Monday, May 26, 2014

I won 3rd place in a poetry competition.

     Approximately one year ago I entered a nationwide (and apparently multi-nation) poetry competition and I found out how I did on May 23rd, 2014 by means of a letter from Eber & Wein Publishing. I was one of the one hundred 3rd place winners. Twenty people got 2nd place and naturally, one person got 1st place. I have never submitted a poem to a contest before, so I feel pretty good about having placed. How often do I write poetry? Not often at all; I've perhaps written only 50 poems in my whole life. Although I don't practice writing poetry with any sign of diligence, I do read voraciously and I spent 16 weeks of my life translating Latin poems into English (about 18 years ago). When I took Latin the first two semesters were like any foreign language course, but the third semester consisted of translating poems. Latin poetry has Latin idioms and those are not easy things to understand, due to the fact that I was not alive in ancient Rome. I had a easier time with Differential Equations than I did with Latin poetry.