John H. Reid, Founder of the Tom Howard Poetry and Short Story Contests
Jendi Reiter conducted this exclusive email interview with John H. Reid, the Australian founder and judge of several major writing contests: the Tom Howard Poetry Contest, the Tom Howard Short Story Contest, and the Margaret Reid Poetry Contest for formal poetry. (Winning Writers assists with entry handling for these contests.) The author of numerous novels and books of film criticism, Reid has also written the indispensable guide Write Ways to Win Writing Contests.
Q: How has your experience as a contest judge affected your behavior as a contest entrant, and vice versa? Have you become more sympathetic, or less sympathetic, to certain foibles of each group?
A: As an entrant, one thing I've learnt to avoid are contests with more than one judge. It's rare indeed for two or three judges to agree on the list of finalists, let alone the placings within that list. The results of such contests are inevitably a compromise in which the actual prizewinners are lucky contestants who have managed to appeal to - or at least not antagonize - all the judges.
As a judge, I've learnt to appreciate just how tolerant I am compared to many of my fellows. I've met judges who quite automatically consign to the reject bin all those entries that don't measure up to their ideals of spelling, grammar and punctuation, no matter how talented their author's characterization and narrative skills. If Charles Dickens had submitted Bleak House to some of these judges, his masterpiece would never have seen the light of day. (Dickens invented his own system of punctuation and thought himself above the conventional rules. And why not?)
So to answer your question, I've become much more sympathetic to entrants, much less tolerant of high-and-mighty judges.
Q: How can contest organizers attract more high-quality entries that follow the rules? Why is noncompliance so common?
A: I know that noncompliance is a common complaint of contest organizers. The reason for this, I feel, is almost entirely the fault of the organizers. Often the rules are so complicated that Einstein himself would have difficulty following their permutations. I try to make the rules as simple as possible and I only really enforce two of them: Entries must be postmarked or submitted online by the due date and entries must be paid for.
I will admit that in the poetry contest, many unpaid entries, some of quite good quality, are received. The reason for this undoubtedly lies in the proliferation of free contests on the net. What can be done about it? Nothing. It's a shame to see all these entrants wasting their time, but that's the way contest cookies crumble.
Q: Name three major ways that contests treat their entrants unfairly. What improvements do you suggest?
A: Number one is naming the judge (or judges) after the closing date of the contest. That's my pet gripe. It means that authors are flying completely blind and don't even know the sex of the judge. You could submit the greatest football story of all time, but if the judge turns out to be a lady with no interest in sports, forget it! On the other hand, if you entered a really sweet story about a lovely but impoverished girl who Cinderella-like loses her gloves but doesn't live happily ever after (e.g. "The Fawn Gloves", a famous story by Jerome K. Jerome) and the judge is a gridiron fan...
Number two is extending the deadline or closing date. This is usually a sign that the contest is in trouble because not enough entries have been received to cover the prize money, but it's very unfair to authors who sent their entries in on time.
Number three is pre-selecting. This usually happens when the judge is a famous author. He or she has neither time nor competence to actually read all the entries, so this is done by an ad hoc committee of idiots, volunteer janitors and other well-meaning but largely thick-headed amateurs who prepare a short list of ten or twenty (or thirty at the most) submissions for the distinguished judge to read and adjudicate upon.
Q: Name three of the most common and serious breaches of etiquette by contest entrants.
A: Failure to pay entry fees. Using a dud check or credit card to pay entry fees. Asking that entry fees be waived because writer is impoverished, under age, mentally defective, etc.
Q: Most poetry contests, unfortunately, don't publish judges' comments about why the non-winning entries fell short. Should unsuccessful entrants ever correspond with the judge? What should they say, or avoid saying?
A: Almost all contests discourage correspondence because it usually takes the form of a personal gripe. Many entrants are peculiarly one-eyed when it comes to judging the worth of their own work. In poetry contests, the writers of doggerel, particularly religious doggerel, seem to regard the worthiness of their subject matter as imparting an automatic uplifting quality to hackneyed sentiments and trite aphorisms. It takes real talent to write religious, political or polemical verse well. Every aspiring poet in these fields should read Margaret Havill Reid. If you can't write like Margaret Reid, forget it!
Q: How can entrants make an educated guess at the judges' tastes when the poetry contest is "open theme", or the judges are anonymous till the contest closes?
A: In the latter case, the only recourse is to have a glance at previous winning entries (if available). As to "open theme", there is no such animal. I discuss this subject at considerable length in my book, Write Ways to Win Writing Contests. Suffice to say here that the most important indicator as to how wide open the "open theme" is can be judged by that magic word, "publication". If publication is offered, that "open theme" is automatically restricted by censorship regulations and the combined sensitivities of printers, distributors, sales managers, booksellers, librarians, schoolteachers, clergymen and assorted community do-gooders. It's amazing how many entrants ignore this fact of life and send in stories and poems that would burn the pages of Playboy.
Q: In a poetry contest with a set theme, what makes an entry stand out?
A: I answer this one in my book, too. And that answer applies equally to short story and essay contests. All a writer has to do is to ask himself or herself what are the obvious ways that this set theme will be tackled. And then it's just a matter of "Go thou and do otherwise!"
Q: Why submit to poetry contests? What are the benefits and the drawbacks, and how would this calculus change as a poet became more successful?
A: Poetry contests are a poet's bread-and-butter. When was the last time a book of poetry hit The New York Times best-seller lists? Yes, I know there have been a few, but when you look at the percentage of best-selling poetry to other forms of literature, you'll notice a wide gap. I believe this gap is increasing, in spite of (or maybe because of) the popularity of poetry on the net.
Poets benefit from a contest win not only by the money but by the all-important prestige of winning. The drawback, however, is the potential hazard of a nationally acclaimed poet's relegation to Highly Commended, or even worse, just plain Commended, as opposed to winning a top prize.
Q: Contests with smaller prizes and/or lower profiles may be less of a stretch for emerging writers. On the other hand, entering too many third-tier contests may be a waste of money. How does one find the right balance?
A: The theory is that smaller contests can provide good experience. I don't agree. You can get a more profitable experience submitting to larger and more well-organized contests. Furthermore, the judging in third-tier contests is often left in the hands of amateurs, eccentrics and even worse, partisans, who are keen to recognize the efforts of their friends, their members, their fellow townspeople, etc.
Q: Given a few dozen poetry manuscript contests (contests for unpublished full-length books) with similar cash prizes and entry fees, how can a poet discover which of these publishers would be best to work with? Small presses vary widely with respect to book design, marketing efforts, solvency, treatment of authors, etc., yet this information is hard to discover until after the contract is signed. Any clues?
A: Performing a search at Google will often bring up a surprising amount of information on publishers, both good and bad. But you will need to be persistent. That information could well be hidden on page 78 or 92.
I will ask myself a question: Do you enjoy judging poetry contests?
I love it! Judging a poetry contest is a walkover compared to judging prose. There's nothing I like better than to read a well-crafted poem that says something. It doesn't have to be something profound or learned or earth-shattering. It can be (and often should be) something quite simple, but expressed in a way that is original, novel, unusual, striking or just plainly and obviously heartfelt.
Winter 2004-2005
