Project Verse Seeks Applicants!

Can you write under pressure without breaking a sweat?
Always telling friends that writing a crown of heroic sonnets is a cinch?
Do you dream of perfect line breaks?
If you think you’ve got the write moves, I’ve got the poetry competition for you.

Project Verse


Dustin Brookshire, through I Was Born Doing Reference Work in Sin and Limp Wrist, is proud to announce Project Verse, the self-proclaimed “Project Runway” of the poetry world.

Project Verse is a free competition set to be a grueling but fun competition for poets. It’s a 10-week competition, and the winner will be announced week 11. Each Monday, an assignment will be posted in I Was Born Doing Reference Work in Sin. Poets will have to complete and submit the assignment by noon Friday of the same week. The judges will read and score the assignments over the weekend, and the judgment will be posted in I Was Born Doing Reference Work in Sin the following Monday.

Who are the judges? Dustin Brookshire, Beth Gylys, and Dana Guthrie Martin are your weekly judges; however, it wouldn't be fun without a little variety. Each week, except for the first week of the competition, there will be a guest judge. I would give you the list of guest judges, but that wouldn't be any fun either! We have a varied list of guest judges ranging from Pushcart Prize nominees and winners to a Lambda Literary Award recipient to National Endowment for the Arts fellowship recipients.

And a competition wouldn't be complete without a prize! The winner of Project Verse receives the following prize package:
 a contract for a limited edition chapbook published by Limp Wrist
 a weeklong residency at Marilyn Nelson's Soul Mountain Retreat* (for the poet to revise and finish his/her chapbook)
 an interview with Joe Milford of “The Joe Milford Poetry Show”
 a review of the chapbook that will be published in ouroboros review and Limp Wrist
 a year subscription to the Naugatuck River Review
 a copy of Best Gay Poetry 2008
 a copy of the 2008 Squaw Valley Review



How do you apply to compete in Project Verse?
 Write a short bio with a max of 200 words. (Make it personal yet poetic.)
 In 500 words or less, respond to the words of Ellen Bryant Voigt, "It's all a draft until you die."
 Submit a max of 10 unpublished poems, no more than 20 pages total.
 If available, provide links to no more than two sites where your work may be viewed.
 Copy and paste the Rules/Regulations/All That Jazz section on its own page
 "I, *Insert name here*, agree to follow all items listed under the Rules/Regulations/& All That Jazz for Project Verse. I understand that not following these items, at any point during the competition, will result in my being disqualified from Project Verse.
 All requested information should be sent in the order requested above, in one Microsoft Word document, to Dustin Brookshire at dustinvbrookshire@gmail.com by 3/01/09. The subject line of the email should read, "Project Verse: Insert Your Name." Your name and email address must appear on every page of your Microsoft Word document. Numbering your pages will make us smile; however, it won't sway our decision on having you as a contestant.


Rules/Regulations/All That Jazz
 Contestants will be selected from a pool of 15 semi-finalists, which in return will be narrowed down to the 11 Project Verse contestants.
 Contestants may not have published more than one full collection of poetry. (Number of chapbook publications does not matter.)
 Contestants must not have studied with any of the weekly judges in a collegiate setting or be related to any of the weekly judges (by blood, marriage, or love affair).
 Contestants must work solo on the weekly Project Verse assignments. Outside help from friends, family, professors, etc. is strictly prohibited and is cheating. Cheaters will be disqualified from Project Verse and thoroughly gossiped about throughout the blogosphere.
 Contestants must agree not to use any previously written poems for a Project Verse weekly assignment, unless the weekly assignment requests it.
 Contestants must be willing to complete pages two and three from the Soul Mountain Retreat application package. (Click here to see the forms.)
 All written information collected from the application, excluding the information from the Soul Mountain Retreat forms, may be published in I Was Born Doing Reference Work in Sin.
 The winner's chapbook will be published in the Limp Wrist limited edition chapbook series. The chapbook will include, but will not be limited to, the poems the winner wrote during the Project Verse competition. The chapbook must receive approval from Limp Wrist before being published.
 By participating in Project Verse, you agree to acknowledge Project Verse as first publisher in future reprints of books, anthologies, website publications, podcasts, radio, etc. Copyright reverts back to authors upon appearance in the Project Verse competition, which takes place on the I Was Born Doing Reference Work in Sin site.
 While the copyright reverts back to the author upon appearance in the Project Verse competition, Dustin Brookshire in combination with Project Verse and I Was Born Doing Reference Work in Sin, reserve the right to use any poems from the competition to create an anthology in the future.


*Please note: The winner of the competition will be required to arrange transportation to and from Soul Mountain Retreat. The fees of the residency are taken care of by Dustin Brookshire on behalf of I Was Born Doing Reference Work in Sin.

Don't forget about the autographed items on raffle: CLICK HERE FOR INFO ON THE LIMP WRIST SCHOLARSHIP RAFFLE