SQUEEEEE! Poetry Win!: ysabetwordsmith

SQUEEEEE! Poetry Win!

Winners for the 2008 SFPA Poetry Contest have been posted:

First Place: She Seemed So Quiet by Marion E. Boyer, Mattawan, MI

Second Place: Artifacts of Intelligent Design by Elizabeth Barrette Charleston, IL

Third Place: And I Fly by Frances Shi, Woodhaven, NY

Special thanks to

stillnotbored for posting the results and

asakiyume for alerting me to the post. Congratulations to all the other poets whose poems placed or earned judicial recognition.

Also, thank you, my audience, for your support and inspiration. "Artifacts of Intelligent Design" came out of the August 12 Poetry Fishbowl, inspired by prompts from

chlorophyta and

flutterbychild.

I couldn't resist figuring the numbers ... 2nd place out of a field of 400+ poems puts "Artifacts of Intelligent Design" in the top 0.5% of the field. Good magazines typically publish from the top 3-5% of submissions; the most competitive ones publish from fractions of the top 1%. So I keep an eye on those percentages any time I have the numbers available.

The one drawback is that you'll have to wait a bit to read "Artifacts of Intelligent Design." I checked the Science Fiction Poetry Association page, and it's not updated yet. The winning poems should go up soon, though. When they do, I'll let you know; or if you spot the update first, let me know so I can post the link. This week has some challenges here -- I'll be out of the house for parts of today and tomorrow -- but I'll keep on top of this as best I can.