I'm pretty sure some of you are anxious to know the results of April's Mini Chapbook Contest (judging by the notes I've been getting), and no wonder, the competition was intense. I know they always say that, but I really mean it. Before I start rambling about how much I loved reading the entries, why don't I just let you find out what ~jack-cade (the judge) thought?

~jack-cade's comments:

"This was much harder to judge than I expected. A fair number of the submissions had the strange effect of really impressing me in some respect but not feeling up to scratch in another area. One of the things I did keep in mind was the timespan with which these collections were produced, and much of the work is immediately impressive in that context. In another respect, I was a little disappointed that there weren't more collections dealing with concrete subjects and concrete sensations - the balance was very much in favour of modernism and abstraction.

"Weihui Lu's Pompeii under your eyelids is themed around the idea of poetry as a 'city of words', and the poet who 'merely traces, trying to stay on its tail', to borrow from one of its epigraphs. Always nice to see a poet step down from the role of 'creator' or 'artist' and try a different approach. The first poem contemplates plaques as a way of freezing a person in their moment of beauty, then follows it with an image of 'a smile encrusted in cement' and the poems are, likewise, a sort of coarse concrete - chunks of cityscape, romanticism, crisp images and captured sounds mixed together. I felt like it was the most completely realised entry.

"I did dither a little over Z.I.N.E. of dreams by Mike Lim, because it's exactly the sort of modernist/abstract (for want of a better phrase) approach that I thought there was rather a lot of. But the dream imagery is genuinely charming - some of the best out of these entries. How about this? 'a boomerang curls into/the milky grey sky/at seven o'clock'. There are playful, almost Carrollian lines, like 'The Sleeper slips,/while his slippers/slip' which do a lot to negotiate the minefield of pretentiousness a poet steps into when he tries something like this. I also appreciated the acrostic macrostructure, with the word 'ZINE' spread across four of the five poems.

"Good job to both, and to all the other entrants!"

So there you go! Your winners are...

First place

*Negated/Weihui Lu for her chapbook, Pompeii under your eyelids

She wins $50 deviantDOLLARS and a 3-month subscription from =Flynn-the-cat.

Second place

*livingtoxic/Mike Lim for his chapbook, Z.I.N.E. of dreams

He wins $25 deviantDOLLARS.

And of course, both chapbooks will soon appear in the roundtable review, whose poetry section is edited by ~jack-cade/Jon Stone.

The chapbooks are up on the site already! Check them out here: Weihei Lu and Mike Lim are the winners of deviantArt's April mini-chapbook contest

Thank you

to everyone who took part, supported, read, faved, spread the word, and especially, ~jack-cade for being a part of this.

There were eighteen chapbooks in all, and as I said, it was a great pleasure reading them. Here are all the other entries. I hope you will take the time read at least a couple of them.

Crab by ~Paul-Cooper
Definitions by ~Ocalikecoca
glances by ~beautyisinthedark
Grimmlings by *orphicfiddler
Masks for the Void by ~John-A-Dreams
My Reflection in Full by ~heart-mojo
Of Human Nature and Me by *AngelofGod87
Oh, the Sound of Bodies by *fllnthblnk
Poems From My Heart by =lbchef
Ruminative Thinking by =Chillinvillain
Tending the Marigolds by *poisonedrose
The Politics of Promise by ~pro-nunc
This Adroit Tongue by *Clippers0507
Three English Teachers by ~evildex
Through the Seasons of Youth by ~cherish-You-Me
Twenty Years Away From Home by *Esin