2024 Rural Dionysia Announcement
Io! The time of the year has come again for the Rural Dionysia!
How to participate
The Rural Dionysia is meant to be a smaller competition than its urban counterpart, as such, we have selected only 3 categories:
Freestyle poetry
Modern hymns
“Complete the fragment”
Freestyle poetry
Your poem can be about any chosen topic (myth, personal experience etc.) in any written format. It doesn't have to be religious in nature.
Modern hymn
An hymn must sing the praises of a deity of your choice. Unlike the "freestyle poetry", your work must be of religious nature to fit in this category.
Complete the Fragment
Each year, we choose a fragment from an Ancient Greek poet to work with. The challenge is that the initial fragment must be included somewhere in your piece in its original order. This means you can fill the gaps however you want, but you can’t switch the order of the words in your piece or remove words from the original fragment.
Here is the fragment selected for this 2024 edition:
Fragment 113 by Alcaeus (trans. David A. Campbell; Loeb 142)
…kiss…(they) began…knowledge…sits…are…mortal
Here is the Greek text for reference. Note that because the word "they" is implied, it will be acceptable to keep or modify this word.
If in doubt for any of these categories, remember that you can check submissions from the previous years to get an idea of how others have done before.
Submitting your piece
Please submit your piece through submissions on this blog. All entries must be tagged for the category they are being submitted to. but you can only choose 1 category per piece and each person may only submit 1 entry per category each year.
Entries must also be tagged for potentially triggering content and squicks. If your entry needs a trigger warning, kindly add them at the end of your submission and we will take care of adding them in. Check the rules below for further information about submissions.
Calendar of the event
Nov. 16: Official announcement and opening of submissions. Dec. 17: Final submission day. Dec. 18: Vote opening. Dec. 25: Vote closing. Dec. 25-26: Announcement of the winners!
No worries though! We will be posting reminders about each step when the time comes.
General rules
Roleplay and fanfic are not acceptable submissions. This is a religious festival, please respect our faith and do not submit an entry if you are roleplaying or writing fanfiction.
Unlike with the City Dionysia, entries do not necessarily have to be about specific deities or Hellenic polytheism except for the “Modern Hymn” category, which has to be dedicated to one or many gods of your choice.
There are no meter restrictions. This is up to the writer.
All stories, myths, and poems must be entered using the submissions button.
All entries must be tagged for the category they are being submitted to. Entries must also be tagged for potentially triggering content and squicks.
An entry may only be submitted to a single category.
Each person may only submit one entry per category each year.
Winners for each category will be decided by popular vote.
Admins of this blog cannot participate, for obvious reasons. As for now, this includes @thegrapeandthefig @verdantlyviolet
Questions about the rules? Check the blog for past answers, your answer might be in there. And if it's not, simply submit an ask. We'll answer in the best delays possible.
