Summary
I have been informed that these submission I'm working on is confidential, which leads me to giving these submissions alternative titles. I also am responsible for voting on whether a submission should be rejected or move on as a finalist. To start off, I read a poetry submission with great wordplay but shockingly it had gore in a poem which had to be flagged and in addition it seemed to have plagiarized work. Then I have been referred to a submission by Tom, who believes it could be a finalist. But the submission has grammatical errors with explicit sexual content and repulsive content.
Around the first week of October, I was confirmed for the confidentiality of the submissions. To avoid confusion about the numbering of submissions, I will give them similar alternate titles.
While working on the 2nd submission (I mentioned in my first blog post), which I will call “Life,” it was intimidatingly long with over 80 poems, but it was unique. The first poem had a method of wordplay such as “un/bearable cold” to describe the feeling of coldness AND the gradual numbness of the body adjusting to the cold. Another similar example is this poet’s usage of “disassociation(g),” notice how the “ing” is in bold. I was confused but realized the poet is creating a duality to create a different interpretation, to include both the condition of and the act of disassociation. The poet continues to use this method of wordplay, experimenting with it.
Life was a learning experience for poetic techniques. But using these techniques would be risky, it may lead others to be confused and even dislike it. This type of writing is a bold move. As I continued reading, I was shocked to find explicit gore. Which was more realistic than the previous submission I had read since it had a fantasy theme. I had to report this for review. Additionally, Life retold Reddit stories, which is plagiarism… another red flag for this submission.
I’m also responsible for stating that I either reject or believe the submissions have the potential to be a finalist. I found this to be difficult and added pressure, but over time I got used to it. As there are many submissions to go through, I must pace myself. The next day, Tom wanted my feedback on a submission, I will name “Edge.” He believes it’s a finalist and when I read its contents, I knew these poems were going to be sexual. Edge has a theme(?) of the romance of an older couple from a woman’s perspective. Initially, the poems are subtle with sex. It had issues with clarity, awkward phrasing, spelling errors, and missing words or punctuation.
As I continued reading, there was a poem that I liked that discussed personal issues about body odor and body grooming. The poem described how tedious and stressful it was for women, which could be great for the female audience. Then it got explicit with sex. If Tom accepted this, this implies that Press53 does accept some content of sex. Or he may have missed the sexual content. This poem had a very gross ending, this was about body odor so I will leave it to your imagination.
Currently, I have gone through many submissions that also have a lot of “surprising” content which I have reported and somewhat getting desensitized to. There is this one submission that I may even refrain from blogging… But! Some submissions have been pleasant with imagery and some have been informative which has the potential to be used in education. This internship has been quite an experience and has shown me many fearless poets.
