It's that time of year again, time for our 2010 Putting Our Heads Together Poetry Contest.
Bipolar Disorder and Migraines tend to be comorbid conditions, meaning that we can have both diseases at the same time, but neither causes the other. Studies have shown that people with bipolar disorder are more likely to have Migraines than people without bipolar disorder.
Given the connection, I wanted to be sure to invite you to enter our Migraine poetry contest.
Whether you're an experienced poet or have never written a poem before, you're invited to submit up to three poems for our contest. One year, the person who write the poem that won first place had never written a poem before! All entries must be about Migraines or headaches and must be poetry, not prose.
The contest will be judged by the National Headache Foundation, and winners announced in April in observance of National Poetry Month.
I can't enter the contest, but I'll share a poem I wrote here, one of my favorites...
phantom tango
the beat is faint, the dance slow
so slow I'm not sure we're dancing
my partner is but a shadow
waiting to become more than a phantom
the disco ball that so blithely
cast shards of light upon my eyes
forecast my partner's arrival
yet I had dared hope he would not follow
but the beat strengthens
and the dance intensifies
the steps we've danced before
are too familiar and unmitigatedly unwelcome
we turn and dip, this direction then that
an intimate tango
with each dip, my stomach rebels
the dips so deep my head ricochets off the floor
he shows no pity
but dances the dance his sadistic way
and when I am beyond spent, he departs
without so much as a bow at the end
Migraine is a merciless partner
a relentless partner
a murderess I would gladly become
if only I could slay him
© Teri Robert, 2007
If you're interested, you can read all the entries from this year and from previous years..
Interested in entering? Check out the rules and entry form.
Good luck,
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© Teri Robert, 2010.
Last updated March 11, 2010.
