My friend and I are also semi-finalists. NT

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: : Dear Mr. Smith : : Ok, here’s the thing. : : My Name is Thorarinn Hugleikur Dagsson and I live in Reykjavik, Iceland. I have a confession to make. About a month ago I stumbled into something called Poetry.com. It’s a website dedicated to amateur poetry. Anyone can write their own poem into a contest and have the chance of winning some money. Now I thought it might be fun to make a poem out of comic-book dialogue to see if it would be taken seriously. I was rereading the new Daredevil series at the time and I put together a "poem" out of dialogue originally written by Mr. Kevin Smith and Mr. David Mack. : : I thought it might be interesting to see how people would react to a text like this when not knowing it is actually from a comic-book. : : here is the poem: : : : : Hole : : When I was a child : : I lost my sight : : thanks largely to a good deed. : : Somehow I cross the line : : a blurring one : : where the scents, echoes and chills : : come less from outside my head : : and more from inside it. : : I’ve been blind since I was a child : : and as a result : : I’ve never actually seen the woman who : : cried herself to sleep in my bed last night. : : I dreamt that a picture of her fell down : : and broke into pieces. : : But they are puzzle pieces. : : I’m trying to put them together : : except that I’m drowning : : and they float to the top. : : They are parts : : of a hole. : : : : As it turns out the poem got quite a responce. A week ago I got this letter from Poetry.com: : : "Dear Thorarinn : : After carefully reading and discussing your poem, our selection Committee has certified your poem as a semi-finalist in our International Open Poetry Contest. Your poem will automatically be entered into the final competition held in May 2001. As a semi-finalist, you now have an excellent chance of winning one of 104 cash or gift prizes—including the $1,000.00 Grand prize. You may even win the $ 10,000.00 Annual Grand Prize! We wish you the best of luck as you compete for these prizes in the coming weeks. : : and that’s not all . . . : : In celebration of the unique talaent that you have displayed, we also wish to puplish your in what promises to be one of the most highly sought after collections of poetry we have ever published, The Silence Within." : : : The letter goes on and on about how much of an honor it is for me to chosen for something lik this. And whil reading it, I couldn’t stop lauching. : : Then I thought: "I can’t go on with this! These aren’t even my words!". Now, I don’t have many principles, but I don’t want to be a plagiarist. Allthough, I could get away with this, because basically it’s just something called cut-up poetry. An approach to the form in which written text is taken out of context and put together as a poem. David Bowie and William Burroughs are among the ones who have done this before. : : What I did, however, was more of an experiment. I am an art student and I usually learn by testing all sorts of things, and the seeing what happens. I never expected this to go this far. I hope you aren’t mad or anything, but I’d understand if you were. : : I guess what I’m looking for is some sort of a permission or a blessing. If you wan’t me to stop this from happening, I will. If you want me to put your names above the poem, I will. If it wins and you want the award money, I will send it to you. Because I, as an artist understand if your work is personal to you. And I don’t want to hurt anybody. : : However, if you give me your blessings, I will not take the credits. I have told the biggest newspaper in Iceland about this and they will print the whole true story if something happens. And you can also tell people about this in the Daredevil letterpage or something. After all, a Daredevil-poem acknowledged by a proffesional comittee as a piece of art is kinda funny. : : Wating for a reply, : : Thorarinn Hugleikur Dagsson. : : Email: buddybradley@hotmail.com : : Address: : : Tryggvagata 4B : : 101 Reykjavík : : ICELAND : : P.S. I also sent this to David Mack

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