Clarification on Competition Rules

Our friends over at My Favourite Books, who are running the Angry Robot poetry competition have had a query about the rules:

Are there limitations on who may enter? Any categories of people who are ineligible? (SFWA members, for example? Rhysling Award winners? Professional publication?) How many entries one may submit? Whether, if multiple entries are allowed, if they can be entered at one time or if each must be entered in a separate entry? Please clarify your rules.

I’m not entirely sure why we’d want to discriminate against the groups of people mentioned, but for clarification:

If there is no rule stated, you can pretty much assume there’s no rule.

So, anyone can enter any number of times (though, to be fair, the judges aren’t likely to read through 150 entries from the same person due to boredom threshholds, etc, so put your best ones first). The judges reserve the right to read the first few entries by an individual then nip off to make a cup of tea, and forget exactly where they were on their return. If you are personally known to any of the judges you may enter (for fun) but you will not win, though we may buy you a beer as consolation when we next see you. How are you, anyway? It’s been ages!

Actually, I’m going to amend the absence of rules by including one very special one:

Anyone may enter except the John Dunleavy who stole my pen in class when we were both 13 and the teacher wasn’t looking. I’ve never forgotten that, and I was too afraid of you to say anything at the time, but who’s got the last laugh now, huh, bully-boy? huh? huh? You’re just going to have to buy the books! And all for one measly pen! Was it worth it John? Really? Was it? I suspect not…

Don’t forget you only have to write a 4-line poem, its free to enter, you can win a copy of all our published books so far, and the closing date is 24th November – head on over to My Favourite Books for full details.