Virtual Poetry Jam: The Winner

Photo by Rick Schulman via FlickrI've gotten myself into this mess.

A week ago, when I put out the call for people to submit videos of themselves reciting poetry, I wasn't sure what would happen. Since it was the first Virtual Poetry Jam I'd ever hosted, I didn't know if there would be zero entries or a hundred.

And, while I offered a $50 Amazon gift card for the winner, I guess I didn't think far enough ahead to realize that, ahem, I had to choose a winner. I, the one who spends enormous amounts of time battling between fruity or nutty in the ice cream aisle, had to determine which entry most deserved vast recognition and enormous financial reward.

You didn't make it easy, either. There were funny pieces, serious pieces, and thought-provoking pieces, poems you wrote or favorite verses by others (How could you have known that I love Thomas Hardy?). There was a squeaky nose, a backwards baseball cap, a frontwards baseball cap, and a witch with a spidery veil. All of the pieces can be found in the comments of the original post.

But I've made my decision. Kind of. There are two pieces that stood out to me as stellar but had completely different feels to them. 

So I've decided to award both a first and second place winner.

First place goes to John Lorson with a $50 Amazon gift card. Lorson's piece, Of Love and Rice won first place for its originality, timeliness, and presentation. 

Second place goes to Mark Weaver with a $25 Amazon gift card. Weaver's piece Dirty Truth kind of blew me away, and I love his presentation pacing and dialect.

Winners, send your e-mail address to write2denice AT gmail DOT com and I'll get those awards out to you. 

If you didn't win, know that I loved every single entry and I'm honored you chose to share your poetry here. I hope you'll return next month for yet another Virtual Poetry Jam.