HERE WE GO!

Before I get to my five favorite submissions, I want you all to know how incredibly impressed I was by this project. I had no idea what kind of response to expect and the absolute surplus of creativity I got back from all of you completely blew away any notion of expectation I might have had. Thank you very much to everybody who responded. It was no easy task picking my favorites. The selection was done before I knew who wrote a single one.

I endeavored to pick 5 varied types to represent the styles I was looking for and received. On top of a card reward that will be presented to them individually, all 5 of these will also receive a raffle ticket. These are presented in no particular order.

/u/CheckingBackLater :

https://i.imgur.com/v2OWrr7.png

I knew there would be some pandering to me, but writing a poem about one of my vocal pet peeves was unexpected and inspired. This one definitely gets the clever award.

/u/BobKey12:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/v4apeyiv75g5ien/EmmaWatson.pdf?dl=0

WOW. In terms of sheer effort, this one blew me away. The varied styles, the creativity, novel presentation. Incredible job and the very first one I read that I knew had to be in the top class.

/u/hsikrut:

https://i.imgur.com/ARpGTwc.png

The simple elegance of this poem was immediately striking to me. The imagery is lovely, the celebrity use is well done and smart, and without any bloat. I didn't want every entry to be a huge project and this is a perfect example of packing a lot into a short work.

/u/taytaystan:

https://i.imgur.com/FsXQVte.png

Oh boy. SO MUCH of the feedback I was getting leading up the deadline was about stress. I encouraged many of you to not worry so much and just do your best. Here we have the perfect encapsulation of that process as I read from many of you. Admittedly, I was hoping to get some meta poems about the act of writing for this contest, and this is the one that keeps making me laugh. This represents the descent into madness, and the "catastrophic" line gets me every time.

/u/TheSnickerDoodleKid:

https://i.imgur.com/KqS7nme.png

Before I started the contest, I curated a list of celebrities from the database. It was a mix of my favorites and other celebs that I thought had potential to inspire. I initially was going to remove Jennifer Connelly from the list as I wasn't sure she really belonged, but after thinking about some her work I decided last minute to keep her. The result is probably my favorite poem of the entire contest. The wildly clever usage here still blows me away. An absolutely amazing job of utilizing the celeb and also writing just a fantastic work of art. I feel comfortable calling SDK the CBL Poet Laureate.

A HUGE thank you to everyone who entered. This was not an easy task, nobody knew what to expect, and the assignment was weird to be sure. But you all came through with a depth of skill and humor and creativity and I am very grateful to all of you.