nature poetry – A Motley Vision

Voting has begun for WIZ’s 2012 Spring Poetry Runoff

Over at AMV’s companion blog Wilderness Interface Zone, the last of the 2012 Spring Poetry Runoff poems have posted and voting to decide which one wins the 2012 Spring Poetry Runoff’s Most Popular Poem Award is open and will run through Tuesday, June 5th. All participating poets, their friends and family, and all connoisseurs of poetry–particularly, of nature poetry–are invited to help choose the 2012 Spring Poetry Runoff’s Most Popular Poem Award winner.

The poll to determine the winner of the Spring Poetry Runoff Popular Poem Award will close 11:59 p.m. on Tuesday, June 5, but winners of both the popular vote and the Admin Award will be announced on or around Tuesday, June 6th. So keep an eye on WIZ to see how matters settle out. 31 poems qualified for the voting, so pop some popcorn, get out a pint of your favorite ice cream, or otherwise provision yourself for a long (but satisfying!) read. This part is important, folks: Each voter can (and should) vote for his or her three favorite poems! Instructions on how to access the poems are available in the post”“please read all instructions carefully.

To read the voting instructions and to vote, click here.

The winners of the Most Popular Poem and Admin Awards will receive their choices of Steven L. Peck’s The Scholar of Moab (Torrey House Press 2011), which recently received the AML Award for the Novel, or the stunning new anthology of Mormon poetry, Fire in the Pasture (Peculiar Pages 2011) edited by AMV’s Tyler Chadwick. Tyler also won an AML Award for his editing of this must-have collection.

So come over to WIZ and join the fun. Or at least set up a lawn chair and watch.

WIZ’s Spring Poetry Runoff Contest has sprung!

Wilderness Interface Zone’s Spring Poetry Runoff has begun. It’s packed with festivities, including, of course, the Spring Poetry Runoff Contest, a haiku chain in which anybody may participate, music, and non-competing guest posts. This week we have scheduled poetry by Davey Morrison, Karen Kelsay, Gabriel Aresti Jr., and Mary-Celeste Lewis–all very vernal in nature and quite engaging. On Tuesday, March 23, an mp3 of Arthur Hatton’s song “You’re Better Than That” will post–well worth hearing.

Poets: there’s still plenty of time to enter the Spring Poetry Runoff Contest. Entries will be accepted until March 31, and each poet may submit up to three poems. All poems should have at their heart thoughts of spring, or they should at least mention spring among other musings about the human/nature story. The winner will be determined by readers’ choice and he or she will receive as a prize his or her choice of Lance Larson’s Backyard Alchemy or Scott Hatch’s Mapping the Bones of the World. Entries will post until all poems have been posted. Following that, a poll that will go up on WIZ to allow readers to vote for their favorite poem.

Beside the Readers’ Choice prize, we at WIZ have decided to add a second prize”“the Admin Award, for the poem we like best. The winner of the Admin Award will receive the same prize as the Readers’ Choice Award winner”“his or her choice of the aforementioned books of verse.

As mentioned before, non-competing poems and other verse-oriented submissions are welcomed during the Spring Poetry Runoff. So please come by WIZ and join the fire ring. Tell a story, sing a song, comment, or just read and wander off into the nearest park, canyon, or garden.