Sonnet Bake-Off: Call for Submissions
 

I will be hosting the Sonnet Bake-Off, which will be judged by Catherine Tufariello. To enter, send one sonnet per person to me at <Susan.McLean@smsu.edu> with the heading of "Sonnet Bake-Off" by midnight (U.S. Central time) on Sunday, April 18. I will take the names from the sonnets, narrow them down to 25, and send those 25 on to Catherine, who will then narrow them further to 12-13. We plan to start posting the 12-13 sonnets with her comments, two per day, starting on May 1. At that point everyone is welcome to join in with comments of their own. When all of the sonnets have been posted, I will start a thread in which people can vote for the top three of the sonnets. Then I will tabulate the results and announce a popular winner, while Catherine will also name her top three. Only then will the names of the authors be announced.

Susan

Unpublished or published, Susan?

Michael, both published or unpublished are welcome as in past bakeoffs.

Limit per author?

Susan should chime in and confirm all this, but in past years, the details have been as follows:

--one sonnet per person

--published or unpublished, except NOT published in a trade book or anthology

--any form of sonnet (Petrarchan, Stefanile, what have you), but not a crown or series

--not necessarily workshopped here or anywhere

My directions did specify one sonnet per person, but I wish to confirm that the other directions stated by Maryann do apply.

Susan

Does "not necessarily workshopped here or anywhere" mean "prefer not workshopped" or "workshopped OK, but not necessarily"?

Yes, and the hidden notes on my profile always read "trouble following directions."

Thanks,
Siham

Siham, it means there's no requirement that the sonnet have been workshopped here. And we don't mind if it was workshopped elsewhere. And if it wasn't workshopped anywhere, that's fine too.

(And we understand how hard it is to get things clear!)

Bumping this to the top. Eight days to the deadline.