Genre: Poetry

Submissions are open for the 6th annual Yemassee Poetry Chapbook Contest and the inaugural Yemassee Fiction Chapbook Contest. Sponsored by the literary magazine Yemassee, each contest awards a prize of $1,250, chapbook publication, and 25 author copies.

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Using only the online submission system, submit 20 to 26 pages of poetry or 20 to 40 pages of fiction with a $18 entry fee by February 15. Gabrielle Calvocoressi will judge in poetry and Sarah Gerard will judge in fiction. Visit the website for complete guidelines.

Based at the University of South Carolina, Yemassee publishes two print issues each year as well as ongoing Monthly Spotlights featuring new poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. Previous winners of the journal’s poetry chapbook contest include Taneum Bambrick and Mick Powell.
 

The inaugural Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry is open for submissions. Sponsored by Arrowsmith Press, in partnership with the Derek Walcott Festival and the Boston Playwrights’ Theatre, the award will be given for a poetry collection written by a living poet who is not a U.S. citizen. Books published anywhere in the world during the previous calendar year, in English or translated into English, are eligible. The winner will receive a cash prize of $1,000, a reading at the Boston Playwrights’ Theatre, the publication of a limited-edition broadside by Arrowsmith Press, and a weeklong residency at one of Walcott’s homes in either St. Lucia or Port-of-Spain, Trinidad. If the winning work is a translated book, the prize money will be shared between the translator and the poet.

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Publishers may submit books published between January 1, 2019 and December 31, 2019 with a $20 entry fee by February 15. Multiple submissions are permitted, but each book requires a separate submission and fee. Visit the website for complete guidelines.

The winner of the prize will be announced in May and will be invited to give a reading in Boston in October 2020. Glyn Maxwell, the editor of Walcott’s Selected Poems and a friend of the late poet, will judge. The prize was established by Walcott’s family to honor his lifelong support of emerging writers.

Photo: Derek Walcott

Marshes, rivers, forest, mountains, butterfly wings, fungi, fruits, flowers, birds, leaves, foxes, bears, wolves, and whales. The Biodiversity Heritage Library, billed as the “world’s largest open access digital library,” is a free archive of over fifty-seven million pages of sketches, illustrations, diagrams, studies, and research of life on Earth from the fifteenth century to the present. Browse through their Flickr gallery and choose a group of images that you find particularly intriguing, striking, curious, or beautiful. Write a poem that considers the life forms and ecosystems depicted in the illustrations and how they affect your imagination today.

Submissions are open for the 5th annual Prize in Southern Poetry, sponsored by the Atlanta restaurant White Oak Kitchen & Cocktails. The award is given for a poem written by a Southern writer on a given theme. This year’s theme is “shared spirit.” The winner will receive a cash prize of $1,500 and their poem will be featured on the restaurant’s Valentine’s Day menu on February 14 and 15, 2020. 

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Submit a poem of up to 40 lines by February 7. Writers who reside in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, or West Virginia and who have published no more than one book are eligible. There is no entry fee. Visit the website for complete guidelines.

The winner of the competition will be announced on Valentine’s Day. The 2019 prize was awarded to Heather Elouej of Johnson City, Tennessee for her poem “Hindsight.”