Poetry Contest Is Open

Image of a black swan book plate from 1864.
from the NYPL Digital Collections

The International Poetry Contest is open once more!  We so look forward to reading your dazzling poems from across the world…or across town!  Send us your best!

Contest fee is $15/5 poems (up to 10 pages total).  The Grand Prize is $1000 and publication!  Twenty Finalists will also be published, and thirty Merit Winners will find their names on a special, dedicated page in the Fall issue.

You may enter as many times as you like, provided you pay the $15 fee each time.

Last day to enter is May 1!

Carter Rekoske Is the 2023 Dan Veach Prize for Younger Poets Winner!

We’re thrilled to announce that Carter Rekoske has won this year’s Dan Veach Prize for his poem, “Prayer for Gratitude.”  He has won $100 and his poem will be published in the upcoming Fall issue.

Carter is a 21 year old creative writing student at Bryan College in Tennessee. He won the poetry award in his school’s 2022 and 2023 annual literary contests and will be published in forthcoming issues of Listening and Black Fox Literary Magazine.

We want to thank everyone who participated, and send special shout out to our Finalists and Honorable Mentions!

The Complete List of Finalists

      • Alejandro Aguirre, “Elizabeth Bishop’s Arrival at Havana, 1955”
      • Gospel Chinedu, “Progeny”
      • Gaia McCune, “A Spring Morning”

The Complete List of Honorable Mentions

      • Amad Aamir, “Letters I Keep Writing to the Sea”
      • Daniel Barry, “Senior Week”
      • Jayant Kashyap, “Nilgai”
      • Chiwenite Onyekwelu, “Duplex for My Father”

Fall Contest 2021 Open!

From NYPL Digital Collections

It’s February, so you know what that means:  we’re throwing open the doors on our annual International Poetry Contest!  As with last year, contest submissions are $15 for up to 5 poems per entry.  Enter as many times as you want.

One Grand Prize winner will receive $1000 and publication, and all Finalists will be published as well.  Thirty Merit Award winners will receive a copy of the Fall issue.

You can read all the details here on our Submittable site.

We look forward to your poems!  Happy submitting!

2019 International Poetry Contest Winner Announced!

Photo credit: Ellie Honl

We are so excited to share that this year’s winner our annual International Poetry Contest is Kurt Luchs, for his poem “Suzie.”

This year’s judge was Dan Vera.

Kurt wins the $1000 prize, and his poem, along with the wonderful poems by the other Finalists, will appear in the fall issue.  Congratulations to Kurt and to all of the Finalists!  You make Atlanta Review awesome!

Kurt Luchs has poems published or forthcoming in Into the Void, Right Hand Pointing, and The Sun Magazine. He won the 2017 Bermuda Triangle Poetry Prize, and was the First Runner-Up for the 2019 Fischer Poetry Prize. He has written humor for the New Yorker, the Onion, and McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, as well as writing comedy for television and radio. His books include a humor collection, It’s Funny Until Someone Loses an Eye (Then It’s Really Funny) (2017 Sagging Meniscus Press), and a poetry chapbook, One of These Things Is Not Like the Other (2019 Finishing Line Press). More of his work, both poetry and humor, is at kurtluchs.com. He lives and works in Kalamazoo, Michigan, where he has no outstanding warrants.

The Finalists:

      • “Mexican Tongue,” JD Amick
      • “[Letter of Love] to Ojīchan,” Aozora Brockman
      • “Self Portrait with Rubble,” Sylvia Foley
      • “A pledge to the dead requires no proof,” Jennifer L. Hollis
      • “Corpse,” Dana Jaye
      • “Meditation on a Trash Fire in My Backyard,” Robert J. Keeler
      • “Quantum Heart,” Kathleen Kirk
      • “Waiting for Mother’s Geraniums,” Pingmei Lan
      • “One Intimate Morning,” Belle Ling
      • “Nighttime in Jericho,” Jo-Ann Mort
      • “Stones without People and the Art of the Mulberry,” Adele Ne Jame
      • “Consumption of a Black Hole and Sweat Bees,” John Nieves
      • “Thin Places,” Edward Nudelman
      • “Thought Experiment,” Edward Nudelman
      • “Apples, Crabapples,” David Rock
      • “Sometimes, Briefly,” Kelly Rowe
      • “Unscrolling,” Joan Roberta Ryan
      • “Spring Freeze,” Joan Roberta Ryan
      • “Dead Woman’s Hollow Road,” Nicole Santalucia
      • “What White Lies Beneath,” Heidi Seaborn
      • “Prelude to a Resurrection,” d.r. shipp
      • “She Zuo Bin’s Rite of Spring,” Mary Spalding
      • “Where We Call to Nest,” Felicia Zamora
      • “Turbulence: Night Flight to Cairo,” Kristin Zimet

Congratulations again!

Dan Veach Prize for Younger Writers–Send Us Your Subs!

Attention undergraduate poets–here’s a bright idea for you:

Would you like to see your poem in print AND win $100 prize?  Of course you would!

The Dan Veach Prize for Younger Writers is open to undergraduate students from 18-23, and it’s free to enter.  (You just need a Submittable account, which is also free, to submit your work.)

Send us two of your best poems, each under 40 lines long, and a recommendation letter from a professor or an adult who knows your writing well and can attest that it’s your own work.

The contest is open until June 1st!  Enter here.

(And creative writing professors–please send your brilliant student poets our way!)