The Taste 'Test

“All of life is a dispute over taste and tasting.” Oh, really, Friedrich? Is Nietzsche just being bitter, or are you gonna let that lemon pass for a chestnut?We’re running a poetry contest to hear about what blooms your buds. Pick a taste, any taste. The sense is locked, but the sense of that sense is up to you. Make sense? Make it good, make it bad, make it salty. Our mouths should water.

With support from Poetry Daily and the Virginia Arts of the Book Center, The Taste ‘Test is a contest whose prize is a limited edition letterpress broadside and an appearance on Poetry Daily’s internationally reviewed website.

Grand Prize:
30 limited edition, letterpressed broadsides, created by artists at the VABC, and special publication of the winning poem on Poetry Daily (poems.com).

Contest Guidelines:

Submission size:: A maximum of two poems per submission. Each submission should have a separate entry fee and form.

Entry fee: $10 made payable to the “Virginia Foundation for the Humanities.”
(The VABC is a program of the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities.)

Entry form: Download the entry form here. For a printed form, send an SASE to: The Taste ‘Test / Virginia Foundation for the Humanities /145 Ednam Drive / Charlottesville, VA 22903. Submissions received without a completed entry form will not be eligible.

Eligibility: Contest open to any poet(s) living and writing in the United States who are not employees, affiliates, or students of Poetry Daily, the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, and the University of Virginia Creative Writing program. Rights to works must reside with the submitting poets, though they may have been previously published. Poems must be original work by eligible submitters.

Considerations: No poem should be no longer than one 8.5”x11” page in 12 pt font. Poems should be stapled together and submitted “blind,” with identifying information appearing only on the entry form.

Deadline:Submissions must be postmarked by June 1, 2008.

Notification: Winners will be announced in August 2008.

Judges: Poets and artists of the Virginia Arts of the Book Center. Selections will be made on literary merit and visual interest as a broadside.  Judges are poets whose backgrounds are in publishing and book arts. Each has editorial experience with journals, anthologies, and/or prize committees, including the Virginia Quarterly Review, Best New Poets, Little Big Form, and recent Companion Poems and Belle Letters contests. Their poems are published in journals such as Poetry, The Kenyon Review, Antioch Review, FENCE, Third Coast, Ploughshares, Quarterly West, and The Antioch Review.