First of all,  we would like to thank those of you who responded to our
question posed a few weeks ago about the apparent lack of interest in our
poetry contest. Much of the feedback was helpful in that we now know why
some writers are mistrustful of these kinds of contests. Many times, it
seems, the motive behind a contest is to get the writer to buy something.
There are also scammers out there just wanting to collect the reading fees
without actually delivering the prizes. I don't know how to go about trying
to convince anyone that we're not that sort of organization. We are merely
a small group of writers ourselves who want to promote good poetry.

There are also a good many writers out there who seem offended by the
notion of a reading or entry fee. These writers believe that we should be
paying them and not vice versa. Being writers ourselves, we can certainly
appreciate that notion. Where, however,  would the money come from to pay
all of you? We (Maudlin Street Press) publish an online poetry journal.
Nobody pays us to do this. We aren't sponsored by anyone and we don't have
any paying advertisers at our site. All of us involved with this project
support ourselves with regular full-time employment. (Myself, I'm a
truckdriver. Heidi works for a marketing firm. November is a teacher... and
so on.)  Again I say, we do this because we love poetry. There is no other
reason besides that.

As I said in my first post, the prize money for the contest is already in
the bank -- a total of $250.  The entry fee ($4 per 5 poems -- which is
quite small compared to other contests) will, hopefully, cover this cost so
that we won't end up out-of-pocket. If there's anything left over (which it
doesn't look like there will be), we will use it to maybe make the prizes
larger in the next contest. (Despite all the negative feedback we've
received about this contest, we really do want to continue with it.
Personally, I suspect that those who were the most negative about it were
writers who don't get published much. One young lady, for instance, who
kept writing to me long after I asked her to stop, sent me some really bad
poems about anger and plasticity and so on...)

At any rate, we do appreciate the feedback and hope you will enter our
contest -- or, if you're completely opposed to such competitions, will
instead submit some of your work to our online poetry journal AVALON. We've
happily discovered that there are some great writers out here on the web
and would love the opportunity to publish their work on our pages.


-- 
Michael & Heidi Stephens
Editors, Maudlin Street Press
http://members.tripod.com/~maudlinstreet
mikeheidi@lycosemail.com

-- 
Michael & Heidi Stephens
Editors, Maudlin Street Press
http://members.tripod.com/~maudlinstreet
mikeheidi@lycosemail.com