peter says i'm published dammit

i'm toying with the idea of applying for the cbc literary awards. like a responsible contest participant i went online and read the contest terms & conditions. they're accepting only unpublished work. in my case, it's a 1000-2000 words of poetry for a potential first prize of $6000, a second prize of $4000. yeeeeaaaaah. there are a couple of road blocks: (1) you basically have to be michael ondaatje to walk away it. he's a former winner. and although the contest requires that you submit unpublished work, it doesn't require that you be unpublished. which basically means that every canadian author with six hours on their hands and a few pages of unpublished poetry is vying for the cash. (2) your work has to be unpublished. i know this is beginning to sound repetitive, but this is a key point for me: the cbc considers blogs a form of publication! all of the good stuff i've posted over the past year and change is therefore ineligible for competition. it's not as though i don't have little diamonds in the rough kicking around my desktop, but having to be concerned that they've been published on some random website and are therefore ineligible is a pain in my ass. i love google, but not in this case. having random house pay you eight grand to put out a chapbook is one thing, but creating and posting a blog entry is considered equivalent? (3) the winning entries are published in air canada's En Route in-flight magazine. you've read it, don't lie, we all have. the En Route magazine, in case you haven't guessed, is an issue for a number of reasons: first and foremost, no air canada exec in their right and sober mind is going to publish a kate leadbeater poem, primarily because kate leadbeater poems inevitably contain sex (and all the components thereof: pussy, cock, tits, ass, etc.), swearing, drinking, smoking, drugs, small children being assautled in...okay i'm exaggerating. but STILL. the cbc literary awards were clearly designed to fuck me. and you peter mansbridge, alleged guardian angel of mine, have seriously disappointed.