FYI: CUNY Undergraduate Poetry Awards

          This is the inaugural year for the CUNY Undergrad Poetry Awards and as such should be jumped upon by anyone with any interest in poetry because there's a good chance that the field will be smaller this year than in the coming years, giving anyone who enters a better shot at some cash. I mean, it's not often that writing poetry translates into a lucrative venture, anyway.

Here's the rundown about the categories as I see them:

Lyric Poetry

- A lyric style generally refers to poetry with a bent toward formal rhythmic concerns and/or has a discernible rhyme scheme but is not utilizing a particular form such as a sonnet, a ghazal, or a villanelle.

- A quintessential (and short) example of a lyric poem is Robert Frost's "Fire and Ice":

Some say the world will end in fire,
  Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
  But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
  To say that for destruction ice
Is also great,
  And would suffice.

- I'd also like to think that, because lyric poetry encompasses blank verse (poem with formal rhythm but no rhyme), this category would be suited to free verse and more contemporary styles as well. So, if your submission doesn't seem to fit anywhere else, I'd try this category.

Dramatic Monologue

- In dramatic monologue, the poem is derived and delivered through the self or a persona, hauling commentary on self and the world with it.

- Slam and rap are also included in this category, both of which are reliant on rhythm and, at times, rhyme schemes, but this isn't to say that the poetry has to rhyme or be formally rhythmic, so to say. 

- Here are a few examples:

Saul Williams:

Shira Erlichmann @ AS220 in Providence:

Billy Shakes

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow

Closed and Traditional Forms
- Exactly as it says. Everything from Acrostics to Pantoumes to the ones I listed above.

Performance Poetry
- This seems a bit up in the air. All I can say is that the poem must be one part vocal and one part physical, and you have to videotape it. I think that this can be like the slam videos that I posted above, or you can get a little more creative with it. Read a monologue to a stranger on the subway. Something like that.