest folk have their rules, based on their ideas about sonnets. I don't see any claim that you must trust the people, their ideas, or anything, unless it be the fairness of the contest. Do you think it won't be?


Puzzled,
Marcia

Marcia, I intended no slight or scorn in relation to the competition. I was just reporting the facts. You may have read scorn into my final “Let’s not get into an argument” comment, but that was more an aside — an acknowledgment of our tendency here to argue at length over such issues as “What are the essentials of a sonnet?”

Some of us would define a sonnet as “any 14-line poem” and some of us wouldn’t. As it happens, I wouldn’t, but I think it’s to the credit of this competition’s organisers that they’ve made their position clear, on that and other issues. I also like the fact that they’ve made it easy to enter online. By contrast, the Nemerov accepts postal entries only and US funds only; an entry from outside the US (by International Money Order in US$) would likely cost more than the £7 (US$13-odd) for this new competition.

Mark, you mean you don’t just amble down to the beach and catch your own fish?

Henry


[This message has been edited by Henry Quince (edited February 02, 2007).]

Returning to say, Mark, if you read the actual competition page rather than just my summary, you’ll see that a) there are three prizes (Second being 50% and Third 25% of First) and b) they do say this: If the number of entries allow us to increase the prize money, we will.

Henry


[This message has been edited by Henry Quince (edited February 02, 2007).]

Marcia,
It's as Henry says. When you announce a "sonnet contest" and then say you will decide what a sonnet is it asks the poet to put an awful lot of faith in the judgemental capacities of the judge, no matter how accomplished a poet he/she may be, and in this case, is.

One is left floundering. I am not arguing against experimentation or free form.

All contests are dubious in the end but they also serve an essential purpose.
Sorry if I lacked reverence. (joke)
Janet

To win $2,000,000 in the NSW state jackpot, Mark, you have to have the same ticket drawn twice. According to state lotteries the odds are 11,827,321:1. The odds for winning $100,000 on your $2 are 200,000:1.

Given your sonnet-writing prowess, I'd say the odds on the sonnet prize are much much better, even if entry costs more. How many entries will there be? 3000? You've got to be better than most of those, many of which will be vanity entries. I'll go you halves on the entry fee for 25% of the take. Or maybe we could get up a syndicate.

Paul, I know - the odds of winning a lottery are in the mathematical nanosphere. The truth is I don't bother gambling on the lotteries, either.

In fact, I seem to have missed out entirely on the gamble-gene which so many in my family suffer from. I have never even placed a bet on a horse-race (even the Melbourne Cup), which is very close to being considered "un-Australian".

The greatest risk to my "investment" in such a competition would be to pick a sonnet to send. I have absolutely terrible taste in choosing the right one. For instance, the one I sent to the sonnet "bake-off" we had here last year failed to reach the top 50!

So, for any chance of success I would need to send at least half a dozen - which would REALLY be out of my financial range.

Anyway, that is a very generous offer, Paul.

But as my mother would say, "you must have more money than sense!"

Henry, it was your er
The Nemerov has, er, competition from this new UK one:
that I read as a slight. Sorry if I read you wrong.

Marcia

On the plus side, it's supported by the Brit poetry establishment, and it's good to see them showing an interest in form. Also it's user-friendly, with clear and simple guidelines and email submission. Furthermore, they've come up with a good solution to the "no previous pubs" issue: they simply say, if you've been paid for it don't submit it, but everything else is OK. Cracking idea. Don Patterson is the best Brit judge I can think of.

On the minus side, it's supported by the Brit poetry establishment, who collectively don't have much of a clue what a sonnet (or any other formal poem) might be. Therefore I expect the top prizes will go to fashionable free versers who submit fourteen-liners rather than sonnets.

David

I'm a big Don Paterson fan (one t)--he's done a terrific anthology of 101 Sonnets with interesting/humorous/enlightening comments on each, writes fine sonnets himself, and is something of a sonnet fanatic, having recently completed a version of Rilke's Sonnets to Orpheus (yes, they rhyme and scan). I think its probably worth the entry fee if he reads your poem!

Paterson--damn--course that's how you spell it. It's all Henry's fault.
101 Sonnets is essential reading for anyone interested in the form, in my opinion.

Sorry about the spelling.

Wish I’d said that, David.

Oh wait, I did! ;)

As I read it, the entry stipulation (a 14-line poem, regardless of line length) doesn’t necessarily bias the judging to non-traditional or FV entries. They’re just leaving the door open for creative entries that might depart from traditional models. That seems a good decision to me. My guess is that the judges — more than one of whom are known to write in the sonnet and other forms — are not necessarily going to value entries that simply defy the traditions of the form unless they’re also original and effective poems.

See also:
http://www.sonnetcompetition.com/pre...ewsrelease.pdf

I just checked out the website for the competition and got a few details. I opened the online submission form and discovered that if you pay the entry fee for two sonnets, the third sonnet is free. This is true no matter how many you enter, though you may only enter 21 per online form. So if you work it right, the entry cost is *only* about five British pounds per sonnet. But that beats seven!

However, the "fine print" says that you may not have been paid "in kind" for the sonnets you enter. I emailed a query to the competition to ask if "two copies of the issue in which (one's) work appears" counts as "in kind." I'll report back here when I get a response.

Best,
Lee

Woops--I just noticed that Henry's original post contains the buy two, get one free information. Sorry for my oversight.

I got a prompt, professional, cordial response from Christopher Whitby saying that he *does not* consider payment in copies to be proper payment for a poem.

Cheers,
Lee

Hello all. I've been most interested to read comments about the Open Poetry international sonnet competition. It's good to get feedback. A few thoughts...

Re definition of a sonnet - ever tried to define it for ALL cases? Iambic - what about G M Hopkins? Pentameters - not in Petrarch (usually 11 syllables excluding elisions). Did anyone tell Shakespeare or Sidney (the great experimenter) they weren't writing true sonnets as they weren't Petrarchan ryhme? Does Donne mangle the metre too much just to show off? When is a curtal sonnet not a 'real' sonnet? Can the sonnet never be anything other than it has been to date? We thought long and hard over definitions and ended up just with 14 lines as it is the single most common factor. We had to draw a line somewhere that was uncomplicated .

Cost - yes it is higher than some competitions, but unlike the Arvon Foundation or UK Poetry Society competitions, we have no friendly solicitors and accountants sponsoring the prize money and running costs. The latter are for example. marketing in the form of printed leaflets & mailings, a part-time student researcher chasing internet addresses, a day's work by a professional marketeer - though kindly at a reduced rate, Google Adwords (now paused - pretty expensive but some results); the website - which I built myself as I was quoted £2000+ (e-commerce rate) by a website designer I actually know personally, though I lost earning time in my normal business when working on it last summer - still I advanced my php coding skills; time recording entries and payments, sorting out issues etc etc. It sure mounts up, I find.

Is the Nemerov sponsored? - I don't know. We have no track record yet to put in front of potential sponsors and so they smile sadly and point to the door. Incidentally, £7 by Paypal = £6.56 after Paypal's fees. The consistent 3 for price of 2 discount was devised to mitigate the initial relatively high cost and so a regular sonneteer benefits.

None of that is a complaint, just an explanation that there are considerable costs to such competitions, mounting to several thousand £s. If the competition does not achieve break-even through entries, I and my one-man business (the same thing really) pick up the outstanding costs. If the competition takes off magnificently, we raise the prize money as stated on the website. Profits, if such there be, will be used by Open Poetry Ltd to further the cause of poetry and especially the sonnet - an imprint perhaps? Schools' work, certainly. Interestingly I found out yesterday that many major UK poetry publishing houses (Carcanet, Bloodaxe, Enitharmon, Anvil etc) get UK Arts Council 'investment' - or so the Arts Council says.

The competition is all a shot in the dark as yet, but instigated by my extreme annoyance that no sonnet is ever likely to win a 'normal' major poetry competition (just look at what does get shortlisted!). Sonnet writing deserves better and the most interesting questions are why it has never died out and why the form remains popular in so many languages and cultures (try a Google search for 'the modern Chinese sonnet').

'Infinite riches in a little room' will do for a temporary answer perhaps, but it's actually deeper than that. Still, I hope this contributes to understanding of what's going on. I may not be back to this site for a while, but good wishes to you all.

Christopher Whitby

That's interesting comment, Christopher.
Here's some discussion at Sonnet Central:

http://p197.ezboard.com/fthesonnetboardsonnetreading.showMessage?topicID=5 52.topic

Best regards,
David

Thanks to Christopher Whitby, the contest organiser, for coming in here and putting the case so trenchantly for the simple 14-line entry rule. I’ve only just managed to get and read Don Paterson’s book, 101 Sonnets, and I see he makes the same central point in his introduction. It’s just too hard to formulate a consensus definition in watertight terms of what is and isn’t a sonnet, although there are still people today “advancing definitions so fascistic that they would cheerfully exclude all the works of Shakespeare or Wordsworth.”

In his intro Paterson goes on to say: “The only qualification for entry to this book is that the poem should have fourteen lines. Two or three poems here are probably not sonnets in anyone’s book, but they are in this one: apart from being fine poems, they’ll serve to show just how fuzzy the definition is.”

(Wasn’t there a thread here somewhere specifically on this book 101 Sonnets? I would have put the following observations there, but I haven’t been able to find the thread.)

101 sonnets, 101 authors. One each. Shakespeare and Craig Raines leveled. Some of Paterson’s choices I frankly hate (Arsehole by Raines, for instance), others are sonnets I’ve long loved — like Kavanagh’s Iniskeen Road..., Auden’s Who’s Who, Wilbur’s Praise in Summer, and oh, Robert Hayden’s quietly moving (more so if you know the history with his father) Those Winter Sundays — unrhymed, the meter loose, the line length varying, but what a poem of ease and directness. Ars est celare artem.

Paterson’s take on the sonnet’s appeal to writers and readers is interesting, including discussion of the 8-6 division in light of the golden section. I was glad to see, too, how at the end of his intro he acknowledges that choice of form can precede content.

“Poets write sonnets because it makes poems easier to write. Readers read them because it makes their lives easier to bear.”

I like that. I don’t buy into purist dogma that says one “shouldn’t” set out to write a sonnet (or any other specific form) but should always let the content find its “natural” form. Content has various potential forms. It all depends. It’s no more “wrong” for a poet to start with a sonnet intent than it’s wrong for a painter to select a particular size of canvas before starting on a picture. (Of course, if the content is highly resistant to being jammed into a sonnet box and clearly wants to be something else, one is wise to be flexible.)

I did find another Paterson thread in M on M where someone was lamenting that no online audio was available of him reading his work. Not so: here he is, with four poems from his CD, including the sonnet “Waking with Russell”.
http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetrya...o?poetId=6172#

I regret that they’ve gone for the more proprietary Real Audio format rather than MP3 on this site, but I think a warning will pop up if you need to install the Real player.

(If there IS a 101 Sonnets thread there somewhere, I’d be happy for a moderator to delete para 3 of this post and transfer the subsequent comment to that thread.)

Henry,

I agree, there's a lot to like in the Paterson book. To me, its "levelling" of the form is one of its principal strengths. He does a great job of demonstrating all the chimes that can be rung with the form, from sonorous, to minor. In the latter category, I like Wendy Cope's and Sean O'Brien's selections. The O'Brien is in triple meter (Paterson notes without explanation that it's a mistake to call it anapestic). Anyway, I refer to it whenever I want toget that rhythm in my head . . . .

Oh, and Three Cheers for Christopher Whitby!

--Frank

The shortlist is up, with a reasonable representation from Erato:

http://www.sonnetcompetition.com/index.html