Vocal Acrostic Challenge Winners

This past month has been a bit of a wild ride! I've wrapped up the end of my ninth year teaching middle school, published a 9,000 word Vocalite Manifesto, and hosted my second unofficial challenge on Vocal!

The purpose of this Challenge was to celebrate Vocal and all the talented creators here while also highlighting some need for change on the platform! I'm very excited about the Leaderboard changes that have been made and I'm hopefully optimistic about more changes to come!

Vocalite Manifesto Update: I have moved my Manifesto Monday to June 9th! I will be reaching out to Vocal to suggest any changes that are popular on the Manifesto poll. If you've considered filling it out, but haven't yet, you have a little bit more time and I will include the poll a the bottom of the winner's list!

Now let's focus on the winners and prizes for the acrostic challenge! Although this is my second time hosting a challenge, it's actually my first time judging one. And I now realize just how wise I was in outsourcing the judging on the last one! You all really delivered some amazing acrostic poems and I am incredibly grateful to everyone who participated! And yet at the same time all your wonderful contributions made this judging process extremely difficult!

I had hoped that by creating the categories it would help me recognize a lot of different types of acrostics. And though it definitely helped a lot, I still found myself totally stuck trying to determine winners.

So how was I to choose from over 50 entries that were all so great? Well I did my darnedest, but I ended up having to adjust my approach a little bit:

• I split the Literal Life into two categories (In the Moment & Big Picture), because I felt like I was comparing apples to oranges.
• I've got some ties for 3rd place in Lighthearted Laughs and Enlightening Literature.
• I've got Honorable Mentions in each category.
• Then I also added a group of 10 Vocal specific Honorable Mentions (Community Champions) that I wanted to highlight because of their clever criticisms or cheery celebrations of our beloved platform.
• Lastly within the Community Champion Honorable Mentions I added a bonus prize for my favorite critical and celebratory pieces.

I know! I'm a terrible judge! I promise to outsource again for the next one! This is really giving me some empathy for the Vocal Challenge judges. Even with adding all these prizes I'm very aware that I'm still failing to recognize some great entries. So even though your judge kind of sucks I hope everyone enjoyed the challenge! I certainly enjoyed reading all of the entries!

Prizes:

1st Places - $10

2nd Places - $5

3rd Places - $2

Honorable Mentions - $1

Clever Critic HM Bonus - $1

Cheery Celebration HM Bonus - $1

I went over my $52 budget a bit...so we've got $90 in prizes!

Lighthearted Laughs

1st Place - "Vow: I Will Write Today" by Laura DePace

2nd Place - "Inside Joke" by Cristal Beikd

3rd Place - "The Ballad of the Banned Baritone" by Tim Carmichael

3rd Place - "Innocent, Even When Proven Guilty" by Cathy Holmes

Honorable Mention - "Valerie's Dilemma" by Mother Combs

Honorable Mention - "Victor" by Susan Payton

Enlightening Literature

1st Place - "Literal Love" by Rachel Deeming

2nd Place - "Countless Brilliances" by Gabriel Huizenga

3rd Place - "Just Visting" by D.J. Reddall

3rd Place - "As I Infiltrate" by Maja

Honorable Mention - "Afire" by Heather Hubler

Honorable Mention - "Heartbeat" by Marilyn Glover

Literal Life (In the Moment)

1st Place - "She Will Speak Loudly, Because I Did" by Carolina Borges

2nd Place - "Audio" by Kendall Defoe

3rd Place - "VOCAL (Not Really)" by Cathy Ben-Ameh

Honorable Mention - "Piano Moments" by Antoni De'Leon

Literal Life (Big Picture)

1st Place - "This Velvet Revolt" by Paul Stewart

2nd Place - "Freedom expressed - via written word" by Lamar Wiggins

3rd Place - "This Is Life" by Donna Fox

Honorable Mention - "Normalization" by Matthew Fromm

Top 10 Community Champions Honorable Mentions

Honorable Mention & Clever Critic Bonus - "Vocal's Algorithmic Jabberwocky" by Dalma Ubitz

Honorable Mention & Cheerful Celebrator Bonus - "Who We Are And Why We Do It" by Shirley Belk

Honorable Mention - "The Word Thief" by JBaz

Honorable Mention - "V.O.C.A.L." by Kelli Sheckler-Amsden

Honorable Mention - "Vocal Voices" by Katherine D. Graham

Honorable Mention - "Vocal!" by Katarzyna Popiel

Honorable Mention - "VOCAL - Acrostic Poem" by L.C. Schäfer

Honorable Mention - "V.O.C.A.L." by Susan Fourtané

Honorable Mention - "Enjoy the Feast!" by Angie the Archivist

Honorable Mention - "Love Across Vocal" by Leslie Writes

Again, thank you to everyone who crafted an entry for this challenge! You helped spread the word and inspire change. For that I am beyond grateful. And congratulations to all the winners! I am so honored by your amazing contributions that made this challenge a roaring success!

All this tipping might take me a bit, but winners should receive their prizes by Friday at the latest! I am off to catch up on reads and I have an absolute mountain to climb, so wish me luck! Cheers, friends!