Each of about eight billion
Ever-changing chameleons
Trying to blend in with others
Trying to stand out from others
Trying to find their true colours
Trying to be other colours
Trying unnatural colours
Trying impossible colours
Trying to achieve some balance
Trying to maintain that balance
All at once
A few months ago, I posted about posting poems I had written for poetry competitions, but which I rejected, as their own collection on my poetry blog. It was just to see what would end up there, and, ultimately, if I would make any “mistakes” to reject poems I would want to use later, but wouldn’t be able to since by having been posted online, they would be considered “published” and ineligible for most poetry competitions.
I have a poetry blog. It’s nothing special, and I am absolutely not being modest here. Pretty much nobody reads it, right now or ever in the past, and that’s quite fine by me, because I don’t write for the readership. You don’t write and post over 1800 poems for readership over a few decades if you’ve never gotten any readership, so I am honest in saying I don’t write for the readership.
After eight weeks since beginning my two-year journey in writing on Jan 1st this year (2021), I have finally found a poetry contest I am willing to enter… not that I have been searching hard for it. I’ve been relying mostly on my local writers’ federation newsletter to introduce me to writing contests to enter, which I work on like writing assignments in a course, and this was the first one for which I qualified and was interested in. By qualification, I mean from not having self-published poetry in the past. By interest, I mean with a very low entry fee because I have no fucking clue what counts for good poetry these days.
Since I officially started my two year journey for writing on January 1st (2021), I had been looking out for writing contests to enter so as to have some goals, get some feedback, and see how my writing compared to the winning entries. I feel good about my writing skills, but not disillusioned to think I would win starting out. I am not well read for literary writing to know what qualifies high calibre writing outside of the classics. To use an analogy, I have no idea what times are good for a recreational 10 km race or a marathon, say, only what are good for national, world, or Olympic races. I’m sure the time gap isn’t huge, if any, for recreational races that are big enough, but what about the local or regional ones, or ones that didn’t include participants who have had acclaim and/or won big prize money. What’s “good” then? A question even harder to answer with something artistic as writing rather than something quite directly measurable as race time.
Digital Citizen 