Wergle Flomp Humor Poetry Competition, deadline 1 April 2025

 With prizes of up to £2k, this is free to enter:

 

Our 24th annual Wergle Flomp Humor Poetry Contest offers $3,750 in prizes, with a first prize of $2,000, a second prize of $500, and a third prize of $250. The top 13 poems will be published online. The winner will also receive a two-year gift certificate from our co-sponsor, Duotrope (a $100 value). There's no fee to enter. Jendi Reiter will judge, assisted by Lauren Singer. This contest welcomes published and unpublished work. Your poem may have up to 250 lines. One poem only, please. Submit online by April 1, 2025. This contest is recommended by Reedsy.   SUBMIT YOUR HUMOR POEM NOW - NO FEE!       Robert Garnham, Abbie Loosemore, and Tim Eberle won the top prizes in the 2024 Wergle Flomp Humor Poetry Contest   The Winners of the 23rd Wergle Flomp Humor Poetry Contest   Remarks from final judge Jendi Reiter Thanks to everyone who entered our 23rd contest for humor poems. While normal people do things like "go outside" in the summertime, there's no place I'd rather be than in my Arctic-chilled office at Winning Writers HQ, chuckling over the 288 shortlisted poems that first-round screener Lauren Singer selected from a record 6,846 contestants. There may be no such thing as a free lunch, but thank goodness for a free laugh. Our entrants creatively mangled many entertaining topics, from the ever-popular travails of hardworking parents, to Biblical satire, the sufferings of the obscure writer (and the questionable merits of the not-so-obscure), and inane television and advertising. Lauren noted an excess of poems about ChatGPT taking over the world. She advises future entrants to reach beyond "the usual pooping, farting, aging, fat-shaming, and poorly executed parodies of 'The Raven' and 'A Visit from St. Nicholas'." The difference between finalists and award-winners came down to the tightness of the poem and whether it had layers of meaning beyond the obvious main joke. Our Winners First-prize winner Robert Garnham's "Torquay, 2 – The Other Team, 2" could be a skit performed by the late great John Inman of "Are You Being Served?" The genially befuddled, foppish narrator is trying to understand his straight mate's "culture" by attending a British football match, but the players' salient features, for him, have nothing to do with the sport's inexplicable rules. I'm also the kind of queen who would bring a book and a cuppa tea to a sportsball event, so I can relate. Abbie Loosemore's second-prize poem, "Gregg's First Pizza Hut", fantasizes about a date with MasterChef television presenter Gregg Wallace, which ends in disappointment for her because he's more excited by restaurant gadgetry than seduction. Whether or not you've watched Wallace enthuse over comestibles, this wry poem will feel familiar to anyone who's tried to seduce a nerd away from his technology. Speaking of technology, Tim Eberle's third-prize poem "RoboBurger or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Tech" also sings the praises of fast-food innovations as a less harmful and more achievable goal for human ingenuity than our typical output of weapons and AI-generated propaganda. This skilled work of formal light verse sustains Seussian meter and clever rhymes over its entire saga of tech-bro hubris. Honorable mentions explored the lighter side of ghostwriting, Gen-X childhood, boozy ladies of a certain age, Instagram moms, dealing with dumb comments about your disability, and much more. We liked how these poems went beyond silliness to say something insightful about relationships. Our next contest is now open through April 1, 2025, with a top prize of $2,000. Be the good kind of weird, not the kind who says cat ladies shouldn't be allowed to vote. Read all the winning entries. See our press release about the winners of this contest. See our current contest guidelines.   Please enjoy the art we created for the winning entries     Illustration by Melody Iza for "Torquay, 2 - The Other Team, 2"     Illustration by Annie Mydla using Shutterstock AI ("ethical AI") for "Gregg’s First Pizza Hut"     Illustration by Annie Mydla using Shutterstock AI ("ethical AI") for "RoboBurger or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Tech"