Painted Ponies Poetry Contest
|
Dream Horse by Janee Hughes |
It was only a matter of time. After the release of our inspirational book Ride the Sky, which paired Painted Ponies with life-affirming quotations inspired by the soul-touching artwork on a Pony, friends of The Trail began to send us poems that celebrated what Painted Ponies artwork meant to them. Most memorable is a collection of poems sent by a teacher who said the idea of writing poetry based on Painted Ponies was initiated by her students and became a class project.
It’s always a joy to learn about the different ways Painted Ponies affect people’s lives; and reading those poems gave us the idea of welcoming poetry from other people whose response to the Ponies, or a particular Pony, found its expression in an arrangement of words known as a poem. What do we mean by a poem? Here we take our cue from Cowboy Poetry, a tradition that grew out of cowboys gathering around a campfire after a day of work, entertaining one another with tall tales and folk songs, some written in rhyming verse that was intended to be recited, some that could only be told from rambling prose by the way it appeared on the page but told a great story.
Catch our drift? A working definition of Painted Ponies Poetry is any poetry that celebrates the uniqueness and character of a Painted Pony.
We will post all the poems as we receive them, through the end of November. Working with a panel of judges we will select what we feel to be the ten most interesting and accomplished poems, and we will announce the ten finalists on December 1. We will then post the finalists and let America vote online for its favorite. The top three vote-getters as of the last day of December, 2008, will receive a special set of “literary” prizes.
