Welcome to Madness! Poetry 2️⃣0️⃣2️⃣4️⃣

2024 schedule, site updates, and more

Hello! ICYMI, buzz is starting to build for Madness! Poetry 2024, and it’s well past time to send the first official event update via this channel (which promised to deliver MORE Madness!, so MORE you shall receive!).

This year will be our 11th tournament since 2012 (spanning 13 years: 🎉🎉🎉🎉🚫🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🚫🎉 …🎉!). So to kick things off, here are eleven things that you should know about this year’s event:

1. 📆 It’s all happening in May. I was hoping to conduct the event in April this year (and will aim to do so every year in the future) to coincide with National Poetry Month in the U.S., but life got in the way, so the event will be held during the month of May (with a hint of June) this year. Exact schedule posted here.

2. 😴 Our new schedule allows more sleeping writing time. We’re going to start giving authletes a little bit more time to write each round now vs. past years. That 36-hour clock was fun, but feedback from veteran successful authletes is that the burnout factor is real. Our new schedule is still fast and furious, but now respects that authletes are, in fact, human. Mostly.

3. 📩 The authlete application window closes SOON. Would-be authletes have until 11:59pm Eastern on Sunday 4/28 to apply. Here’s the application.

4. 🪢 We’re tweaking our poem length limits. Starting this year, the poem length limits by round will be 750 characters (including spaces and line breaks) in Rounds 1-2; 1,000 in Round 3; 1,250 in Rounds 4-5; and 1,500 in Round 6. These new limits give writers the space to expand their concept a bit in the early rounds (vs. the recent 600 character limit in Rounds 1-2), but also protect writers with tighter concepts or constrained forms from getting "out-typed" in the mid-to-late rounds (as with the recent 1,200-2,400 character limits in Rounds 3-6).

5. 🏫 Student group leaders can register any time! It’s a simple 2-step process: (1) register as a leader, then (2) create as many groups as you need! Voting begins Tuesday morning, May 7th. Here’s the registration form.

6. 📢 New feature: Community “Highlights”: We have a new page dedicated to showcasing how authletes, schools, and community members are experiencing the event. Any logged in user is welcome to contribute to the story (though all posts will be moderated). I’d love to see different perspectives show up here, in addition to my own! Post your highlights here.

7. 🏆 Improved “Champions” page: I looked back at each past season and wrote a blurb about each of our first 10 champions’ paths to victory. Read them all here.

8. 📜 Easier-to-use “Archive” page: Did you know that you can quickly search through all 1,267 poems ever written for this event? Search by keyword and/or filter by authlete name.

9. 📊 Cleaner user dashboards. We introduced a proper user dashboard last year to make it WAY easier (for authletes and teachers especially) to participate. We’ll continue to enhance this as time goes on, but if ever in doubt as to what you should be doing at any moment in time, look no further than the upper right corner menu to open your dashboard to find out!

10. 🧭 We updated the site navigation … again. A recurring user complaint is that it’s too hard to navigate one’s way around the site. We’ve made some additional changes so it’s hopefully🤞🏼now intuitive to find what you’re looking for using our new header navigation, mobile menu, and expanded footer.

11. 😮 A fun SURPRISE feature will be launched at tournament’s end. What could it be? And why wait until the tournament is over to launch it?

Okay I think that’s enough for now. Enjoy the madness!

-Ed