“Official Verse Culture” and the Poetry Contest phenomenon
7 May 2008“Official Verse Culture.” Sure gets easier to say each time.
Blogging about “Official Verse Culture,” the power we give it, and how we willingly participate in it has reminded me of Chris Tonelli’s (relatively) recent blog post, “Contest Culture and Poetic Community,” on the Ploughshares blog. An excerpt:
Who, exactly, wittles the slush pile into a manageable finalist pool? I’ve done it as a student intern, just barely into a graduate program. It’s this odd model of allowing, theoretically, the least qualified of those involved (the intern) choose the work that gets to the, theoretically, most qualified of those involved (the judge). The chances I, as a student intern 10 years ago, passed along the 10 best manuscripts, if given the chance to go back and review my choices, are slim to none. My guess is that a lot of sophistication and subtlety is lost on many a preliminary judge, as it was on me. This leads me to believe that much of what gets through is either gimmicky and loud or numbingly quiet–those that are undeniably under the umbrella of Poetry.
I really appreciate this blog post for its criticism of an ongoing system within “Official Verse Culture,” which has badly needed reexamination and restructuring. Still, I doubt our criticisms change much, if we all continue to participate in this part of “Official Verse Culture.”
Howard Junker has just posted this on the Zyzzyva blog: “The major way nonsuperstar poets get their books published is by entering them in contests…” I keep wondering, why is this the major way? Why must this be the major way? There are so many publishers of poetry out there, and most exist in spite of poetry not being a revenue generating genre. Additionally, there are so many new small publishers of poetry being born. There are bodies such as SPDBooks (Small Press Distribution) who are so effective in making all of this poetry available and accessible.
This year, I have not been keeping track of how much I have spent on poetry contests. Really, it’s only been a small number of contests, and a small amount of money, compared to what I hear other poets are shelling out every manuscript submission season. I hear of folks shelling out hundreds of dollars per manuscript submission season and that is staggering.
I will not be submitting to poetry contests anymore. Given the above model described by Tonelli, with the “least qualified” being bestowed the role as poetry institution gatekeeper, Diwata simply isn’t ever going to make it past a contest slushpile. Its title is an unrecognizable term in an unrecognizable language (unhispanized Tagalog). This unrecognizable language is consistently used throughout the manuscript and not translated, though this time around, there is no baybayin script to be found in my manuscript. The unrecognizable term is the manuscript’s premise.
Diwata’s literary references are not those of canonical or popularly consumed American literature, unless you consider Eduardo Galeano, Jessica Hagedorn, Leslie Marmon Silko, Tu Fu, and the Tagalog Creation Story of Malakas and Maganda among the canonical or popularly consumed American literary works, which they are not.
Among Diwata’s historical and social references and inferences are Lapu Lapu, the headhunting of the northern tribes, the Philippine American War and resistance figures such as Macario Sakay, USAFFE Filipino WWII veterans, the Japanese Occupation of the Philippines and the Bataan Death March, the Comfort Women, non-hipster SoMa and Mission District San Francisco, Manny Pacquiao. Familial references include a dedication to Tita Alice and Papa (Papa’s name is also quite a mouthful), a densely populated family tree, and then Lola Ilang. And then there is my use of Philippine and invented feminist mythologies. Perhaps the only reference readily familiar to intern slushpilers is the biblical Eve, and she’s not doing conventionally Eve things.
I say all these things not to rant, really. In rejecting the contest route, I am not rejecting editorial approval/affirmation. I believe in editorial process. I would simply prefer discerning and experienced editors (and I gauge these things based upon which poets and titles they have previously published) to read Diwata, which is currently in or will very soon be in some [unnamed editors'] good hands, safely outside of the contest route, and where the odds are maybe not guaranteed to be in my favor, but are markedly better than being the “ethnic” “political” “experimental” poet in a slushpile of thousands (thousands?) of conventional American English narrative poets.
And so regarding these unnamed editors with these unnamed independent publishers, let’s just say that my “shameless hussy-ing” is making this possible, though I don’t know how well it’s “working” until I receive the final word. I want to say that I feel like it’s close.
I just saw the APA-directed movie “The Motel” via Netflix. Briefly, it’s about a boy who wins honorable mention in a short story contest and an invite to the awards ceremony. His disapproving mother ridicules him by saying that winning honorable mention isn’t winning anything and, thus, winning honorable mention means you lost the contest, so why go to a dinner to celebrate that you’re a loser. Harsh. But I’ve been thinking about that all week. Sometimes surfing around looking at various open chapbook contests. Came across Black Lawrence and I think there was an email or blog post about Tupelo Press, and read Howard Junker’s post today re Alice James Books, with the publishers listing around a dozen or more finalists and semi-finalists. And, I think (harshly), geez, the author’s names on that list are just a giant statements that say, “I paid $25 for a reading and I lost.”
Hey Debbie, OUCH! When you put it like that…. :-) Anyway, this leads me to ask about “prestige,” because I suspect it is the reason behind our participation in poetry contest. Or course, I also kind of don’t know what “prestige” means. It’s a soft and shifty term.
Sometimes a finalist gets lucky and gets picked up for publication. That’s what happened with my chapbook forthcoming from Finishing Line Press. While I’m pleased that my “losing” chapbook is being published anyway, I’m still not submitting to anymore contests. Stick a fork in me. I’m done.
Hey Collin, You are done! Congratulations on your chapbook’s forthcoming publication. That’s awesome. So that’s another interesting thing to me. I see the “prize” of getting your manuscript published. So if finalists are also getting book contracts out of these contests, then what makes the winning manuscript more special?
Hi Barbara,
I agree. The contest-dynamic has become so pervasive. It’s the advice I most often hear about getting one’s book published: enter contests. Only, the contest process is certainly not the most well-run system, having been a student reader for a national book prize myself.
If anything, the finalist and semifinalist results may help us, affirm our writing, but ultimately, we need books– and hundreds and hundreds of people are spending hundreds and hundreds of dollars for those so few book spots.
My book was taken up by two independent publishers– both of which got back to me in one year. No money spent, aside from the cost of paper and postage, and it wasn’t discouraging, as it might be for someone who’s doing a “contest-only” route.
I wonder how many important emerging voices out there are getting too-submerged in the “submit to contests, that’s how you’ll get your poetry out” advice line?
besides the lure of money (how rare it is to receive any money up front from small press publishers–and we know poets need the money), i think a big reason why people join contests actually implicates small presses: many of them do not accept unsolicited manuscripts. what is a non-superstar poet to do when all these small presses won’t even look at manuscripts? small presses are not the solution to contests; they are part of the problem.
where things get interesting to me is when small presses hold contests, which seems to be a developing trend. altho tonelli makes a good point, the initial readers for the omnidawn contest, for example, are first-rate, published poets (i am not one of them). and i would say this is true for many small press contests. they are *usually* not judged by students, and the money goes to supporting the press that needs our support much more than univ. presses or the poetry society. also, some of them will even send you the winning book or a book of your choice. that seems fair to me.
xo
cs
Good points made by all here. Thanks for the discussion. Craig, I want to clarify “don’t accept unsolicited manuscripts.” I always thought that meant that we shouldn’t just send entire manuscripts cold, but rather, that we should query, introduce ourselves, briefly pitch our manuscripts, and then offer to send.
Still, I see that a lot of small presses do accept queries, and this process I appreciate for moving slowly past the impersonal.
I appreciate that the monetary reward is a draw, given what nonexistent money we make as poets publishing.
That the revenue from contest fees goes on to fund the presses is a good point as well; still, that some contests are created in order to generate revenue interests me because then I wonder what is the *meaning* of being the winning manuscript in the end. I hope this part makes sense.
Sasha, congratulations on your forthcoming book.
good points also. i think what you say about querying is true. tho i remember one press took 4 months to respond to my query and they simply wrote “we don’t accept unsolicited manuscripts”. LAME. tho that seems extreme compared to other cases, as you suggest.
cs
Yeah, that is lame, and fortunately, I think that might be specific to the one publisher and not many.
Anyway, the moral of the blog post (!) might be this: we need to know our work really well and we need to be confident to stand behind it. What kinds of concessions are we willing to make on our own work - and this is work we have lived with as a part of us, not just randomly threw together - in order to facilitate its smooth movement through the machine? And still, there would be no guarantees.
The funny thing is I keep coming across articles on the overabundance of publishers and published poetry, but I also keep reading poets’ blog entries on how few spaces there are for manuscripts to be considered for publication. This being a rationale for submerging oneself in the contest route, as Sasha suggests above.
Hi Barbara,
I have way too much to say about this so I’ll just broadbrush. I don’t think I’ve encountered anything in the publishing process that I like, except that I’ve met some very nice people. The idea of poetry being a “contest” kind of turns my stomach. The idea that some voices need to be heard more than others and that someone is qualified to say whose voices those are is presumptuous. The poetry publishing process is competitive, but there is no logical reason why competition should have anything to do with poetry.
Since there is no money in poetry, what is it we are competing for? Attention? For our voice to be heard? Fame? ‘Prstige’? (I have a practical reason. I would like to teach creative writing, and I have never met an unpublished creative writing teacher.) We all want to share our work, and for it to be taken seriously, and it is difficult to reach a significant audiance without being published by a reputable publisher. There are, however, hundreds of thousand of poets, and it is unlikely that we can all be heard.
If nobody submitted to poetry contests, would those presses dry up? Or would they find some other way to get funding?
It’s cheaper to publish books on the internet, and easier for people to find and access them. It probably also uses less space and resources.
Hi Brian, Thanks for your comment. So I don’t think publishing must necessarily have anything to do with contest. I believe in publishing, and I love that I have poetry books that I have worked hard to have become so.
I don’t know what it would take to abolish the poetry contest. I don’t know if prospective authors will ever stop submitting to them. So then maybe a more realistic thing to strive for is to elevate means of publishing that do not involve the poetry prize/contest. There are very reputable independent publishers that do not offer prizes that don’t need any of our help being ‘elevated.’
Anyway, as to your last point re: less space and resources, I think over time, digital print on demand will gain favor among those in the ‘industry.’ Now, it is starting to allow new indie publishers to get started when it was previously very cost-prohibitive. It just makes more sense, saves trees and all.