2011 Kota Poetry Award

Dakota Cierra Christina Moler

I want to talk about the 2011 Kota Poetry Award and how it came into being. It really ties into the beginning of our publishing house in 2009 and all the craziness of putting together two poetry anthologies to raise funds for 'Heifer International'. Remember I had recruited some online writers friends, set up a website and put out the call for submissions. Oh my God, we had no idea we would receive over 800 submissions!! Not to mention how in the hell were we going to read them all, rate them, etc. when it had to be done entirely through e-mails to each other?! Rob lived in Canada, Rachel in New York, Michael in the UK and yours truly in sunny Florida for Christs sake! I have to admit the prospect was daunting. Until...I created a private forum through our website where we were the only ones who could view it and/or post in it! Wa lah~~! I could even insert tables in the forum where I listed each poem we'd received and assigned a number to it and as the poems came in I e-mailed them to everyone with their assigned number. This created a listing of all the poems and as we each got around to reading them we would post a rating for each poem. I think we ended up with twelve or thirteen tables of rated poems and then began the process of whittling them down to our favorites...everyone was terrific when it came to trying to keep up (although I did have to prod them now and again that we were running behind. I tried to remind myself that these were unpaid volunteers who were generously donating their time in this effort but I'm sure I came off at times acting like the Wicked Bitch of All Directions!)

Long story short, we managed to get it done and in between we received a submission by Melissa Moler-Beery entitled "It Wasn't Like In The Movies" and it was about her fourteen year-old niece's drowning. I have to say that this poem broke my heart. I remember e-mailing my condolences to Ms. Beery and in her response she mentioned that not only had Dakota drowned but she had done so while saving a younger child (who survived) and that even at her young age "Kota" had written poetry and loved to draw. I asked Ms. Beery to send me one of Kota's poems and we printed it along with a beautiful photo of her alongside the poem by her aunt in one of the anthologies. Kota's mother, aunt, other family members and friends were thrilled that we had honored her memory and it was then that I decided to try and do just that on an annual basis by offering an award in Kota's name.

Fast-foward past 2010 (when we took a one year hiatus after publishing the anthologies and another book of poetry "Essendo Morti- Being Dead" by Jeanpaul Ferro. All three publications had been largely successful however the stress of getting them out took its toll on our group of online writers and we all began to lose track of each other during the process. I tried to understand it, we had busy lives, differing tastes in literature, some were more committed than others etc..I can't say that it didn't piss me off because certainly at times it did. I felt probably wrongly that I had taken on the lions share of the work while their contributions although seriously generous hadn't held a candle to my own efforts...I blame these sort of feelings on my mother (why not? there is no Internet in her final resting place).

Anyway, we're baaaaaaack! Not all of us, but most of us and although I still do most of the work and make most of the decisions, this is by choice and a feeling of entitlement I suppose for having started this circus act to begin with. Either way they that is to say my two editors let me lead but are always there to help pick up the slack should I need them and for that I will always be grateful.

As for our first and I hope one of many the "Kota Poetry Award" for 2011 submissions are being accepted beginning on April 15th, ending on August 31, 2011 (the anniversary of the day she drowned), there is always a method to my madness no matter how mad I may become!