User:Noroton/poetry award listings

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List of prizes, medals, and awards

This article is a proposed set of guidelines for lists of poetry awards and for articles about poetry awards.

(Poetry awards and prizes are very similar to fellowships, livings, grants and sometimes publishing "series" in which the prize is getting published in a poetry series, often with a monetary award attached. With little change, articles on these other honors can follow the same format and be listed with awards.)

Lists of poetry awards in Wikipedia may be the best free, online guide anywhere to which poets won what major poetry awards, at least in the United States. It seems that no listings on the World Wide Web are more comprehensive in pulling together disparate award listings and providing links to poets. This could be useful to poets themselves, readers of poetry and those who research poets as students, journalists and other writers and even those who recruit poets for readings and other events. (There is another site on the Web that lists poetry awards, but it's not free, not open to the public and is used by poets who want to compete in contests.)

The two biggest problems with Wikipedia lists of poetry awards as they now stand (October 31, 2006) is that the scope of the lists doesn't seem to conform to the geographic scope of most major poetry awards, which tend to be nationwide (in any nation, except perhaps the smallest) and there isn't much uniformity to the Wikipedia articles on awards.

Contents

[edit] Proposal 1: Notability for poetry awards

According to one Web site, there are 750 awards available to poets (presumably American poets and the Web site would only have been referring to English language awards). They can't all be worth Wikipedia articles. If the standard isn't used for notability, it should be used for whether or not to list an award in a list article.

I propose a notability standard for these articles with these conditions:

  • The award should have a prize of at least $1,000 (a pretty low standard)
  • The award should be national in scope or somehow justify itself as a very important statewide or regional award
  • At least two winners of the award should have their own Wikipedia articles (which fulfill Wikipedia standards for authors), unless the award itself has not yet been given out five times (or three times if the award is not annual).
  • The award should have at least one Web page devoted to it which gives information on what the award is for and the names of at least some who have received it.


[edit] Proposal 2: Guidelines for articles on poetry awards

Aside from normal Wikipedia guidelines for articles, an article on a poetry award should include this information:

[edit] Top section

  • The first sentence should state the name of the award, a general indication of what it honors (a type of poet, a type of poem or general excellence, its geographic or other scope), and possibly a descriptive word or two about the importance of the award.
  • Somewhere in the rest of the top section the article should state how much money (if any) is given out with the award.

[edit] Somewhere in the article

  • More information about the criteria for the award and basic requirements for applicants, but this does not need to be (and should not be) comprehensive. Leave out bureaucratic requirements such as deadlines. The article is meant for the general reader, not for poets applying for the award. The Web site for the award itself is the best place for a reader to find that information.
  • If the awards list is especially long, several prominent winners could be included here. If the award is for young poets or their first books, then it might be useful to mention here the prominent authors, even if the full list of winners isn't that long.
  • How the award was created and who it is named after. Often this is just someone with a lot of money, sometimes little involved in poetry. If that's the case, this information is one of the least important things about the award and should be presented farther down in the article, but above the list of winners.

[edit] =A list of all winners of the award

  • This part should go below anything information describing the award. At least one list of winners is its own article, separate from a good-sized article describing the award itself.
  • A comprehensive list of all winners from the beginning of the award until present. Very few awards began before about 1910, so these lists are not insufferably long.
  • This section should have a standard title to make it easier for editors to link to: "Winners" That is the word used on most poetry award Web sites (other words used are "recipients", "honorees", "awardees")
  • For complicated lists with many elements for each item, a table is often easier to read, but a table may take up excessive space and force the reader into unnecessary scrolling for simple lists. For some awards, only the year of the award and the poet's name is included in each item. Other simple lists include the name of a book. Where items have four elements it becomes a judgment call as to whether a table or list would be easier for the reader. Complicated lists may include names of one or more judges who selected the winner and the publisher's name. Tables are useful for these lists, especially if there are several links for each item.
  • Winners lists should be in reverse chronological order, with the most recent winner at the top. This seems to be the most convenient order for most readers, and it is the order on most Web pages for the prize-giving organizations.

[edit] In the winners list

Each winners list should include the following, if possible:

  • In this order: asterisk/bullet, colon or mdash, year(s) of award (as the Web site of the award styles it), name of the poet (whether or not the award was for a particular book or other work), name of the work for which the work was given (if any), name of publisher (if important -- such as an award for a book published by a small press), Judge(s) who selected the winner.
  • Asterisk/bullet at the beginning. This is the usual Wikipedia style for lists, although some awards lists don't use them now. Uniformity is probably better, and it's an easy way for future editors to update the lists. (Many lists haven't been updated and are one or two years out of date, so making updates easier for future editors is an important consideration.)
  • Year — It seems very useful to have links in the years to the "(year) in literature" pages (such as 2005 in literature). Some awards lists link to these pages, other link to the general year pages, others have no link at all. At least it would be more useful than not to have the links. Those year-in-literature pages also have that year's award list, which could be a very useful tool for someone researching that subject, or just curious about what other awards were given out and who was winning them at that time.
  • Poet name — After the year, this should always be the first item listed, if only for the sake of uniformity. Even if an award is for a particular book or work, it is always the author who receives it. No one should be confused by this, and it doesn't seem useful to make fine distinctions between an author getting an award and a book getting an award. The award is always "given to" "received by" and "won" by a particular author. If there were a list of awards commonly received for a work by multiple authors, then the work should be listed first. The name should have double brackets around it to link to the author's article or to show in red that the article doesn't exist. We can assume there will eventually be an article for each contemporary poet who wins an award. They almost always win multiple awards and publish more than one book, which usually makes them noteworthy enough for an article. For very minor awards, this might not be the case, but there shouldn't be Wikipedia articles about very minor awards. Very few awards list the home town and state of the winner, and some Wikipedia list articles do as well. It's probably best to leave this information for a Wikipedia article on the poet to report.
  • Name of book or other work — Put this in italics. Since so few books, especially books of poetry, are the subjects of Wikipedia articles, it doesn't seem reasonable to put them in brackets creating red links. So much red type would become difficult to read. Link to the book's article if the article exists.
  • Name of publisher — this is usually not listed and should not be listed unless the publisher is integral to the award in some way (such as awards for books published by small presses). Links should be provided.
  • Judges — some awards Web sites give the title "judges" to their judges, others simply say so-and-so "selected" the winners. Use "Judge:" before the name of the judge/selector to identify that person, then put brackets around the judge's name to link to the judge's Wikipedia article. The judge is usually a distinguished poet or critic, and if there is no current Wikipedia article on that person, it's reasonable to assume that eventually there will be. There is often only one judge, sometimes three. List them in the order that the awards Web site or announcement lists them.

[edit] "See also" section

  • This section should list any Wikipedia lists where this award article is an item.
  • Any Wikipedia articles on awards given out by the same organization that gives out this award should be isted here.
  • Similar awards with the same or roughly the same scope should be listed here unless that list gets too long. An award for translations of poetry into English, for example, would be useful in a "See also" section of an article on another poetry-translation-into-English award.

[edit] External links

  • A link to the official Web page that describes the award should be here
  • If different, a link to the official Web page that lists previous award winners should be here.


[edit] Categories

Links to categories for Poetry awards and perhaps categories should be created for poetry awards in specific countries, since readers might become confused, annoyed or discouraged if they are only interested in awards by country. Perhaps a "Major international poetry awards" category would be useful.

  • Links to the "literary awards" category are probably not useful, since the "poetry awards" category links to it already. Perhaps only very prominent poetry awards should also get the "literary awards" category link.

[edit] Ideally

The superior poetry awards article would have more information about the award than is on the award's official Web pages. Perhaps information from an article about the award, the politics surrounding it, how the award is perceived by others or how prominent the award is. Memoirs, biographies or articles would have this information.

[edit] Proposal 3: Scope of articles listing poetry awards

I know of three different Wikipedia articles that list poetry awards in the United States. Each of these list articles is broader in scope than the United States and none of them even restricts itself to the English language. There may be a place for at least one list of poetry or literature awards worldwide (probably just major awards), but the List of poetry awards and ,,,,,,,, lists seem duplicative. The "List of..." page only covers awards in the United States, UK and Canada.

Since most poetry awards (at least most major ones that Wikipedia might have articles on) cover poetry within the bounds of a particular nation, poetry list articles would be useful on that basis.

I propose creating these pages:

  • List of United States poetry awards (currently about 50 Wikipedia articles)
  • List of Canadian poetry awards (currently about 10 Wikipedia articles)
  • List of British poetry awards (currently about 10 Wikipedia articles)
  • List of major poetry awards -- for worldwide listings, taking only international poetry awards or the major awards from each country (major could be defined as largest money awards, with any necessary exceptions).