I have to hand it to the PowerPage readers: I didn’t expect the wide range of poetry I got in response to our first-ever Mac Poetry Slam! Who would have thought that all of this would start with nothing but a freebie magnetic poetry set from Apple? We even got a fabulous celebrity entry that won its own special presentation yesterday. (Lest I be accused of favoritism, we’ll keep the prizes to lesser-known Mac addicts than the Mac poet laureates Snaggy and Nitrozac.) Picking winners was difficult, so in the end the only way to do it was to give three separate prizes in categories I, er, made up after the fact. (Okay, so maybe I’m not likely to get any poetry adjudication invites any time soon.) Click ‘read more’ for the results and winning entries. You’ll find a cool beat poem that’ll make you snap, poetry generated automatically by a Mac Perl script, and even a magnetic poem that’ll help you pick people up.
I have to hand it to the PowerPage readers: I didn’t expect the wide range of poetry I got in response to our first-ever Mac Poetry Slam! Who would have thought that all of this would start with nothing but a freebie magnetic poetry set from Apple? We even got a fabulous celebrity entry that won its own special presentation yesterday. (Lest I be accused of favoritism, we’ll keep the prizes to lesser-known Mac addicts than the Mac poet laureates Snaggy and Nitrozac.) Picking winners was difficult, so in the end the only way to do it was to give three separate prizes in categories I, er, made up after the fact.
The ‘Most Creative Entry’ and ‘Joint Entry’ awards go to boyfriend and girlfriend Marc Robinson and Mallory Gerber. The entry that put this Mac couple (how cute!) over the top was Marc’s ‘Guy at a Singles Bar’:
my wish is love
i play cool 🙂 iChat
we go home :-}
dvd movies? ;-O
the best hot music cd
buddy, iSync perfect !
We can only assume Marc won Mallory’s heart with something just as creative — and, of course, Mac-centric. Marc and Mallory describe their homelife in magnetic poetry, too: “I switched email so my love will wish I go home. The digital surf is perfect. We play. :-)” So that I don’t break up that happy home by awarding Marc’s poem and not Mallory’s, I’ll also publish their collaborative entry:
I, Jaguar
I switched email so Love Camera will wish I PhotoShop home.
Digital mac movies play. Go, DVD Buddy!
iSync my iPod. The best CD? Cool surf music :-}
We sing perfect. ;-0
:-)
Our next contest: send us a novel that best pays homage to Asimov’s writing style, entitled “I, Jaguar.” 400-600 pages. Sound like too much work? Well, who said YOU had to do the work. Which brings us to our next entry:
The ‘Finding a Way to Cheat out of Lazines that Actually Creates Way More Work for the Judges’ – slash – Special ‘Perl Programming’ Prize goes, without contest, to Brad Knowles. Yes, Brad actually wrote a program to develop entries for him. He writes, “Decided that the best way to proceed was to hack a program to generate haiku, based on the word list. I found the program fnordku.pl which seemed to be the closest to what I wanted, and came up with AppleKu.pl as a result (see attached).”
Brad was nice enough to send us 1000 entries to read through. (Uh, thanks. I think.) These included gems like: “EMAIL is SHOP wish / HOT iPhoto MY BEST HOT / camera CD” and ” is we SING EMAIL / digital iPhoto HOT / go PLAY OS WILL.” Yes, poets, someday the Mac will REPLACE YOU. Brad tells me in his entry, “If you really like them, I can easily set up an infinite loop to generate a haiku per message and send them all to you.” I’m more than happy to send him a prize as a bribe so that you won’t do that, Brad. Please!!! You win, really!!! Stay tuned, though, because Brad is working on an improved Perl script that will use the many Apple product names not included in the giveaway magnetic poetry set, and that will use more logical English. (On that last point, though, a lot of our readers sent us nonsensical entries, so maybe you’re ahead of the game, Brad!)
The ‘Kinda Breaks the Rules But Really Makes Us Want to Snap in Applause After We Hear It’ – ‘Coolest of the Cool’ Award goes to none other than Kim Jacobs. Here’s her entry:”
Digital love
My Jaguar sings,
surfs,
plays,
is cool.
Hot digital movies.
Perfect music iSync.
Go hot
Go cool
Go Mac.
Kim’s going to need some friends so she can get two ‘cool’ magnets and three ‘go’ magnets but I’m ready to see a beat poet perform this in an Apple ad!
The winners will receive a fabulous PowerBook Accessory Kit prize package donated by RadTech, a signed copy of the Mac Bible donated by my co-judge, the great Jason O’Grady, or a PowerPage t-shirt. Thanks to all who entered: I enjoyed all the entries! We may have to have a poetry reading at the next Macworld!
