Editor Interview: Wergle Flomp Humor Poetry Contest

Humor poetry

Journals: Solstice Lit Mag, New Millennium Writings, Barrelhouse, Fence
Publishers: Yes Yes Books, Graywolf, Alice James Books, Sibling Rivalry Press, Saddle Road Press

The Wergle Flomp Humor Poetry Contest at Winning Writers is one of the largest cash prizes for humor poetry. We are distinguished by our openness to all taste levels from G-rated light verse to bawdy satire, and our commitment to politically conscious judging (no prejudicial or punching-down humor).

Read the past winners and the judges' essays! Don't assume that light verse is easier to write; it's harder.

The best way to answer this question is by reading our judges' essays on the winners' page from each year.

Sending the wrong genre or theme because they didn't read the rules carefully (e.g. serious verse for a humor contest).

No, we are committed to anonymous judging, and would like entrants to leave their names off the attached files with their poems.

For the first-round screening, we can usually tell from the first few pages for prose, or stanzas for poetry. We read pretty much all of our finalists.

There are generally 3-4 rounds of judging, the first 1-2 by screeners (named on the contest page), the final rounds by the final judge.

We never edit except for cleaning up a stray typo (and entries with too many typos are eliminated from the contest). We feel it's important for the prize to be awarded to the entry as actually submitted, not a different version that we helped to improve. That keeps it fair for the other entrants.

We nominate for Best of the Net. One of our other contests' prizewinning essay was accepted there in 2017.