When the sunne and the moone connect,
Forth their bond comes a seed.
A child of celestial aspect,
One of special breed.
It's curiosity is endearing,
With power beyond mysterious.
But watch out for it disappearing,
For it being lost is all too serious.
Evil forces desire its vitality,
So it must be dearly treasured.
Veer it free from all brutality,
Alas, to stay measured.
Although despite of it's grin,
Do be aware of a beast within...
Alright everyone, we're in the final phase of the contest! You're given until 5/14 (Tuesday night) to vote for up to three(!!) of your favorite poems. Votes are recorded as likes on the poems you select, but you can also PM me your choices (on here or Discord) if you're shy.
Also, please cast your votes with several things in mind, including but not limited to: effective use of poem style, poem content, imagery, figurative language, visuals/audio, etc. etc.
Please note a few of the contestants couldn't manage to get their poems in on time, so there are only twelve entries for this contest.
Here are some voting questions I've gotten recently (and in past rounds many, many years ago):
Q. Turtwig, can I vote for a poem even though I didn't participate?
A. Yes, please do! It makes everyone feel special when they get the like notifications. You can comment and quote, too, if you want!
Q. But Turtwig, I signed up for the contest and didn't write a poem...Are there repercussions? Can I still vote?
A. Unfortunately, withdrawing from the contest leads to serious consequences: I'll bug you to join again in the next round. Take that, slackers!
But in all seriousness, life happens. You are still very much encouraged to vote for the entries this round and I do hope to see you when we continue the poetry contest later this summer.
Q. Can I vote for my own?
A. I don't even think you can like your posts anymore, but if you PM/DM me voting for your own poem, I'm going to write back " ._. "
Q. What if I vote for four poems?
A. You really don't like me, do you?
Q. When is the next PokéPoetry contest?
A. I'm not sure what is planned already, but I'd imagine we'll cycle this out with other projects to keep things interesting.
Also, I'll echo this later on but just want to make a point: If you enjoyed writing your poem and would like to create more silly song parodies or free verse narratives, please make a megathread here in CW for your poetry so everyone can see it!
After tallying both the “like” votes displayed on the thread and discord DM votes (which there were a few), the winners of this PokéPoetry! Contest were very clear:
Congrats to @VioletValkyrie and her poem “Time,” a Riolu-focused Free Verse woven with excellent imagery and emotion that brought back the nostalgia of our beloved Pokemon Mystery Dungeon series. From the fragment on the beach to the teary goodbye, I’m sure many of us found ourselves yearning to replay the spinoff series. Violet, you're now in the PokéPoetry! Hall of Fame!
Once, on a beach
A simple treasure
One fragment was what held us together
A dream
One coward with a dream
His bravery was what carried us through
Through our hardships
Our pain
Our fear
Deception, distrust, and danger
Lurked around every corner
From the brightest forest
To the darkest abyss
All because time
had been stolen under our very eyes
And his bravery was what carried us through
My pride in him cannot match
His love for me
His love for a small
confused
amnesiac little Riolu
with a dark past throwing him into danger at every moment
But his bravery was what carried us through
To the end
Through a teary-eyed farewell
As that sacrifice
Of an old partner
An old friend
Could not be in vain
Through a fight against a god
Driven mad
But time
Was supposed to heal all wounds
But back on the path towards home
All I realized was
My newly filled heart
Would begin to bleed, to empty
I can't stand to leave you.
And if I really could see the future
I would never
Want this day
To end.
I don't want to say goodbye.
In second place, we have the classic “Africa” by Toto parody written by @Vom about Magnezone. Including the family’s wacky evolution methods brought context to the flow, and embedding the song within the reply no doubt helped fans sing along to the catchy tune.
I feel the magnetic field tonight
The time for evolution is finally upon us
I can already see the light
Enveloping our bodies and getting rid of what's superfluous
An old man stopped us along the way
Asking us to go on some quest with something he called "Pokédex"
We looked at him as if to say
"Sorry man, we're just a Magneton!"
It's gonna take a lot to keep me away from you
The sun, the stars, erroneous maps we can use as clues
To find our way to Mount Coronet
And finally become our perfect form, Magnezone (ooh, ooh)
Wrapping up the final three is @Serperior and his “Extraterrestrial Infatuation,” a Free Verse poem starring the infamous ultra beast Pheromosa. The aabb rhyme kept the stanzas fluid and fun, and my personal favorite line was “Stakataka would stop stacking to look at me and you.”
It was an ordinary day in Ultra Space
Everything out of whack, everything out of place
Bustling light connecting here to there
Nebulous Cosmog everywhere
Nihilego is napping with another new friend
Guzzlord is guzzling up comets again
Blacephalon is bouncing its head on the ground
Kartana is folding and floating around
I flex and I flex as I do so well
My muscles are massive, as you can tell
But as I began to stretch out my four legs
Something had stolen my attention instead
Swift as a specter but white as a star
Someone was watching me from afar
A level of elegance I had never seen
Perhaps this thing is more elegant than me?
My red eyes met blue but then after that
It vanished before I could show off my lats
"Come back!" I buzzed, but to no reply
The gorgeous ghost already wished me good-bye
My, what a creature! We would be such a pair!
Quintessential brawn and beauty - everyone would stare!
Ultra Necrozma would be jealous...Solgaleo would be too
Stakataka would stop stacking to look at me and you
So in the Jungle I will stay, perfecting my craft
If my muscles brought you to me, they will bring you back
With you by my side...oh what a dream
Pheromosa, I hope we could work as a team
A major factor in every PokéPoetry! Contest is simply the Pokemon you are assigned. As such, whether you are an experienced poet or not, every round is fair game for anyone. You can be given the perfect Poképrompt...or you could be scavenging for scraps.
In past PokéPoetry! contests, we often do different themes and styles every time to spice things up--we didn't this time to bring it back to the roots. Please comment different themes you'd like to see in the future (e.g. only Water-type Pokémon, Pokémon that can fly, slow Pokémon, a certain Pokédex) so we can consider them!
It was a pleasant surprise to see PokéPoetry! garner so much attention after several years, and all of the poems were very well-written and fun to read. Thank you all for participating and making this a hit! I hope you all feel determined to steal the crown (or cling to it) in our next round of PokéPoetry! in the future.
Congratulations to @VioletValkyrie and @Vom, and thanks to all the writers for sharing their poetry! I had a lot of fun with this and was impressed that we had the response that we did! I'm looking forward to the next round!
Thank you to everyone who voted, and thank you again for @bbninjas for convincing me to sign up. Not to mention of course @Turtwig for hosting.
Again, I'm not very experienced in poetry, so if you're someone watching this competition and you're interested, even if you've never written a poem, sign up next time! Give it a shot because the idea of writing something based on a random Pokemon is very fun. I enjoyed myself a lot, regardless of my placement.
if you're someone watching this competition and you're interested, even if you've never written a poem, sign up next time! Give it a shot because the idea of writing something based on a random Pokemon is very fun. I enjoyed myself a lot, regardless of my placement.
I second this. It really allows you to learn about how you feel about specific Pokémon as well. Generally, I write emotional relief poems. I learned just how incredibly indifferent I was about Mudbray when writing. Because of that, I made do with information available to me through learn sets and dex entries. That just shows that its possible to do anything with what you have as long as you give it a shot.
