Results of the Raw Poetry Contest

After two long months, the results of The Raw Poetry Contest are finally here. Yay!

You can keep those hockey sticks inside now, impatient participants.

Before we move on to the fun part, I really want all of you to know that you all did great. And I’m not just saying that for the sake of formality- I genuinely appreciated the response to the contest. At first, when I launched it, I got very few entries and I was disappointed to know that so few people could relate to the concept of raw poetry. But extending the deadline by a week was one of the best decisions I ever made because entries poured in after that. I guess y’all are just as lazy as me, huh? So, in the end, I got 19 entries, which was a pretty big deal for me considering that I hadn’t expected to get even 10.

And boy, was it a stiff competition. Even though there were three judges including me, we had a hell of a time selecting the top three. That’s why it took us two whole months to fully analyse and rate each poem.

I don’t want to be one of those annoying judges that say ‘participation is more important than winning’, because I know all too well that more than comforting, it feels like salt on a wound. So to all of you who couldn’t win this time, I will not say that. But I will be very honest with you and tell you that it takes a certain amount of faith in your work to submit it even for a small-scale contest like this one, and all of you who participated had that faith. All of you put in the effort to come up with a uniquely ‘you’ poem. And I think writing raw poetry is an achievement in itself because we’re so used to writing regular poetry. It can be difficult to remove that inherent propensity to use poetic devices and write a traditionally beautiful poem. Even if you did not win, I hope you learned something and most importantly, had fun.

Many of you still wrote regular poetry, and though you did not win a prize, I do hope you will read the winning entries and finally understand the concept. And if you do, my purpose is complete- the whole point of launching this was to familiarise you with the idea of raw poetry and encourage you to deviate from the traditional norms.

Just one last thing before I move on to the prize winners. The trophies displayed with each of the names were personally designed by me in Paint 3D (What a multitalented girl. I know, right?). All of you digital artists, don’t judge me, because it was my first time using Paint 3D. Prize winners: you can upload those trophies on your own blog and/or social media if you like.

Also, the three of us individually rated each poem out of 10 to keep track of our opinions about each one, and the average rating mentioned with the prize-winning poems are the average of those three ratings.

So, here we go: