Yesterday I posted a poem entitled Emergence to our Schizophrenic summers category, which has been a graveyard filled with the remnants of submissions past for over a month now. Yes, Jessie and I became bored with the format — monthly poetry themes that we would arduously and obligingly toil over to submit, usually days after the end of the month (or sometimes not at all). And we have had precious few submissions from others (ahem! fellow poets).

But we cannot reasonably expect others to submit to a monthly theme that we barely participate in ourselves. It was time for a change. And I believe we have found an appropriate and much more invigorating use for this space.

The Schizophrenic Summers Challenge

Instead of one of us (Jessie) arbitrarily choosing a poetic theme and structure for everyone else (me) to follow, we are evolving Schizophrenic Summers into an open challenge format. Here are the Rules:

To Challenge Other Writers:

1. One person will post a poem of theirs to their own website (or submit to RSPC, if you like). This poem can be any style, theme, or form.
2. They will then post a follow-up Challenge Call to RSPC’s Schizophrenic Summers category. (For other writers, this call would be submitted to us at info@redstringpapercuts.com. We could also simply reblog it from your site — we just have to know about it.)
3. The Challenge period will then run for two weeks from the date of the Challenge Call for any others to respond.
4. We will run only one challenge at a time.

To Answer a Challenge Call:

1. Anyone may answer a Challenge Call by posting a response poem of the same theme/structure to their own websites/blogs.
2. Copy-paste the link to your response into the comments of the original Challenge Call. We want to see your responses!
3. Enjoy the other responses!

We’re really hoping this will help engage the small community of writers and blog followers we’ve built over the last two years. We also learned that the main flaw of our original Schizo format was that it only drew attention to our site. With this new format, we hope to encourage the sharing of content and ideas across  websites. So please participate!

Okay, onto my challenge.

First Challenge Call

Theme: the fear of an overwhelming power

Structure: free verse

Challenge deadline: September 22

See my poem, Emergence, if you want to respond. You have two weeks!

Steve D