I don’t submit to contests much. I don’t want to discourage you from doing so either, but it could get quite expensive to submit all those poems to contests over and over again.
I think it’s more important to work on the poetry itself to get it the best that it can be. I would spend ten hours on a poem to improve it before spending one hour submitting to contests, but that’s just me. I’m a perfectionist when it comes to crafting the poem.
If you do submit to poetry contests, do your homework. Don’t just submit to any and every contest you find. Find out who the judge is, if possible. If the judge’s name isn’t published then don’t submit to that contest. There is no rational reason for a judge’s name to be held confidential. By publishing the judges’ names for a contest, the contest sponsors are giving you a clue as to what kind of poem might be a potential winner. If a particular judge favors formalist poetry, for instance, and you write Beat throwbacks then you might not stand a chance. Wouldn’t you like to know that before throwing your money down the drain?
Also, I favor contests that are free. At least for the beginner. You should try your hand at the free contests before submitting poetry with a fee because you want to know if your poetry is worth spending the money on. If you submit to 100 free poetry contests and don’t even end up with one runner up poem then you might not be ready for the big leagues. You should try to polish your poetry a little more and resubmit. After you have won a few free poetry contests then you can try submitting to those that require fees.
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