[Alex Pepple]

Dear Eratosphereans,

It's time for this year's Sonnet Bake-Off! It will run again with the previously tried and much popular and exciting twist of the double-blind--anonymous judging AND anonymous submissions.

*** TO ENTER :

1. To enter, please send one sonnet per person by email to . (Note: this is not a link, it's an email address--so, don't click on it. Type the email address as indicated into the To/Recipient field of your favorite email-client program.)
   
   1. Only previously unpublished sonnets are welcome. (Make sure your submitted sonnet cannot be found online by a web search of any of the sonnet's title/first line/etc.)
      
   2. Please, include "Sonnet Bake-Off" in the email subject line, and the sonnet itself goes in the body of the email.
      
   3. Your sonnet must be received by by midnight (U.S. EDT) on Monday, May 11, 2015.
      
   4. *NOTES *: i) If your submission is in a file attachment, make sure that your name is not present anywhere in the submission file (for blind judging!). ii) Also, if you know how, please remove your name from the author field of the document properties; if don't know how, then never mind, and I'll have to do it for you.
      
   5. *This is a new addendum (from 4/26/2015)*: Some of you have written to say, with good reasons, that you're baffled about the question of anonymity in an email. (E.g.: How can one be anonymous in the content of an e-mail? And if the poem is an undocumented attachment how can the editor know from whence it came? Will it be lost in the shuffle without an identity? ...). It seems I missed indicating that I will be personally anonymizing the submissions before forwarding to the DG. Usually, I can tell who's submitting from the email's address field, but to be sure, also add the author's name at the end of the email's subject field, if necessary.
      
2. Our anonymous Host & Distinguished Guest will select about ten finalists (more or less at the DG's discretion). The DG will post the finalist sonnets, two per day, with their comments, starting on Friday, May 15, 2015. At that point everyone is welcome to join in with comments of their own. In order to allow sufficient time for comments on all ten finalists, popular voting for readers’ first, second and third choices will begin on Friday, May 22 and end at midnight (EDT) on Monday, May 25, 2015. Results will be tabulated and a popular winner will be announced as soon as the DG can manage it, at which time all ten finalists’ identities will also be divulged. The DG will also announce their own top picks.
   
3. Only then will the names of the authors be announced ... and twist twist, the identity of the Host & DG will then be revealed! So, for this bake-off, you can have some fun guessing not only the identity of the sonneteer posted, but also guessing who the Secret Distinguished Guest & expert sonneteer is!

And it's a go ... so, go ahead -- submit now! Submit one, submit all!

Cheers,
...Alex

[Matt Q]

Is the idea that one sends sonnets that have not previoiusly been posted on the boards for critique?

Thanks,

Matt

[Julie Steiner]

In the past, previously-workshopped sonnets have been welcome--met with lots of little crows of delight and "I remember this one! I know whose this is! But I'm not telling!"--so long as they are not findable online.

Moderators, would you kindly prune the workshop boards of older posts?

[Alex Pepple]

Yes, previously workshopped poems at Eratosphere are indeed welcome. That's not the same as previously published -- meaning, accepted and previously published at a print or online journal, or, coming up on a web search -- i.e., at a site other than the Eratosphere.

Cheers,
...Alex

[Matt Q]

Julie, Alex,

Thanks for making that clear.

best,

Matt

[Martin Elster]

Last year I submitted a poem that I had once posted on D&A, but subsequently deleted. It was chosen as a finalist for the Sonnet Bake-off, but then I got a note from Alex saying it was disqualified for showing up on a Google search, appearing in a cache of that very thread on the Sphere! The poem would not have otherwise shown up anywhere else in Google. (Naturally I was disappointed.)

So the question is, if a poem shows up somewhere on Eratosphere, would it be disqualified?

[Alex Pepple]

Hi Martin - the rules might vary somewhat each year, and this year, no poem that appears on the Sphere will get disqualified. So, submit away!

Cheers,
...Alex

[Martin Elster]

Thanks, Alex. Yes, the rules do, indeed, change. But so does everything else in the universe!
And we either adapt or perish.

[Marcia Karp]

Dear Alex,

If previosly Sphered poems can be submitted, why can't poems once published elsewhere? Being searchable can't be the reason, since it's been made clear on Matt's thread that the Sphere poems can be found and since the honorable thing for commenters and voters is not to search (or remember what they've seen here before?).

[Ann Drysdale]

Right. I've got this so far. Now, let us take a hypothetical situation.

Let us suppose I have a sonnet that hasn't been published or even workshopped anywhere. There is no way it can conceivably turn up in an online search. It is therefore truly eligible for the Bakeoff - but it's also eligible for any other competition or journal to which I care to submit it. For now.

But will this latter circumstance still prevail after I have submitted it to the Bakeoff?

Since I am submitting it via email, I can't do that clever thing of putting wotsits in the post to protect it from Beelzebots. Can I?

So is it, therefore, a straight choice between this or any other competition. A competition, let us say, with a closing date in the more distant future, to which it may have already been submitted as never having appeared...?

If it is, so be it, but it would help to know. For purely hypothetical reasons, of course.