My job had a writing competiton
The large tech company I work at had a writing competition, which they do every one or two years. Of course, I decided to enter. The theme was “coming full circle”. At first I started writing a poem about a relationship I had just gotten out of, but the poem had too much sexual innuendo so I decided not to risk submitting it. Two days before the submission deadline, my sleep deprived brain started putting together ideas and visions. At the time I had been reading Moby Dick, as well as some Lovecraft stories, and the influence of both is obvious in the final product I hurriedly put together in two nights. I felt satisfied with what I wrote, and after reading the other submissions I felt confident that mine was the best poem.
I am usually quite private with my writing, only sharing my works with my siblings and sometimes a close friend. But I am trying to be more open, so I sent this poem to my parents, grandparents, and a few friends. The feedback was generally positive, but not as much as I had hoped. It seemed that the poem was somewhat confusing, which I could see then reading it over. However, I have never felt bothered by someone else’s writing being confusing, whether philosophy or literature or poetry.
The contest would have two winners in each category - one selected by popular vote of the employees, and one selected by a panel of "local authors". Of course the former vote would be a popularity contest; I doubt many of my fellow employees read all of the submissions, so my hope was to win the latter vote. Even though I thought it was clear that my poem was a level above the rest, I still knew I would lose. And lose I did. I lost to one of those cliche poems that are like:
Sadness
I hate
Myself
I love
Nothing
What did I do wrong
(Now read it backwards)
I guess this panel of local authors had never seen that technique before and were just blown away by the twist ending. Or maybe they thought it fit the theme better. Or maybe my poem just wasn’t as good as I thought it was. There’s no accounting for taste, I guess. Either way it still made me angry. I’m over it now, and of course it doesn’t really matter, but I wanted to share this story anyway. It feels like a microcosm of something, although I’m not sure exactly what. I’ve written some other things related to this nameless phenomenon, and I’ll be exploring it more here, on this substack.