There once was a gal from Atlanta,
Who wrote of her passion for Fanta …
Hmm, maybe winning White Oak Kitchen & Cocktails's inaugural poetry contest won't be so easy after all.
This is no small potatoes contest the high profile Atlanta restaurant has cooked up. Top prize in the first annual White Oak Kitchen & Cocktails Prize in Southern Poetry is $1,500. Maybe equally delicious, the winning work will be prominently featured on the Valentine’s Day menu that runs from Feb. 12-14 at the restaurant that’s centrally located at the corner of Peachtree and Baker streets.
I think that I shall never see,
A more handsomely situated downtown eatery
OK, that's just a blatant attempt to work the judges. Or judge, in this case. He's Kevin Young, award-winning author of 11 books of poetry and prose and the Charles Howard Candler Professor of English & Creative Writing and the Curator of Literary Collections and the Raymond Danowski Poetry Library at Emory University.
He knows his poetry onions, in other words. Don’t be tryin’ to slip some half-baked version of a love poem by him and expect to win.
Yep, that’s right, all poems entered in the contest must be about love in some way (What, you were expecting something else for the Valentine’s Day menu?). But the definition seems pretty elastic:
“Must be on the topic of ‘Love,’” say the rules for submission. “But can be a ‘Love’ of anything.”
It says nothing about having to work the subject of food into the couplets somehow. Which may be a good thing.
What kind of a poetic fool are ya,
If you’re trying to find a rhyme for arugula?
White Oak says the contest is part of its "continuing celebration of Southern culture and arts." And they really mean it, limiting participation to people currently living in Georgia and 12 other Southern states (see the full list here, along with the complete contest rules).
Only one entry allowed per person, and they can’t be longer than 40 lines. Poems must be submitted to info@whiteoakkitchen.com before Feb. 5.
