Congratulations HOWL Contest Winners!

Recently my open mic reading, HOWL, sponsored a contest for best poem. I saved the money from passing the hat at every reading and challenged the poets to enter 3 pages of poetry along with a $10 entry fee to win a 1st, 2nd, or 3rd place prize. Since it was our first contest, and the rule was that you had to attend 4 HOWL open mic readings a year, I worried that many of my poets would be too nervous to enter. Reading at the open mic was one thing, entering a contest to be judged was another.

I was very pleased to have 10 entries, nearly 30 poems. The fees and hat would take care of the $300 first prize. I enlisted the aid of two poets unassociated with HOWL to judge the work on a points system. It was a very close contest and highly educational for me. Judging is much more subjective than I ever thought. If you didn't win, it didn't mean your poem wasn't good. That's the truth.

After the points were tallied, I was very happy with the winners. Congratulations to Jeanne, who took first place; and to Jan who won second, and Fran who won third. All three are fine poets and wordsmiths. (Jeanne's winning poem is featured below.)

However, winning was not the most important part of this contest. (Tell that to the winner, eh?) But I think she would agree. The most important part was gathering the courage to enter. If she had not entered (and she is a fairly shy person and a fairly new poet) she could not have won. And you would not have the pleasure of reading her poem in this post.

I am proud of every woman who entered our first HOWL poetry contest. I know what it is like to submit your best work. I know what it is like to win, and I know what it is like not to win. As far as I'm concerned, there are no losers who take such a risk. When you do, you champion your own creativity and earn the admiration of your peers. It's hard, and we do subject ourselves to disappointment at times. It forces us to deal with rejection in a healthy way; in a way that does not hurt our work, but simply redoubles our determination to continue.

Write on, my poets, my peers, my peeps. What you risk, you never lose.

The Catch

Stiff wind
dances points of light
on the friendly pond.
Clear water above thick algae
Hiding minnow, water bugs, bass, perhaps.

Blue Sky
hazy with wisps of clouds--
Backdrop for the stand
of pole-like pines
ringing the dappled pond.

Live oak holds
onto its parchment-dry
leaves, resisting
the wind's call
to let go.

Waist-high grasses, brown now,
Lead me to the water's edge.
I cast and the thin fine line
Of my imagination reels off
And sinks into the rippling water.

I wait, my eye on the bobber,
Impatient for the strike,
the spark of insight
that will pull the words
from my watery soul

To form the flash
and wriggle of the poem,
the story, the work that
once hooked, comes
struggling

Into this fresh
cool winter day,
Into this moment of quiet,
Of solitude,
Of attention to.

by Jeanne Sievert
© 2010

Join the HOWL: Women's Open Mic facebook page at www.facebook.com/howl.openmic

—Mendy Knott is a writer, poet and author of the poetry collection A Little Lazarus (Half Acre Press, 2010). To order your copy of A Little Lazarus directly from the author, please click here. Or, if cookbooks are more your style, get a copy of Mendy's family cookbook Across the Arklatex at www.twopoets.us.

Risk It.

There comes a time in every artist's life when they must take the risk; whether they write, paint, work in clay, metal or wood. What risk? The final risk for every work of art is putting it out there.

I compare it to sending your 5-year-old to kindergarten for their first day at school. In the classroom, they will quite naturally be compared and compare themselves and their skills with others. As parents worry and pace, bite their nails at home, the children size each other up, find out what their strengths and weaknesses are, and determine where they will need work to become better students and to excel.

Such are our feelings when we put our creative work out into the larger world, whether we are entering a contest, submitting for publication, entering a show, or simply standing to deliver our work to an audience for the first time. It's a nail-biting, floor-pacing experience. This is the jumping off place. Believe me, the water can look a long way down from the cliff's edge far from the comparative safety and privacy of our computer, palette, studio. Out in the world, our very personal work (our babies) will be subject to comparison and criticism. It will be, in some way, judged--a scary word. We know if we never go to the open mic, never enter the show or contest, never submit for publication, we are safe in our own little world. There we can believe it's all good and we need no one's input.

The only drawback of confining ourselves and our work to the security of our creative caves is that we never get to share what we've accomplished. The people who need to read or hear our poems and prose, see our pastels, touch our carvings, and hold our pots in their hands cannot be inspired or encouraged in their own creativity. If we don't take the risk of putting our work out into the world, we not only isolate ourselves, we leave others who would create—if they thought they could—without inspiration.

—Mendy Knott is a writer, poet and author of the poetry collection A Little Lazarus (Half Acre Press, 2010). To order your copy of A Little Lazarus directly from the author, please click here. Or, if cookbooks are more your style, get a copy of Mendy's family cookbook Across the Arklatex at www.twopoets.us.

Join the HOWL: Women's Open Mic facebook page at www.facebook.com/howl.openmic

Why We Don't Write: Beginning Again

Buddhist writer Sharon Salzberg teaches us that "with every breath, we can begin again." I find this one of the most hopeful and helpful quotes of a lifetime of reading, writing, and listening to writers. We need this bit of "begin again" wisdom to become something we rely on in times of doubt. I say these things because, I too, fall victim to the "Oh, I haven't written a new post for so long, why do it today? It just seems too hard right now." Until a month, or even two, have passed and all my readers begin to wonder what has happened and wander off to other more conscientious bloggers.

Today I begin again. And not for the first time, but for the first time in a long time. I can blame it on my shoulder surgery which made writing hard; made it, in fact, hurt. Yikes! Or the fact that I broke a tooth and the whole getting a crown thing has been quite painful. Or maybe the fact that I have lupus and experience fatigue and pain most every day, but that hasn't stopped me in the past, and I've been dealing with it for years. The question is not why I haven't written in the past couple of months, but how do I begin again, and how do I continue? I believe this is a question we all deal with at times, especially those of us with a chronic disease or pain. Or maybe it's taxes, the state of the economy, war. These are all very real, not simply excuses. I know that. But how do we write or remain committed to our art anyway?

Because we also know the truth; our art, our passion for words or paint, the longing to somehow capture truth and beauty even for a moment, is one of the most healing things we can do for ourselves and the world. I always, not sometimes, but ALWAYS feel better when I write. And yet my tendency, when down, is to give in and allow my self to distract me from the very thing I know will help most. I can't answer the why of it so much as help with how to pull ourselves out of it. Somehow I'm better at doing the physical, when it's hard, than the mental/emotional/creative. I realize even if I'm tired or my feet hurt already, that a walk will make me feel better. And so I walk and therefore do feel better. Swimming is even harder, so I tell myself all I have to do is get in the water. It never fails. If I make it that far, I swim. I keep my expectations low--if I walk a mile or swim at all, I get a star on that day in my calendar.

Art is not as easy. We have higher expectations of ourselves--to be gifted, to be wise or witty, to make perfect whatever it is we are working on. When what is called for, what is most needed, is just doing something. Anything. Creating crap is better than not creating at all. From experience, I can tell you that writing through my pain has created some of the best poems and songs I've written. I've always loved listening to the blues, so why can't I allow myself to write some, too? Blues singers and composers are quite obviously taking a hard moment and transforming it, through their persistence and unwillingness to cave, into art. We can do the same. I often do. But not always.

That's when we have to forgive ourselves and climb with all our aches and pains and doubts, back up on the wagon of our creativity, trusting that it will take us where we need to go. We have to believe that wagon is our way out; taking us down the road to better times and into the land of truth and beauty. Even if the landscape seems bleak, we are moving! We are headed out of the "valley of the shadow" that keeps us from creating. Don't give up. Don't give in to the voice of pain, doubt, or even despair. First, forgive yourself. Then pick up your pen, and begin again. Start with small goals, short freewrites, small paintings. Write about the very thing that plagues you. You don't always have to be bright and cheery--that's another difficult expectation to fulfill. Just start and see where your life leads you. This is trusting the process to the fullest extent. Believing that all of life is like riding a bike. You don't forget how to live, no matter how long you've parked it in the dark garage. A few circles around the block, and baby, you're back in business!