That’s the 24 Hour Poem competition all over and done with. Eighty-six people managed to wrestle the muse into submission in time to send in an entry (including five people during the last couple of minutes and one on the stroke of midnight). So now we just have to print out the entries and choose a winner, a runner-up, and an Organiser’s Husband’s Choice. I’ll post the results here when we’re finished.
If you were one of the people who took part, whether you managed to get a poem entered on time or not, I’d love to hear from you. How did you find it? Easier, harder, exactly as bad as you expected? Did you enjoy the words you were given? And how did you go about the whole thing – scowl at the page until you had a poem, read the words and sleep on it, dart frantically from event to event on Poetry Day in your part of the country attempting to come across inspiration in a back alley somewhere …
A Dark Feathered Art 
Hi Jo
I’ll tell you about it after you’ve done the judging, otherwise you might guess which poem is mine and … well … that just wouldn’t be right. Enjoy reading all the entries!
HT
I loved the challenge of it. When I first saw the words at 6am, I put my head in my hands. How on earth was I going to find a common thread between all of them? Some words I liked instantly and others I loathed. I had to work on Friday so I spent the early morning working with each individual word, then looked for connections between them. I worked on it again at lunch and because I was traveling for work I had two hours late-afternoon in transit to focus on it. I think being able to work on it and put it aside and then come back to it again and again aided in my ability to find the thread. In the end, I feel a great sense of accomplishment and, although now on day two I see one thing i’d like to change, I am really pleased with what I created in a day. Can’t wait to read some of the others.
Hi Joanna,
Great competition. thank you. Being old and a poor sleeper, I got up at 3am, got the words wrote them down, went back to bed leaving my subconscious to work on them, but I didn’t sleep much… I was happy with the words – I hoped, and expected that there would be a mixture of useful, everyday words and some others quite difficult to use in a poem; difficult but not stonkingly impossible. And so it was.
I completed a couple of drafts, than went out and attended other Poetry Day events, to help me come back to it with a new eye before submitting a ‘final’ version. I say ‘final’ because in the everyday world, I’m tempted to tinker for ever. With this competition, you have to work intensely, put it in and then like an exam, put your pen down… I’m reminded of the painter, Bonnard and another whose name I can’t remember, who could never leave a painting alone but kept coming back to it, to touch it up a little more. The other painter actually an injunction out against him prohibiting from going into galleries and altering his paintings. That would be me.
Anyway, thank you Joanna. It was a great challenge.
Regards
John
Hi Jo, a bit about my experience in the competition. I loved it. I’m used to working with constraint because I have a full time job and have always had to write in the cracks and crevice of my day. That said, I got up at 5am to get started. I’d never wake that early to, oh, I don’t know, work out or go for a run. Btw people who do that need to be heavily sedated. But no problem for poetry! Given copious amounts of time and the entire English language, I don’t do very well and waste a lot of time. It’s like whistling into the wind, it just gets lost. I enjoyed the words because they gave me a fresh perspective. Before getting started I considered definitions and how I’d use them ie nouns, verbs, adjectives. I also considered the competition and judging. I figured you’d be reading the same 10 words over and over, so I strived to make the images sharp and narrative compelling so they would pull focus from the individual words. I usually include a cooling off period in my process. I tend to love my first few drafts, but after a period of separation I’m more objective and editorial. Of course, I couldn’t do that with a 24 hour challenge so I tried to be harder in myself earlier on. All in all I enjoyed the challenge because it meant doing what I love on poetry day.
Cheers Marisa
Sent from my iPad
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Lee here. I always have notes written or poetic. I pulled out some & compared the off words ( words on the list that I wouldn’t use,) used the words from the list that fitted sensibly into my tracts, rewrote the conscious thoughts and then observed what direction this might go to. Took a while. I put the poem into place by 11. Got my wife to sort out the send area and hopefully?. There were words that created difficulties. Several nouns preemting a sentence beginning or constructing a sentence around it. More ajectives would be helpful. By&large I was happy with the result. Ran it by my family. Now I’ll pick over and revise. Thanks for the challenge…I enjoyed doing this.
On Sat, Aug 25, 2018, 08:22 A Dark Feathered Art wrote:
> Jopre posted: “That’s the 24 Hour Poem competition all over and done with. > Eighty-six people managed to wrestle the muse into submission in time to > send in an entry (including five people during the last couple of minutes > and one on the stroke of midnight). So now we ju” >
I entered the competition and I found it really interesting. It really got me thinking and was a good challenge. I’ve never entered a competition before. Poetry sort of finds me rather than me thinking and making it happen. So I looked at the words and kind of wondered what would hit me. I didn’t have a chance to really get into it till the evening and a small part started coming out. The rest of the story just unfolded from there. The hardest word I found was insurrection and I’m not altogether sure I have used it correctly. It was a pleasure to take part. Can’t wait to see what other people came up with.
This was the first time I’d done anything like this.
I was a bit overwhelmed at the list initially and was on holiday with a family member so I really had very little time to think about it at all. Initially I couldn’t imagine how they would all come together but then I just started writing. I wrote the poem in a few minutes and then shared it with said family member. When I went to the computer to type it up I realised I had a word wrong! That caused some reworking and then I left it for most of the day before asking my sister to read it and give me some feedback. I am quite weak at editing and because my poetry is normally just for me I tend not to revisit it much. (Also I’m a bit lazy like that!)
I really enjoyed having some parameters to work with and I was pleased with what I eventually submitted. I am really looking forward to reading the winning poems – I’d love to see them all but I guess we’ll just see the winners??
A really fun challenge. Thanks so much for organising it.
I stayed up until midnight on Thursday to pounce on the words and light my muse. I liked them right away and had an immediate hunch. I dashed out some lines before bed where I let the subconscious do its work. I was supposed to work on Friday, but could not stop working on the poem in the morning. I enjoyed the word play challenge like others might enjoy sudoku. I’ll admit ‘sleeve’ was tricky. After the poem was formed I checked section breaks, enjambment, punctuation, and the other things our trusty tutor Joanna has taught us. I got some feedback from innocent bystanders. Eventually I just had to submit it so I could get my work done!
Thank you Joanna for your efforts to make this event happen. Thanks also for letting us read the top 10 in your popular choice selection. So fun to see how others mixed the assigned words. Can’t wait until tomorrow to read your picks.