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 five finalists.
Check out the poems below, including the contest winner our readers voted for.
Winner: “If a Word Appears Once” by Sarah M.
Titles are
Transient and
Match how
You please
But
Play with the
Art form
And
Make
Witty scenes
The sky
Over world,
An impeccable
Fit
Resembling
A frolicking
Bubbly
Ball pit
A poem
To submit
For artists
A tip
An
Original contest a
Virga visit
Finalist: “a newsletter” by Jessica N.
I fear an ambivalent revolution.
We hunt deep waters and a ballroom of floating sky,
shark-bitten orcas and a chance festival of vibrant sunrise.
Eagle-eyed for a pretty game of changing season, inventing scenes of spring and summer, we shop creative culture and new friends.
Giving search for the original: the aging storytellers, with unwanted silver tentacle wisps, and old hands.
Tomorrow: precipitation.
You’re invited to a library of limitation.
A last tomorrow.
Finalist: “Silver Lining Spotlight” by Jenny C.
Spring has come, for all ecotypes
breathing life into the gallery
of a changing season
Portland awakens with
health and aging adults
(in good condition and dairy-free)
appearing along nature trails and
frolicking like cutting edge moss,
while today’s transient young
buzz like unwanted creatures
in deep waters;
Spring Rules
inventing plant-based rewards
it offers unidentified students (us)
a natural process to discover
all things
in the search for yourself
Finalist: “A Found Tanka” by Nathan T.
A poem might be found
in the streets of a fungi
sunset—on display
at the communal sunrise—
vibrant sand trails in the clouds.
Finalist: “The Dealmaker’s Season” by Gia G.
This morning
Birds resembling clouds crossing
Find you
In today’s form
Free to meet the sunrise-
To wait for summer,
And yellow jackets.
To honor
The blueprint of nature
You reach and feel
Along older trails for substance
Turning loss into flora and fauna,
moss to night- silver night.
Here, in the Rose City-
Industry locked,
newest erasure calling down-
Report! Report!
The English name behind nature- found!
Revolution pledged-
Unlike the sunset-
Fair, red, down.
