Poetry Nation
  • Search
  • Join Now
  • Login
  • Home
  • About Us
    • Contact Us
    • Publishing Info
    • About the Team
  • Collections
    • Create a Collection
    • Latest Collections
    • Top Collections
  • Rate Poems
    • Start Rating!
    • Rating Guidelines
    • Latest Poems
    • Top Poems
  • Contests
    • Enter Poetry Contest
    • Monthly Challenge
    • Contest Winners
    • Contest Info and Rules
    • Contest Judging
  • Reference
    • Articles
    • Workshop
    • Glossary
    • Greatest Poems
    • Senior Spotlight
  • News
    • The Professor’s Plug
  • Store
  • User’s Top Poems
  • Poems
  • Contest
  • Collections
  • Ratings
  • Workshop
  • Join
  • Search

Collection Categories

  • Animal
  • Athletics
  • Celebration
  • Confessional
  • Copycat
  • Cowboy
  • Diversity
  • Friendship
  • Haikus
  • Heartbreak
  • Holiday
  • Humorous/Funny
  • Limericks
  • Love
  • Lyrics
  • Memorial
  • Milestone
  • Nature
  • Nostalgia
  • Odes
  • Peace
  • Political
  • Regret
  • Season
  • Sentimental
  • Sonnets
  • Spiritual
  • Teen
  • Urban
  • Whimsical

    Web News

    • 845 Life: Local group creates a moveable feast of poetry
    • COLUMN: Should lyrics be considered poetry?
    • Catching a glimpse of the poetry
    • Teachers on the St. Croix: River workshops provide education, inspiration, and poetry
    • Poetry Sunday: Mardelle Shepley
    • Ada Limon On Poetry Collection, 'The Carrying'

  • PUBLISH YOUR OWN BOOK OF POETRY

    You can publish your own book of poetry for as little as $350! Click here to learn how.

  • Editor’s Note

    The number one question our editors receive is—what do the editors and judges look for when judging the contest? The number one answer we give is creativity. Unlike prose, writing composed in everyday language, poetry is considered a creative art and requires a different type of effort and a certain level of depth. Of the thousands of poems entered in each contest, the ones that catch our judges’ eyes are the ones that remove us, even just slightly, from the scope of everyday life by using language that is interesting, specific, vivid, obscure, compelling, figurative, and so on. Oftentimes, poems are pulled aside for a second look based simply on certain words that intrigued the reader. So first and foremost, be sure your poetry is written using creative language. Take general ideas and make them personal. In his infamous book De/Compositions: 101 Good Poems Gone Wrong, W. D. Snodgrass imparts, “We cannot honestly discuss or represent our lives, any more than our poems, without using ideational language.”

  • © 2018 Poetry Nation
  • All Rights Reserved
  • Terms Of Use
  • Disclaimer
  • Privacy Policy
  • Return Policy
  • Website Design & Marketing provided by Adventure Web Interactive