Please, if you would, offer your thoughts on this...

Please, if you would, offer your thoughts on this.

We will be looking at an expansion of contests in 2016, beginning in February. Each contest will have a theme and will required some fairly specific inclusions as far as style, subject matter, and length.

Additionally, the winner of each contest will get a $25, US dollar, gift certificate from Amazon.com. This will require the winners to provide, privately, their e-mail addresses.

Why are we doing this?

For several reasons.

1) We want you to write outside your comfort zone

First let me welcome all the members who have joined over the past 6 months. i hope you find your time here to be a rewarding experience.

It may be this year that here at Neopoet we will compile a book for the first time.
Last year saw a decline in the number of poets commenting on others works, as this helps to edit the poetry on stream, therefore making poems easier to be selected for a book, I hope that we can when asked start to become more active in Neopoets activities.
1.Comments:- are needed to judge the quality of the poetry we have here, this applies to all poets.
2. Chat Room:- this part of Neopoet needs better attendance.

Merry Christmas to all my Christian friends, Happy Hanuka to my Jewish friends, Happy solstice to my pagan friends and may my Atheist friends have a Good day.
Respectfully,
Rett Wiginton

I cannot stay long as this is the shortest day here in the Northern hemisphere.
So my friends, I am here in the United Kingdom, thought I would pop in and wish you all a wonderful Season, isn't it great that at this time of the year, that near all the Earth comes together in some form or another to wish each other well.
This season should last all year, Our Sothern Hemisphere friends, mostly in Australia or where ever you are have a lovely few days off.

Renga is a fun way for poets to come together write a shared poem collaboratively. Renga is Japanese style of writing that's a 1,000 years old. "Renga is an art of time and space as well as words and images." The Renga platform is a place where neopoets come, write and read renga together; it's a place similar to the temporary wooden structured by Alec Finlay at http://www.renga-platform.co.uk/.

Every day I strive to be a better poet.

I will never be a better poet by soliciting people to tell me my work is flawless. My assumption is that every other poet here desires the same type of interaction.

My assumption is, of course, flawed. So, instead of dealing with hurt feelings and the subsequent pouting, I only critique poems when I am asked to.

If you have a specific work you would like critiqued, let me know.

The 2016 contest format will be very structured.

What does this mean?

It means that each contest will have a set of rules and requirements and entries must abide by these rules and requirements.

Why?

Neopoet is a poetry workshop. If all we do is write in our comfort zone, we defeat the purpose of a workshop. If you only write to be told how much of a special snowflake you are, the contests are not for you.