The results are in and it’s a tie. Billy says

And yes, I did call the election a few hours early but with these 2 great poets locked in a photo finish and me with a real day job to go to early in the morning… Well, I made the rules and I can bend the rules.
Want to know a secret? Prior to their nominations I had never heard of either of the winners. But that’s exactly what the contest is all about– making a few poets you might have never heard of a little better known. To be perfectly honest, my pick lost.
So what did Sina and Robert win? Bragging rights and the responsibility to promote other lesser known poets through their blogs, websites, interviews, notes passed under the desks, streetplanes (Sorry, I couldn’t resist) or via any other means they wish. And if by chance we should ever actually meet in person I’ll spring for lunch.
So for those critics of the process… Get over it. We have 2 laureates this year. Everyone nominated deserved to win and in a small way they were all winners.

Yay, Billy. Love that attitude.
Good call. As he said, running that close, he’d probably have to do a recount and who has the time or desire for that.
It’s too bad that a few people being sour made the process less pleasant for everyone with the insertion of rants and blames.
The point is good fun and exploring pages of peers who are all on the side of poetry. Robert Lee Brewer has been blogging 3 years and has been at the centre of a groundswell that provides a platform where hundreds of new poets congregate and read each other and get a motivational boost. Each year his interviews and prompts get more of a following.
Sina Queyras has been blogging about poetry for 6 years and engaging at Harriot and commenting on other blogs to keep exploring the dialogue of what poetry is and what it is and can do. She has works in print, 3 poetry books of her own and one edited anthology. How sweet her story of her 80-year-old maternal aunt getting involved. “Poetry, she may not quite understand, or like, but votes–that she could do.”

A picture taken just before the April 26th OIWF poetry night reading. Here is the first-prize winner of the Bywords/Think Ink Secondary School poetry contest: Christine Klippenstein, Grade 12, Canterbury High School. She wrote a poem about cooling tea, inspired by Stephanie Bolster’s Two Bowls of Milk. It shows promise beyond her years according to judge Marcus McCann. The graceful piece was at home on the stage of published poets and had a lovely turn at the end that pushed the depth further. Nice piece.

Are you twitter-practiced? Want to add a thought of that length to Concordia’s Tickertape Project?
[Aaaaaand, I forgot to press post yesterday. Even with this retro-posting I missed 3 poetry month days entirely. Ah, rules and their breaking.]
What else? Quarc, no quirks? Art and Science call issue.
Have you voted for Sina Queyras as 2010 Poet Laureate of the Blogosphere today? The margin of votes hovering between a couple and a couple dozen depending on the hour.
The 30th is the last day to vote for Buying Cigarettes for the Dog. Results announced in two weeks.

The self-imposed challenge of a thought on poems a day for April has faltered but there’s this which spurts fun I wouldn’t want to miss mention of: TLHOB-QO’ JA’-QO’ A Contemporary Klingon Lyric in Traditional Form by Hugh Tribbey.
And hopes for write ups of poet-y things still when my energy rallies after fest.

Do you compose in snippets? Or need a flat-out stretch of time? Only when alone? Need noise around?
I was recently pondering how one functions best in whatever one is habituated to. If one is used to living a narrow grid with corrective buzzers and cutoffs and constraints, one learns a thought habit compatible with the regimented externally-disrupted/controlled routine. When given an open field, how to orient and pace oneself? If one is used to not needing time and space management, the sudden imposition abrades. One adapts fairly quickly.
Judy McCrosky was thinking about distractions and her optimal environment for writing and how that’s shifted for her. [thanks to Brenda for pointing out.]
I got used to having chunks of time between 3 and 10 hours long. Long time isn’t the same as effective time. My own breath became disruptive, and my back and my hunger or thirst or bladder but basically I could govern the time as I needed. I could pursue a thought without penalty, do shuffle work on one line for hours if need be.
If I’m nervous all my senses being turned up means I can get distracted by sound or movement easily. I’d prefer utter silence. Especially no music. Language around me I can screen out but rhythms of music displace writing. Once I screen it out I can write but it uses mental energy to do that and I tire faster.
I thought I needed a quiet environment but that wasn’t the most salient element. Noise in the street that doesn’t pertain to me doesn’t disrupt work. (Sleep yes, work, no.) Music impairs function. A burst of it can bind up some stray emotional energy and chelate it from the system but that is in a break from composition or editing.
I realized that I could work easily in bustle or among a low buzz. (One loud talker in a room doesn’t work tho especially writing in restaurants when the anecdotes told were hands down more interesting than anything I could come up with. Then I had to switch to Henry Higgins’ role.)
Whether I could fall into a flow was more a result of my default priorities. Priorities that worked when we saw each other a couple hours a day have to shift now that it’s 24/7. I was used to weighing any sound of hubby as being communicative and trump-worthy of anything I might be doing. We were used to having little time together so hearing each other’s voice always meant one of us was addressing the other. However we both mutter to ourselves as we work. We have to learn to screen each other out for certain hours.
That realization applies outwards as well. Email doesn’t distract unless I take on the emotional attachment of wanting to help someone with something. That case throws me into unsettled state of fret in which I can’t prioritize fiction (prose or poetry) because real life wins. It is a matter of deciding “real life” doesn’t always have to win. Sometimes I can elect to finish my pursuit and let the various household beepers beep to their non-heart’s content. Phone already has a system for collecting messages. Notes can go under the door.
Whatever random happenstance doesn’t need to set the agenda and overturn my apple cart. I’ve been spending my time picking up the same increasingly bruised apples over and over.
Being too responsive is futile and unnecessary. It is a sort of egocentricity to think that being asked something requires a yes.