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A prize of $1,000 and publication by Regal House Publishing is given annually for a poetry collection. The editors will judge. Submit a manuscript of 48 to 100 pages with a $25 entry fee by January 31. Visit the website for the required entry form and complete guidelines.
Nine fellowships of $1,500 each and participation in a virtual five-month mentorship program, which includes one-on-one mentorship with an established writer; introductions to editors, agents, and publishers; a professional headshot; and a one-year PEN America membership, are given annually to emerging poets, fiction writers, and creative nonfiction writers “from communities that are traditionally underrepresented in the publishing world.” Fellows also participate in workshops on editing, marketing, and building a professional platform. Writers who have not yet published a book and who do not hold an advanced degree in creative writing are eligible. Using only the online submission system, submit a writing sample of up to 10 pages of poetry or 15 pages of prose, a series of personal statements, a curriculum vitae, and contact information for at least one reference with a $25 entry fee by January 31. Visit the website for complete guidelines.
A prize of $1,000 and publication in Soundings East, the annual literary journal of Salem State University, is given annually for a group of poems. Susan Rich will judge. Using only the online submission system, submit 8 to 10 pages of poetry (no more than one poem per page) with a $10 entry fee (or $15, which includes a copy of the latest issue of Soundings East) by February 1. Visit the website for complete guidelines.
Five fellowships of $27,000 each are given annually to U.S. poets between the ages of 21 and 31. Using only the online submission system, submit 10 pages of poetry and an application between January 15 and March 2. There is no entry fee. Visit the website for the required application form, which can be accessed via Poetry Foundation’s online portal (applicants must register for portal access by February 23), and complete guidelines.
In a tribute published in the Yale Review to Ellen Bryant Voigt, who passed away in October, executive editor Meghan O’Rourke writes: “Through her, I learned to read like a poet. Not to identify themes, as I’d been trained to do as an undergraduate at Yale, but to attend to effects.” This type of close examination included describing poems by how many medium-length lines and periods were in a poem, and how many lines a sentence takes up. “Her rigor taught me how to read my own work as I’d learned to read others’: closely enough to see what it was resisting,” writes O’Rourke. Revisit a poem you’ve written and consider what the work may want to be, and what it might be resisting. What about its syntax or grammar might lead you to these conclusions? Explore reworking the poem a little or a lot to shape how it arrives at its desired effects, or resists them.
“You have to learn to write when you don’t feel like it.” —Raquel Gutiérrez, author of Southwest Reconstruction
The author of Ocean of Clouds (Knopf, 2025) considers the lineage of his own loping lines and encourages poets to try them.
“This table has been a house in the rain, an umbrella in the sun.” In this video that originally aired in 2012, poet Joy Harjo reads her poem “Perhaps the World Ends Here,” which appears in her collection The Woman Who Fell From the Sky (Norton, 1994), for PBS NewsHour.
Write a poem that begins with the image of an animal arriving where it should not be, such as a whale in an office space or a Zebra in a suburban backyard. Allow this surreal scene to take you to unexpected places and metaphors. Is the animal an omen or is it concealing a secret? Focus on the literal and symbolic dimensions of the encounter, drawing out the scene to illuminate overlooked truths, inner stirrings, and the quiet absurdities of the world around you.
The author of Ocean of Clouds (Knopf, 2025) considers the benefits of planning elements of a poem before its composition.
