[1] Many thanks to all who submitted entries for the Global Voices Valentine's Day poetry contest [2]. We had 28 submissions in all, including some fine doggerel, plus one entry from an actual dog!
As this contest was a spur-of-the-moment idea cooked up on the GV mailing lists, a few things fell through the organisational cracks. Among the more notable of these was our failure to announce how the winning entries would be determined. This was easily remedied, however, as the only person who seemed to notice this omission [3] also happened to be highly qualified to judge the competition.
It is my great pleasure, therefore, to introduce our esteemed contest judge, Nicholas Laughlin, [4] Global Voices author [5] and editor of the Caribbean Review of Books [6] (he's also a published poet, by the way).
AND NOW, JUDGE FOR YOURSELF . . .
As a professional, Nicholas is going to have to be a little harder on those who didn't follow the contest rules, which means that some of your favourite entries may be out of the running. So we've also decided to open a separate round of voting to you, our dear readers.
For the People's Choice Award, all 28 entries qualify, even those submitted after the contest closing date, with one caveat: we could not facilitate the translation of foreign language submissions submitted after midnight PST on February 14, 2007.
Here's how you can help determine the winner of the People's Choice Award:
- Review the 28 entries at this page [7]
- Go to this page the form at the end of this page (or, failing that, clink on this link [8]) and vote for your favourite entry by midnight PST (GMT -8) on Wednesday 21 February, 2007.
UPDATE: Please note the change in the voting method. Thanks to a brilliant suggestion from Marvin Chery [9], it's no longer necessary to leave the site in order to vote, and the poll now lists the name of the poem as well. Duping the system also now requires a little more work. I have moved the votes from hanna and chtonia, who placed their votes prior to this change, over to the new system.
One vote per person, please. We're aware that, given the method we've chosen to conduct the voting, we might as well have sent out personal invitations to vote riggers and other perpetrators of election fraud. If we didn't believe in the inherent goodness and intelligence of human beings, however, there'd be no Global Voices: we know you'll try your best to be honest, or at least to dazzle us with your innovativeness.
The contest results will be announced in these pages on Thursday 22 February.