Welsh Poetry Competition
HIGHLY COMMENDED | So as part of my rebuilding year (trademark?) I kind of cast a wide net. A very wide net. After twenty years of not submitting anywhere, I had so much material sitting around to work with, I just started sending it off higgledy-piggledy and willy nilly.
My writing went to big places and small, to fancy places and very much not-fancy places. It went all over the dang place.
I started trying again, as I hadn’t for an age. And now here we are, more than half-way through the calendar year and the results of this experiment are beginning to roll in.
The first small bit of encouragement arrived early in the form of the Honourable Mention from The League of Canadian Poets for Spoken Word (in something the LCP calls a a Cold Moon Contest). But that was back in the spring. Since, I have mostly been waiting. Submitting, but waiting.
It’s been strange. Today’s little success is also strange: I have been “Highly Commended” in the 20th and Final Welsh Poetry Contest.
To be clear, it’s an international English-language competition. You don’t have to be from Wales or anything. It’s well-established, having been going for twenty years. At the same time, from what I have witnessed, it’s not super elite in terms of perception, but then … nor am I.
The organizer seemed like a nice enough guy and I appreciate anyone who has endured trying to run something like this for so long, considering the climate. So I sent something in. And it didn’t win. A Canadian did, though, which is kinda nice. And since my poem was just “highly commended” it’s not published or anything so I can still send it elsewhere, tinker with it, etc.
It’s just a very teeny little bragging-rights thing.
Although, were I to “brag” about this particular honour to most of the CanLit people I know, they would struggle to respond politely, if at all, but that’s a whole ‘nother thing. A think someone like me must not speak of. 😉
You know what? I’m grateful. Forever grateful. Let’s just leave it at that.