That said, I don't think that it was promoted well, as had I not been trawling through all of the contests, I would simply never have known that such a specialized event was happening. Perhaps a notice might be sent out to users, or perhaps I missed such a notice...either way, I consider it nothing more than a rather good deal of dumb luck that led me to find the contest in the first place.
The contest itself...well, I entered my first poem, and, not being a regular user, signed on to find out that I'd qualified with a week or so remaining to write a new poem. That would have been fine, had I not been scheduled to go out of town (to Death Valley of all places) that week. As it was, I rushed to get a miserable wreck of a poem in, and, not too surprisingly, didn't procede in the contest. True, I suppose that would qualify as my fault, but it seems to me that emails should be sent out to qualifiers, even if they've chosen to receive email requests generally from Allpoetry, as I see little harm in it, and it would instantly notify users as to when the next poem would be due...
I found the critiques thorough and well-thought-out; they were a hell of a lot better than any comments I've seen since anywhere on the site, undoubtedly because they were actually thoroughly analytical, something that I would consider paying points to get on a normal basis (eh?).
The qualifying guestbook entry on my page was appreciated as well...cool graphic.
That said, I personally saw little skill difference between seperate poems that qualified and those that didn't, and in my opinion, some that did qualify shouldn't have, and vice versa. I won't complain - for some reason some fool up there actually gave me an honorable mention
but I've wondered who exactly decides who makes or breaks...just curious.Future suggestions...well, promote it better, for starters. I don't know what sort of pull you have within the site, but I think you should make it so that all of the users who come online find out about it in some way; that way there would undoubtedly be a larger pool of entries to choose from, standards would go up, and prizes would have greater meaning. I really have little to critique regarding the judging. Poetry is poetry. Anyone who understands what that truly means will know that, as such, there can be no real injustices in this respect, save those due to ignorance (or that fool who decided to say that my poem was bad because its background was too boring), which didn't look like a problem with you fellows. I found it a gratifying experience overall, most likely due to the fact that I was just starting to come into writing again (from a several-year lapse), and still did relatively well in the contest, but it's is also undoubtedly due to the simplicity in which you executed such a large contest - well done.
Thanks,
Jason
Gold trophy winner
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