“You have changed me already. I am a fireball / That is hurtling towards the sky to where you are,” begins Dorothea Lasky’s “Poem to an Unnameable Man” from her 2010 collection, Black Life. The poem’s speaker regales their addressee with the projected story of their intense connection, as Lasky incorporates cosmic imagery, a confessional tone, and grandiose language combined with an intimate, idiosyncratic voice. This week write a poem that traverses the galaxy and addresses someone or something you feel tethered to, as if you’re “hurtling towards” them. As you write, play around with figurative language that points to both sizable and smaller, nuanced observations.

“Why do we dream? Because it’s the only mechanism our brain has for sorting through all the myriad associations it discovers and deciding which ones are potentially of value,” says Robert Stickgold, professor and director of the Harvard Center for Sleep and Cognition and coauthor of When Brains Dream: Exploring the Science and Mystery of Sleep, in his TEDx Talk on the purpose of dreams and how sleep sews together the pieces of our memories. Write an essay that begins with the description of a dream you’ve had recently, recounting it in as much detail as you can remember. Then expand and explore how the conflicts and emotions brought up by your dream might be connected to another time in your life when you experienced something similar. What do you think your brain was trying to figure out?

This year’s Lunar New Year begins on February 10 and celebrates the year of the dragon. Festivities vary in different cultures, however in Chinese traditions, they begin with the first new moon of the year and culminate with the full moon two weeks later. The two-week period allows for time to travel and visit with family, celebrate and gather with friends, set a new tone for the year, anticipate the forthcoming spring season, and make merry with food and drink. Write a story that takes place during a two-week stretch of time, perhaps revolving around a festive event. How does the restrictive length of time create a sense of urgency or tension?

“In writing the sonnets of frank, the form was a rescue raft, a lifeline, the safety net beneath the trapeze act. I liked how it equalized every event, relationship, song, or story that the individual sonnet might take on,” says poet Diane Seuss in a 2022 Publishers Weekly interview with Maya C. Popa about her Pulitzer Prize–winning collection, in which she explores with brutal frankness her personal history and themes of death, illness, addiction, and love. Inspired by Seuss, write two fourteen-line sonnets with vastly different subjects. In using a specific form to create a sort of equalizing force between topics, how do the minor victories and upsets of mundane occurrences find balance with the heavier ups and downs of your life?

Don’t let your writing life become a version of Groundhog Day, the 1993 film in which a disgruntled weatherman—played by Bill Murray—must relive, seemingly ad infinitum, the eponymous holiday. Change things up by submitting your work to a new contest! Nine awards have a deadline of February 15 or February 16, offering prizes that include $3,000 and publication for collections of poetry, fiction, and essays; $1,000 for a poetry collection translated from any language into English; and five prizes of $1,000 to $1,500 for a single poem “composed in the traditional modes of meter, rhyme, and received forms.” Good luck, writers!

Academy of American Poets
Ambroggio Prize
A prize of $1,000 and publication by University of Arizona Press is given annually for a poetry collection originally written in Spanish by a living writer and translated into English. Norma Elia Cantú will judge. Deadline: February 15. Entry fee: None.

Academy of American Poets
Harold Morton Landon Translation Award
A prize of $1,000 is given annually for a poetry collection translated from any language into English and published in the United States during the previous year. Valzhyna Mort will judge. Deadline: February 15. Entry fee: None.

Arrowsmith Press
Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry
 A prize of $2,000 is given annually for a poetry collection published in English during the previous year by a writer who is not a citizen of the United States. English translations of works originally written in another language are accepted. Deadline: February 15. Entry fee: $20.

Center for African American Poetry and Poetics/Autumn House Press
Book Prize
A prize of $3,000 and publication by Autumn House Press is given annually for a first or second poetry collection (or a work that intersects with poetry, including hybrid text, speculative prose, and translation) by a writer of African descent. Aracelis Girmay will judge. Deadline: February 15. Entry fee: None.

Finishing Line Press
Open Chapbook Competition
A prize of $1,500 and publication by Finishing Line Press is given annually for a poetry chapbook. Manuscripts written in a language other than English are accepted when accompanied by an English translation. Deadline: February 15. Entry fee: $20.

Furious Flower Poetry Center
Furious Flower Poetry Prize
A prize of $1,500 and publication in Obsidian, the literary journal of Illinois State University, is given annually for a group of poems that explore Black themes. The winner also receives a $500 honorarium to give a reading at James Madison University. Poets who have published no more than one poetry collection are eligible. Roger Reeves will judge. Deadline: February 15. Entry fee: $15.

Omnidawn Publishing
First/Second Poetry Book Contest
A prize of $3,000, publication by Omnidawn Publishing, and 20 author copies is given annually for a first or second poetry collection. Desirée Alvarez will judge. Deadline: February 16. Entry fee: $35.

Sarabande Books
Morton, McCarthy, and Sarabande Prizes
Two prizes of $3,000 each and publication by Sarabande Books are given annually for collections of poetry and fiction; in 2024, a new prize of $3,000 and publication will also be given for a collection of essays. For the Kathryn A. Morton Prize in Poetry, Hanif Abdurraqib will judge. For the Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction, Lauren Groff will judge. For the Sarabande Prize in the Essay, Alexander Chee will judge. Deadline: February 15. Entry fee: $29.

West Chester University
Poetry Awards
Five prizes of $1,000 to $1,500 will be given annually for a single poem “composed in the traditional modes of meter, rhyme, and received forms” (Iris N. Spencer Poetry Award); a single poem written in haiku form (Myong Cha Son Haiku Award); a single poem written in sonnet form (Sonnet Award); a single poem written in villanelle form (Villanelle Award); and a single poem written in Spanish and accompanied by the English translation or translated into Spanish and accompanied by the English original (Rhina P. Espaillat Award). Second-place prizes of $500 will also be awarded for the Iris N. Spencer Poetry Award and the Myong Cha Son Haiku Award. Only undergraduate students who are enrolled in a United States college or university are eligible. Ernest Hilbert will judge. Deadline: February 16. Entry fee: None.

Visit the contest websites for complete guidelines, and check out the Grants & Awards database and Submission Calendar for more contests in poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, and translation.

What does a Bill look like? What about a Michael? As the U.S. primary election season progresses, an innocuous excerpt from Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley’s 2012 memoir, Can’t Is Not an Option, has resurfaced on social media and news outlets. In the book, Haley writes that when she began dating her husband, he went by his first name Bill, but she decided that he didn’t look like a Bill and found his middle name Michael suited him better, and he became known as Michael. Write a personal essay that revolves around your sentiments about your own given name. Have you ever thought about changing it? Do you think you’ve taken on certain personality traits because of it, or in spite of it?

In his essay published in the Evergreen Review, Younis B. Azeem writes from his viewpoint as a young student newly arrived in New York from Pakistan about the culture of smoking cigarettes. “Among the few indisputable facts of the world, right below gravity and above the moon landing, is that cigarettes will kill you,” he writes. “In America that belief translates into a two-part statement, the second one unsaid, where it’s declared that cigarettes will kill you before anything else does. This right here, this inherent first-world privilege is something that all the best efforts of Big Tobacco cannot undo.” Azeem asserts that in other places in the world, there are hazardous living conditions much more likely to be the cause of death than smoking. Write a short story in which a newcomer posits an unexpected, iconoclastic, or unusual opinion. How does this create a disruption to your other characters’ everyday lives?

“Like a snail with a shell of sticks //  — she loads them on her back — //   Like a camel with a hump of sticks //  — on her back, on her back — // Like a horse with a knight of sticks and a stick for a sword,” writes Valzhyna Mort in her poem “In the Woods of Language, She Collects Beautiful Sticks” published in the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day series. In her description of this poem, Mort explains how an inability to write another poem she was working on made her “feel homeless in language and in poetry” and that writing this poem became “a bit of homemaking” for her. Write a poem that reflects your own process when your mind wanders away from writing and you must find a way back into the home of language. Does it involve the vocabulary of domesticity, construction, or helpful creatures?