It’s that time of year again! We can’t wait to read your submissions for the 2023 International Poetry Contest. We want to read poems that sizzle, poems that make us cry or laugh or lose our breath. We want to be inundated with your beautiful and strange words.
As always we appreciate all kinds of poems, so feel free to send us your sonnets and villanelles and sestinas, your free verse, your nonce forms–whatever you got, we want to read it.
Contest submission entry is $15 per each packet of 5 poems (not per poem!!). Feel free to enter the contest as many times as you like, provided you pay the fee.
We’ve been busy uploading sample poems from past issues so that you can see all the great poems that we’ve published down through the years.
The most recent past issues include Poetry 2014, Pakistan, and Poetry 2015, and you can find between 8-10 poem .pdfs per issue. This project (like the Index Project) is time-consuming and slow-going, so be sure to check back periodically to see what “new” past issues we have available.
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
This year, two poems submitted for the Dan Veach Prize for Younger Poets were so exceptional, they both had to win. That’s right: we had a tie! Both Ivy Marie Clarke, for her poem “Where to Find Poetry,” and Rema Shbaita, for their poem “Palestine is Upsidedown” will win the $100 prize, and their work will appear in the Fall issue. Congratulations to Ivy and Rema, and to all the Finalists!
Rema Shbaita is a graduate of UC, Riverside and a former Co-Editor in Chief of The Mosaic Art & Literary Journal est. 1959. They don’t consider dandelions weeds and they’re allergic to grass. They enjoy media about found families and slap-dash friendship groups. They’re working on getting into a PhD program for educational research.
Ivy Marie Clarke is an emerging writer and photographer from Georgia, where she is studying Creative Writing and English Literature at Mercer University. She is currently a preceptor for English classes at her university and an intern at Macon Magazine.
The Finalists:
“Hills (for Bia),” McKenzie Hurder
“On the Edge,” Christine Kannapel
“Self Portrait with a Hare,” Reuben Gelley Newman
“Self Portrait as Expatriated Sapling in North Beijing,” Benjamin Stallings
Did you miss us while we were closed to online submissions? Of course you did. And we missed you too!
Our doors are open once more! You can start sending us your wonderful poems at Submittable. We are ready for a new batch. (Though tbh we’re still making our way through contest subs, so we ask for our contest submitters’ continued patience while we finish reading your work–we received nearly 475 submissions this year).
Hope you’re having a great summer writing your hearts out!
It’s summer which means we’re about to take a month off from receiving new work so that we can catch up on all the general/ contest submissions you’ve sent us—well, we will try anyway!
Our Submittable portal will be closed from June 1-30 for general submissions. (Of course, you can always snail mail us work in June if you simply MUST send us your poems.)
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.
That’s right, everyone, our 2019 International Poetry Contest closes on May 15th, which means you have less than a month to get your poems into the contest. What are you waiting for?
$10 lets you submit a packet of 3 poems. Submit as many packets as you want—the more the merrier.
Hurry, hurry! Send us your poems! We’re excited to read your work!
This year’s International Poetry Contest is up and running. Send us your poems from around the globe! We’re eager to read them.
What’s new:
We’ve lowered our contest submission fee to a flat rate–now you can submit any 3 poems for $10. Enter as often as you like! Send us 3 poems or 30, it’s up to you!
We have a new contest window: Submit from February 1st-May 1st.
It’s that time of year again! We can’t wait to read your submissions for the 2023 International Poetry Contest. We want to read poems that sizzle, poems that make us cry or laugh or lose our breath. We want to be inundated with your beautiful and strange words.
