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Poetry Scholarships I'll get into talking about poetry scholarships in a roundabout way by first bringing up Natalie Goldberg. As an impressionable teenager, I read in her book "Writing down the Bones" probably the best writing advice ever, in four concise steps: "1. Don't think. 2. Be specific. 3. Keep your hand moving. 4. Lose control." The same four pieces of advice can apply in seeking out poetry scholarships: Don't think that you're not good enough to get one. Be specific in defining your goal and how to attain it. Keep your hand moving as you thumb through scholarship directories and fill out applications. And be prepared to lose control of your inhibitions, because it's one thing to secretly love your work in your journal, but quite another to hit the streets trying to sell it to the masses! Quite a bit of the poetry scholarships out there depend on some kind of contest entry, you see. Frequently there will be a limited number of poetry scholarships to hand out to the few winning essays from entrants. At least you can say that it is easy to screen a writing-related field this way! Your only challenge is to look up poetry scholarships offers, find out their requirements and deadlines, and then submit the winning entry. And you thought this would be difficult! I don't know how many companies out there are offering plain old poetry contests, but it seems like they're everywhere. You might go for one whose prizes are in the form of poetry scholarships, or just go for one that awards a cash prize and then spend that on tuition. Whatever you do, you should be persistent. Anybody can tell you in the writing field, you will collect a lot of rejection slips before you will get your first sale. The contest entries for poetry scholarships are just a preparation for the real world. You should be cautious not to be taken advantage of in pursuing poetry scholarships. For some reason, the public perception of poets - especially in Red-State Git-er-Done America - is that of a naive and narcissistic soul who is just waiting with money in hand to be paid to the first person who comes along and asks for it. While a modest processing fee for entrants is acceptable, you should just watch out for exorbitant fees charged by fly-by-night outfits. A processing fee is sometimes necessary for the same reason book publishers don't openly offer to read unsolicited manuscripts: it takes time and resources to read these submissions, and no matter how good you are, your entry will be in a pile of others, some of whom will be incredibly, awfully, hideously bad. Work as an editor some time and you'll see how bad it can get. Even though many contests for poetry scholarships may have different constraints on the kind of submissions, your best bet will be to have a piece of work which you've already done and redone and polished to perfection, then alter it for the purposes of the individual contest. For unconstrained contests, just have a sample of your best work ready. As a final note: very few young submitters tend to win. Especially bad is teen angst, "beatnik" style, and "slam" poetry - that stuff you rambled at the microphone at the coffee house might have gotten some applause over the latte crowd, but publishers want to be able to look at your work and think "This will make money!" Good luck, future wordsmiths! The future of literacy is in your hands! Article Snippet Click to Read Complete Article
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