07 Aug 2012 01:22:44
There's the Forward prizes for poetry, the prestigious TS Eliot award, and now the Attys, a new trophy for online verse named after the Canadian novelist and poet Margaret Atwood.
The Attys, launched by social reading site Wattpad, are specifically for digital poetry, and are taking entries from both amateurs and the more experienced. "Poems can be submitted from anywhere, and we anticipate that some entries will be written on mobile devices," said Allen Lau, co-founder of Wattpad, which is produced in Toronto, Canada. "We want to create a digital-first opportunity for poets to share their work and for audiences to discover the genre [and we] are excited to see how the world connects over poetry."
Atwood, who joined Wattpad's community of nine million writers and readers in June, will be judging the prize, for which competitors must enter 10 poems as a collection, each demonstrating a different poetic form. Prizes will range from $1,000 (£640) to feedback sessions from the Booker-winning author.
"I'm very honoured to have it named after me. Poetry is at the core of each language, and language itself is at the core of our humanity," said Atwood. "I hope that all entrants will enjoy both composing and reading the poems of others. These are very ancient pleasures; by sharing in them, we share in our own deep history."
The author has been sharing her own poetry with readers on Wattpad, with three new poems now posted online: Update on Werewolves, Thriller Suite and the most recent Ghost Cat, in which she writes: "Cats suffer from dementia too. Did you know that?/Ours did. Not the black one, smart enough/To be neurotic and evade the vet./ The other one, the furrier's muff, the piece of fluff."
"I might be a ghost cat because somehow I relate to this completely," complimented one reader.
