It’s National Poetry Month, and in the spirit of the season, you’re officially invited to enter AVLtoday’s first poetry contest.

This contest is open to all, and the rules couldn’t be more simple: turn today’s newsletter into a poem.

We’ll clarify. Using only the words that appear in this newsletter, craft an original poem of up to 125 words. Unlike an erasure poem, the words do not have to appear in the order they’re found. Mix and match how you please. Any English word appearing anywhere in today’s newsletter is fair game, including the ones you’re reading right now (we’ll throw some fun ones at you: Banana. Titular. Bedlam.). If a word appears once, you can only use it once.

The rules

Submit your poem here by 11:59 p.m. on Thurs., April 21.
Include a title + author’s name in your submission. Titles are an exception to the rule, and do not need to pull words from the newsletter.
Poems, excluding title and author’s name, must be 125 words or less.

The fun stuff

While we’ve placed a pretty big limitation on your poem’s words, the form + direction is up to you — and we can’t wait to see what you all come up with.
The Editorial team behind AVLtoday will narrow submissions down to a group of finalists based on style, originality, artistic quality, and creativity. Finalists will be announced the last week of April in our newsletter, and then we’ll poll our readers for their favorite poem. The winner’s poem will be featured on our website — in addition to winning bragging rights, of course.
Pro tip: To make the process easier on yourself, we recommend printing out today’s issue, highlighting the words you find most interesting, and crossing them out as you include them in your poem.
Psst…Every single word has to come from the newsletter, so don’t forget to keep track of your articles (words like “the” and “a”).

Happy writing, Asheville!