Wergle Flomp Humor Poetry Contest 2026
Congratulations to the winners of our 2026 humor poetry contest!
Honorable Mention $100
- Emily Cho,
- Eddie Elizabeth,
- Chad Frame,
- Matthew Goldberg, Carbon-Based Life
- Uzma Kadri,
- Christopher Lessick,
- Stacey Lounsberry,
- SP Mulroy,
- Esme Seaborne,
- Kazuto Tonari,
- Andy Young,
Thanks to everyone who entered our 25th annual Wergle Flomp Humor Poetry Contest. It's our silver anniversary! That's right, Wergle has outlived Henry Kissinger, Cherry Vanilla Coke, Red Lobster, and most of Trump's tariffs. Yim yam widdley woooo!
First-round screener Lauren Singer shortlisted 150 entries from which I chose the prizewinners and finalists. This batch was not as filthy as in some past years, with poets showing more interest in bureaucratic malfunctions than bodily functions. We saw an uptick in longer poems (5+ pages). Our poets continued to be preoccupied with technological change and social media. Watching, being watched, or being forgotten, we stare into the abyss of the Internet, and the abyss not only stares back but posts a selfie.
A lot of shortlisted poems with great premises and funny lines didn't advance further because at some point in the poem, the author randomly gave up on the tone of voice and/or formal scheme that made it work. Remember how "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" ended with the intrusion of modern-day cops to break the fourth wall before the final battle? If this bit fell flat for one of the greatest comedy troupes of our time, it's not going to work for you either. Okay, you can fight me if you loved that ending, but my point is, the longer a piece goes on, the more we're invested in expecting a climax that doesn't discard all the artistry that went before.
Life's transience, accelerated by consumerism's planned obsolescence, cast shadows that brought the light verse into relief. Often, a winning humor poem draws its strength from contrasts: intense seriousness about a goofy topic (ferret-racing), or frivolity about a horrifying one (livestreaming the apocalypse). Parenthood inspires competing feelings of annoyance about household chaos and melancholy that children so soon outgrow their innocent magical thinking. The inspirational bestsellers of yesteryear prove to have a shelf life not much longer than a pet goldfish. On the other hand, the statues at the museum might be thinking petty thoughts about each other for hundreds of years. You just never know.
Our Winners
First-prize winner Tim Loveday's "Dog Act(or)" meditates on the slippage between persona and presence, via this all-important philosophical question: is a dog on-screen playing a dog, or being a dog? Akin to a Zen koan in its minimalist language and its oscillation between absurdity and profundity, this poem reaches the only logical conclusion: dogs do not exist.
Annah Chiedza Hodhera's second-prize "Ode on a Grecian Takeout Container" picks up the lament for the transience of human life from its John Keats source material, poking fun at our degradation of classical imagery as decoration for disposable consumer products. Think of this when you are munching on popcorn from the inevitable Odyssey-branded jumbo bucket at Cinemark this summer.
Third-prize winner "Ink?" by Cal H decries the end stage of consumer capitalism, in which we actually own nothing, because some crucial component—in this case, printer ink—is merely licensed by a company that can revoke it on a whim, just like those books on your Kindle that you thought you "purchased".
Honorable mentions found humor in our obsession with wildlife camera feeds, nonsensical results from translation apps, flagrant violations of a movie theater's "no outside food" policy, and much more. We valued these poems for their consistent voice, and subject matter that was unique but nonetheless spoke to universal concerns like the individual's loss of agency in mass society.
Our next contest is now open through April 1, 2027, with a top prize of $2,000. As always, it is free to enter.
The judges would like to commend these finalists:
- Henry Crawford, "The Setup"
- Joshua Davies, "The Economics of Poetry"
- Prosperity Idugboe, "The Department of Minor Catastrophes"
- Devansi Kumari, "Planetary Group Chat"
- Aritra Mohajan, "Ode to My Therapist's Emotional Support Cactus"
- Megan Morales, "First Impressions in the Figure Drawing Room"
- Hayley Phoenix-Winterburn, "Official Minutes of the Assembly of Remaining Magical Entities"
- Andres Reyes, "The Law of the Break-Up"
- Paris Rosemont, "Emergency Contact: NIL"
- Utkrisht Singh, "The Ghost in My House Has Given Up"
- Sharon Svendsen, "Questions About This Book for Your Readers' Group"
Contest Judges
Lauren Singer
Lauren Singer is an assistant judge of our Wergle Flomp Humor Poetry Contest and a past judge of our Tom Howard/John H. Reid Fiction & Essay Contest and North Street Book Prize. She is a native New Yorker living in Western Massachusetts. Her poetry has been published in Nerve House, Bareback, Feel the Word, Read This, Kosmosis, One Night Stanzas, and other literary magazines across the country. An attendee of the New York State Summer Writers Institute, she is a graduate of Bard College at Simon's Rock and received her MSW at the University of Chicago in 2015. She has self-published three chapbooks and received an honorable mention in the 2011 Wergle Flomp contest. Her poetry book Raised Ranch was published by Game Over Books in 2025. In addition to her creative interests, Lauren works as a sex and relationship therapist and runs a private practice out of Northampton, MA. She prides herself on her wealth of useless pop culture knowledge, namely of nineties R&B lyrics, and she can pretty much quote "The X-Files".
Contest Judges
Jendi Reiter
Jendi Reiter is vice president of Winning Writers, editor of The Best Free Literary Contests, and oversees the Winning Writers literary contests. Jendi is the author of the novel Origin Story (Saddle Road Press, 2024), the short story collection An Incomplete List of My Wishes (Sunshot Press, 2018), the novel Two Natures (Saddle Road Press, 2016), the poetry collections Introvert Pervert (The Word Works, 2026), Made Man (Little Red Tree Publishing, 2022), Bullies in Love (Little Red Tree Publishing, 2015), and A Talent for Sadness (Turning Point Books, 2003), and the award-winning poetry chapbooks Swallow (Amsterdam Press, 2009) and Barbie at 50 (Cervena Barva Press, 2010). Awards include two Massachusetts Cultural Council Artists' Grants for Poetry, the 2016 New Letters Prize for Fiction, the 2016 Rainbow Award for Best Gay Contemporary Fiction, the 2015 Wag's Revue Poetry Prize, the 2013 Little Red Tree International Poetry Prize, the 2012 Betsy Colquitt Award for Poetry from Descant magazine, the 2011 James Knudsen Editor's Prize in Fiction from Bayou Magazine, the 2011 OSA Enizagam Award for Fiction, the 2010 Anderbo Poetry Prize, and second prize in the 2010 Iowa Review Awards for Fiction. Jendi's work has appeared in Poetry, The New Criterion, Mudfish, Passages North, Cutthroat, Best American Poetry 1990, and many other publications. See their interview in RoundPier and subscribe to their Substack.
