Here is walkthrough on how the free poetry contests work.

You submit a poem to a contest. That doesn’t yet guarantee that the poem gets entered into the contest, however. It also needs to pass a public test of approval, and you as the contestant are responsible for making this happen. The poem needs to get 10 or more votes in the form of Facebook ‘Likes’. This happens by simply clicking the ‘Like’ button on the poem page.

When you submit the poem, it gets published on its own page. This link will be given to you after the submission of the poem.

How do you get these 10 votes? The best way is probably to promote your poem on Facebook by posting the link to the page where it is published and asking your friends to vote on it. Another way is to select a handful of your friends and send them an email with the same.

If you are writing under a pen name and wish to remain anonymous, you can also promote your poem by posting about it on a poetry forum, for example. We will also help you along by tweeting about all the new poems and also by featuring some of the poems we think haven’t received enough attention.

But the onus is on you as the contestant to ensure your poem passes this first test.

After this, the poem is entered into the contest. There are still live judging rounds for all the poems entered into contests, so this is not a popularity contest: the first round of public approval serves as a way to ensure the wider acceptance of the poem.