Sex and erotic poetry compliments together like sun and moon. Erotic verses were usually written to seduce, to beguile, to boast of conquests, to pull, to memorialize fleeting moments as it was first sight love, or to represent undignified slavery to lust. Poets like Richard Lovelace, Andrew Marvell, Walt Whitman, William Carlos Williams, Amy Lowell, and E.E. Cummings have found myriad ways to observe nature that lay bare the emotions and body.
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This month of Valentine, Wingless Dreamer Publisher is proud to hold the Erotic Poetry Contest 2022. The real challenge is how much detail should you expose and avoid sex writing that strikes a false note because of overly vulgar language. This poetry challenge is a tightrope act and only a good erotic poem knows how to walk the line. So good luck.
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Deadline: 28th February 2022.
Rules:
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The competition is open to anyone aged 18 or over.
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Poems may be on any subject and in any form or style as long as it goes well with the theme for the contest.
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They must be typed and not longer than 40 lines (excluding title).
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Remember one poem submission per contest.
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Poems should be in English, must be the entrant’s own work and should not have been published or accepted for publication elsewhere (including online), should not have won another poetry competition, or be the translated work of another poet.
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All poems are judged anonymously and should not bear your name, or any other form of identification.
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Our judges will read all entries.
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No changes can be made to a poem once it has been submitted.
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The decision of the judge is final and no correspondence will be entered into.
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WinglessDreamer Poetry Festival Trustees, employees or associates, or members of their families, may not enter.
March 18, 2022 | Wingless Dreamer | Announcements
Wingless Dreamer publishers were seeking out talented writers who know how to unleash the inner desires of the human body into beautiful poetry. We wanted our writers to achieve a delicate balance between sex and eroticism in their poetries. We wished to explore the erotic natures of humans through poetry and appreciate its beauty through the written form. The undignified slave to lust is transformed throughout its poetic verse, into something that makes the vulgar beautiful and allows the poet to paint an erotic portrait that appeals to our deepest desires. Comparable to lunar and solar forces working together, eroticism and sex complement each other exquisitely in this anthology, to create an elixir of poetic verse that will captivate the reader.
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Drumroll please as we announce our winner of this contest!
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GARY BEAUMIER – SIROCCO
Gary Beaumier is the author of two books of poetry From My Family to Yours published through Finishing Line Press and Dented Brown Fedora published by Uncollected Press. He has been a boat builder, a teacher, a garbage man, a bookstore manager, and a Gandy dancer amongst many other occupations. He once taught poetry in a women’s prison.
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Cue the confetti for the first runner-up of this contest:
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GABRIEL MCLEOD – DISTANT SHORES AND DUMPSTER FIRES
Gabriel McLeod is an artist, photographer, and writer that currently resides in the United States with his two amazing daughters in a home where books line the walls. His work has been featured in Beyond Words Literary Magazine, The Elephant Journal, Storyteller Magazine, Poet’s Choice, and Wingless Dreamer. He is currently working on a collection of short stories and art for publication. You can follow him on IG at @gabrielmcleod
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Cue the confetti for the second runner-up of this contest:
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SARAH BRICAULT – SKY
Sarah Bricault has Ph.D. in neurobiology and currently works as a postdoc in that field. Her fascination with the mind and how it processes information often finds itself in her poetry, as do themes related to mental health. For more info on Sarah, check out SarahBricault.net!
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Yohooo! A big round of applause for our top finalists:
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MOLLY HANNA – EVENING GLORIES
Molly Hanna is a Queer Appalachian Poet studying Environmental Studies at The University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill. Her poetry explores emotion and experience through imagery drawn from nature surrounding her – both the beautiful and the ugly. She is passionate about poems becoming experiences and time capsules for herself and others; storytelling of emotions. Her most recent focus has been on sexuality, mental health struggles, and neurodivergence as told through the environment she observes around her.
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STEVE GERSON – BREATHLESS
Steve Gerson writes poetry and flash about life’s dissonance and dynamism. He’s proud to have published in Panoplyzine, Route 7, Poets Reading the News, Crack the Spine, Decadent Review, Underwood Press, Dillydoun Review, In Parentheses, Vermillion, and more. Check out his chapbook Once Planed Straight: Poetry of the Prairies from Spartan Press.
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JAMES B. NICOLA – ANTICIPATION
James B. Nicola is a frequent contributor to Wingless Dreamer. His full-length collections are Manhattan Plaza (2014), Stage to Page: Poems from the Theater (2016), Wind in the Cave (2017), Out of Nothing: Poems of Art and Artists (2018), Quickening: Poems from Before and Beyond (2019), and Fires of Heaven: Poems of Faith and Sense (2021). His poetry and prose have appeared in the Antioch, Southwest, Green Mountains, and Atlanta Reviews; Rattle; Barrow Street; Tar River; and Poetry East, garnering two Willow Review awards, a Dana Literary award, eight Pushcart nominations, a Best of the Net nom, a Rhysling nom, plus a People’s Choice award from Storyteller magazine, for which he feels both stunned and grateful. His nonfiction book Playing the Audience won a Choice award. A Yale grad, he hosts the Hell’s Kitchen International Writers’ Roundtable at his library branch in Manhattan: walk-ins welcome.
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DICK ALTMAN – THE WOMAN I WAKE TO
Dick Altman writes in the high, thin, magical air of Santa Fe, NM, where, at 7,000 feet, reality and imagination often blur. He is published in Santa Fe Literary Review, American Journal of Poetry, riverSedge, Fredericksburg Literary Review, Foliate Oak, Blue Line, THE Magazine, Humana obscura, , The Offbeat, Haunted Waters Press, Split Rock Review, The RavensPerch, Beyond Words, Sky Island Journal and others here and abroad. A poetry winner of Santa Fe New Mexican’s annual literary competition, he has in progress two collections of some 100 published poems.
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NATALIE COUILLARD – STILL DARK
Natalie is a PSW in a Long Term Care facility caring for seniors. She began writing again after an energy healing by a good friend with the intent to assist her in meditation. Writing poetry is her version of meditating, consequently bringing some healing and peace. Her writing journey is in its infancy and she looks forward to seeing where it takes her. She’s had five poems published so far. A Claim to Power…2020 Summer Anthology: A Headrest for Your Soul Other Wordly Women Press Cracks in the Mirror…2020 Winter Anthology: Healing Felines and Femmes. Other Worldly Women Press Nemesis Dawning For Samhain 2021 Wingless Dreamer
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SAMANTHA LORENZ – CONNECTION
My name is Samantha Lorenz and I enjoy the genres of fiction and fantasy. Graduating with a Bachelor’s Degree in English with a minor in creative writing back in 2020, I’ve always loved the fiction genre for its creativity and ways to mold it from short stories to works like poetry and hope to continue bringing out my own writing ideas for the world to read and enjoy.
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TEJASWINEE ROYCHOWDHURY – WHEN YOU AND I COLLIDE
Tejaswinee Roychowdhury, a lawyer, lives in West Bengal, India, and writes fiction, CNF, and the occasional poetry. Her work has appeared / will appear in Brave Voices Magazine, Boats Against The Current, Ayaskala, Ongoing, Alphabet Box, Roi Fainéant Press, and elsewhere. She tweets at @TejaswineeRC and chronicles her list of works at linktr.ee/tejaswinee.
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ELIJAH KAZLAUSKAS – ONE HAIKU
Elijah Kazlauskas is an aspiring Canadian writer with a B.A. in English who is currently visiting Kosovo.
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STEPHANIE MORDI – LUST-TAINTED LOVE-INSATIABLE ONE
Stephanie Mordi is an aspiring poet whose hobbies include: sleeping, eating, and anything related to writing. She has a previously published poem under one of the Wingless Dreamers Collections.
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On behalf of the Wingless Dreamer team, we would like to congratulate all the winners for making it to our anthology, Erotica of eternity. The contributor’s list will soon be uploaded by Monday, 21st March 2022. The book for this contest is out now in our bookstore and soon be available on Amazon and other marketplaces as well.
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Wait, it’s not over yet. Open the champagne bottle for the first exclusive glimpse of our upcoming anthology, Erotica of Eternity. Hold your breath.
March 11, 2022 | Wingless Dreamer | Announcements
Hello everyone,
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Hope you all are doing well. We apologize but there had been a delay in announcing the winners of the Erotica Poetry Contest 2022. We’ve been going through the hundreds of entries over the past few weeks, giving plenty of time to each submission, and eventually got down to a shortlist of around 50 submissions.
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Thank you to everyone who took the time to enter our contest and we truly appreciate how much effort all of you went to!! We request you to kindly have patience and give us a little bit more time to announce the winners. We won’t take it long, hopefully by 18th March 2022. We will email all the selected participants with more highlights on this.
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Thank you for understanding.
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Ruchi Acharya
Wingless Dreamer Publisher