Some years ago I was invited to judge a poetry competition. The package of poems arrived in the mail. There must have been close to a hundred poems. The thought of having to read all of them was daunting. But as I sat down to go through the stack I realized it wasn’t quite as difficult a task as I had imagined. Inferior poems were easy to spot. I put them in one pile. The ones that spiked my interest I put them in another. The rest of the poems required more consideration, and each eventually ended up in the “in” or “out” pile.
It took considerable time, but when it came down to deciding the winner and honorable mentions I felt that every contestant was given a fair chance.
The competition I was involved in was probably a small potato compared to other institutions that sponsor book-length contests. I realize from reading their fine prints that most employ a team of “readers” to take care of the elimination process. The invited judges are asked to decide on only the semi-finalists. They don’t get to see the whole scope of the entries.
It is presumptuous to assume that the “readers” have the same sensibility as the judges. Perhaps that’s one way that good manuscripts get lost in the junk pile.
