With just on 24 hours to register, I’m wondering if I should run a CV2-inspired competition for National Poetry Day. Post a set of words at midnight, and then give people just 24 hours to write and submit a poem using all of them. See if I can wangle a few bucks from the official organisers for some NZ Poetry books to give away as prizes, otherwise something simple like $5 to enter and give the proceeds away proportionally as prize money. (Or possibly just glory and satisfaction?)
The tricky part would dealing with the submissions. I’d probably have to set it up as some sort of contact form. Or maybe a separate webpage, and require people to register for it in advance. So that would be one thing. And the next would be the question of when I try to be able to announce the winners – if I only get a handful of people, that would be quite easy. But if I get hundreds, it’ll take a while.
Ok, some parameters to contemplate:
- Free to enter, but you only get one poem and are limited to 60 lines.
- You must use all the words provided (I’m thinking eight or so).
- The competition will run on Poetry Day itself (24 August 2018), from midnight to midnight.
- I’ll announce the winner(s) a week later.
- Prizes will entirely depend on getting some sort of funding, but I’m thinking something like three recent NZ poetry collections to the winner, two to the runner-up, and one to the third place (or maybe something like Organiser’s Husband’s Choice?)
So consider this a test of the waters – if I do run it, how likely are you to enter?
A Dark Feathered Art 
I don’t think it a good idea to run it on Poetry Day itself, as people will want to attend other Poetry Day activities and are unlikely to have time to write. I think it better to run it at some time before and announce on Poetry Day, which would also give you more time to judge. You might then post the winning poms on Poetry Day (instead of a week later when the enthusiasm has run down. – Cheers, Karen Z