I had run to the grocery store in the middle of the day and on my way out, a woman who knows me stopped her car in the parking lot, rolled down her window, and pleaded.

"Can't you please put the poem about my mother in the newspaper?" she asked.

No. No, we can't.

We're currently accepting submissions for our annual Mother's Day tribute, which will be published next month, and one of the rules that we've already published several times is "no poetry." Here's why.

Poetry is a very personal medium. A lot of people feel compelled to try to write poetry, but there's no guarantee that any readers other than the poet will be moved by it. There's a lot of good poetry out there; there's a lot of bad poetry out there. But we here in the newsroom don't have the time or training to be poetry critics, and it's not really feasible for us to sit here and sift out the good from the bad.

Your poem may be fantastic; but if we agree to run your poem, we're pretty much forced to also run a poem from your next-door neighbor, who couldn't write his way out of a wet paper bag. In order to make sure that the Mother's Day section is enjoyable for everyone, it's simplest for us to just avoid poetry altogether.

Poetry can get us into copyright trouble. When someone submits a poem in tribute to their loved one, we're sometimes not sure whether it's a poem they have written themselves or a poem that they or their loved one read in a book somewhere. We could get into trouble for publishing someone else's poetry without the poet's permission.

We had been running the guidelines for the Mother's Day section in the Area Briefs column for a week or two; lately we haven't had room for it because there are so many events taking place in the county this month. (That's a whole different column.) So let me take some space here to repeat the information:

The Times-Gazette will publish its annual Mother's Day salute next month. As always, we'd like you to submit photos of your mother and/or your own personal thoughts and remembrances about your mother. Here are some guidelines:

* Only one photo will be published per mother, so if you are choosing a photo of a mother and children, try to make sure that everyone who needs to be included is included.

* Please identify everyone in the photo by first and last name, and if the photo is of a particular place or event, please tell us about it.

* No poetry, please, and nothing copied from a book or magazine or pass-along e-mail. We're looking for your original thoughts, not for someone else's copyrighted material.

* Photos may be e-mailed to jcarney@t-g.com with "Mother's Day" in the subject line, mailed to the Shelbyville Times-Gazette, attn: Mother's Day submissions, P.O. Box 380, Shelbyville TN 37162, or brought by our offices at 323 East Depot St.

* If you are e-mailing a photo, please send it as a separate JPG attachment -- don't embed it in a Word document.

* Items submitted by mail or in person should preferably be typed or computer-printed; hand-written submissions are discouraged, but if that's your only option please print legibly.

The deadline for submissions is close of business on April 30.