Genre: Poetry

Prizes in Books

Pulitzer Prizes
Entry Fee: 
$75
Deadline: 
October 15, 2024
Six prizes of $15,000 each are given annually for books of poetry, fiction, general nonfiction, U.S. history, biography, and memoir first published in the United States during the current year. Eligible authors include U.S. citizens and permanent residents or those who have made the United States their longtime primary home. Using only the online submission system, submit a digital copy of a book published in 2024 with a $75 entry fee by October 15. Visit the website for the required entry form and complete guidelines.

Tom Howard/Margaret Reid Poetry Contest

Winning Writers
Entry Fee: 
$22
Deadline: 
October 1, 2024
Two prizes of $3,500 each, two-year gift certificates for membership to the literary database Duotrope, and publication on the Winning Writers website are given annually for a poem in any style and a poem that either rhymes or is written in a traditional style. Briana Grogan, Michal “MJ” Jones, and Dare Williams will judge. Using only the online submission system, submit any number of poems of up to 250 lines each with a $22 entry fee for each submission of up to three poems by October 1. Visit the website for complete guidelines.

Evaristo Prize for African Poetry

African Poetry Book Fund
Entry Fee: 
$0
Deadline: 
November 1, 2024
A prize of $1,500 is given annually for a group of poems by an African poet who has not published a full-length collection. Writers who were born in Africa, are nationals or residents of an African country, or whose parents are African are eligible. Using only the online submission system, submit 10 published or unpublished poems of up to 40 lines each by November 1. There is no entry fee. Visit the website for complete guidelines.

Poetry Prize

Dzanc Books
Entry Fee: 
$25
Deadline: 
September 30, 2024
A prize of $1,000 and publication by Dzanc Books will be given for a poetry collection. Jonathan Fink and Keith Taylor will judge. Using only the online submission system, submit a manuscript of at least 60 pages, a synopsis, and a brief bio with a $25 entry fee by September 30. Visit the website for complete guidelines.

Benjamin Saltman Poetry Award

Red Hen Press
Entry Fee: 
$25
Deadline: 
October 31, 2024
A prize of $3,000 and publication by Red Hen Press is given annually for a poetry collection. Jason Schneiderman will judge. Using only the online submission system, submit a manuscript of 48 to 96 pages with a $25 entry fee by October 31. Visit the website for complete guidelines.

Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize

Yale University Press
Entry Fee: 
$25
Deadline: 
November 15, 2024
A prize of $1,000 and publication by Yale University Press is given annually for a poetry collection by a poet who has not published a full-length book of poetry and who resides in the United States. The winner also receives a writing fellowship at the James Merrill House in Stonington, Connecticut. Rae Armantrout will judge. Submit a manuscript of 48 to 64 pages with a $25 entry fee by November 15. Visit the website for complete guidelines.

Paterson

8.13.24

William Carlos Williams’s multi-volume, mid-twentieth-century poem Paterson is purportedly inspired by the works of his contemporaries: James Joyce’s Ulysses, Ezra Pound’s The Cantos, T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, and Hart Crane’s The Bridge. Through his subject—the former mill town of Paterson, New Jersey—Williams provides a voice for American industrial communities. A launching pad for other artists’ work, the book inspired Jim Jarmusch’s 2016 film Paterson, about a bus driver and poet named Paterson in the city of the same name, and Robert Fitterman’s book Creve Coeur (Winter Editions, 2024), set in the segregated suburbs of his eponymous Missouri hometown—an illustration of contemporary America that mirrors the structure of Williams’s postwar epic. Write a poem that draws on specific observations of your neighborhood to express a wider perspective on life in the twenty-first century. Incorporate street names, local landmarks, and history as well as tidbits of everyday conversation.

Visions of America With Kaoukab Chebaro

Caption: 

In this installment of the Visions of America: All Stories, All People, All Places series hosted by the Institute of Museum and Library Services and PBS Books, Kaoukab Chebaro, head of Global Studies at the Columbia University Libraries, discusses the importance of first-person storytelling and her work in preserving the individual history of Arabs across the globe.

Growing a Garden

“In colonial times, gardens were utilitarian. A cross between a grocery store and a pharmacy. In the gilded age, they became an entrance to high society, a place of conspicuous display,” narrates the main character in Paul Schrader’s 2022 film Master Gardener, a man with a secret past who works as the horticulturalist of an estate owned by a wealthy dowager. This week write a poem about a garden, perhaps a large and well-known one visited by tourists, a seasonal garden tended by family members that you frequented as a child, or one you pass occasionally on a neighborhood walk. You might explore the functions of the garden; list colors, shapes, textures, and smells; or make conjectures about its guiding aesthetics. What can a garden reveal about its gardener and the space in which it resides?

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