This month, we ran a poetry contest to celebrate National Poetry Month. We challenged our readers to craft a poem using only the words that appeared in one of our newsletters (here are the original contest guidelines if you want to give it a try).
While prose is our newsletter’s bread and butter, it turns out that you all certainly aren’t op-prose-d to verse; we received several creative, intriguing, and beautiful poems that we narrowed down to our top three finalists.
Check out the poems below, including the contest winner our readers voted for.
Winner: “The Quality of Your Style” by Jim S.
Be big!
Honor the quality of your style:
Pull in that direction,
craft a game
unlike anywhere
appearing in English.
Throw limitation out.
Mix it up,
narrow the red tip,
submit your words,
contest the vote
of erasure.
Finalist: “Insights” by Kate B-R
Lifetime: You can only use it once. Don’t miss out.
You’re officially invited to ditch the dress pants. Appear how you please.
Embrace change: look beautiful.
Vote.
Be an oasis open to all.
Sleep, work, or play: sharing your time is up to you. Lifestyle form + direction are up to you.
The greatest remembered threw a wrench in routine.
Finalist: “Oasis” by Clayton O.
Black keys embrace ambivalent hands red with limitation.
Crossing rare creativity as they play organic music.
Unique songs open access to a missing quality
while documenting the death of direction.
It’s the construction of fungi remodeled into art.
Galleries yum! at the beautiful change of work
like rural flowers celebrating April showers.
Poems pour into intimate stories like water
running free through a garden limited to daylight.
A craftsman found oasis in adaptation.
