Ready, Set, Go! Poets, Prepare for Fall Competitions
Tuesday August 19, 2008
If you’ve spent the summer polishing a poem or a chapbook manuscript or even a full-length collection, now’s the time to pack it up & send it off to one of the many award competitions that do their reading in the fall:
- Poetry Super Highway Poetry Contest (email entries only, fee postmark deadline September 20)
- Pudding House Chapbook Competition (postmark deadline September 30)
- May Swenson Poetry Award from Utah State University Press (postmark deadline September 30)
- Ruskin Art Club Poetry Award from Red Hen Press (postmark deadline September 30)
- New Criterion Poetry Prize (postmark deadline September 30)
- Kinereth Gensler Award from Alice James Books (postmark deadline October 1)
- Jeffrey E. Smith Editor’s Prize in Poetry from The Missouri Review (postmark deadline October 1)
- Benjamin Saltman Poetry Award from Red Hen Press (postmark deadline October 31)
- The T.S. Eliot Prize from Truman State University Press (postmark deadline October 31)
- The Ledge Poetry Chapbook Competition (postmark deadline October 31)
- Bakeless Literary Prize in Poetry from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference (postmark deadline November 1)
- CBC Literary Awards for Canadian citizens & residents (postmark deadline November 1)
- Chautauqua Literary Journal Annual Poetry Contest (postmark deadline November 15)
- Yale Series of Younger Poets competition for poets 40 or younger (postmark deadline November 15)
- Perugia Press Prize for a first or second book by a woman (postmark deadline November 15)
- Howard Nemerov Sonnet Award (postmark deadline November 15)
- Crab Orchard Series in Poetry Open Competition Awards (postmark deadline November 17)
- Poetry Business Book & Pamphlet Competition (postmark deadline November 29)
- A. Poulin, Jr. Prize from BOA Editions (postmark deadline November 30)
- The Missouri Review Audio & Video Competitions (postmark deadline December 1)
- Beatrice Hawley Award from Alice James Books (postmark deadline December 1)
- Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize from Waywiser Press (postmark deadline December 1)
Required reading before you submit to any contests:
How to put together a poetry manuscript for publication
“A Word To the Wise: On entering your poems in competition,” by Kurt Heintz
“You Do It Because You Love It,” by S.A. Griffin
Related resources:
More contest links
Comments
You might want to vet this list a little. The Orphic Prize link goes to last year’s information (Dec. 07 deadline). The Washington Writers’ Publishing House is a dead link. I didn’t try them all, of course, but those two need a look.
My apologies — I thought I had pasted in the updated list, but last year’s appeared instead. All the links should be good now, and I’ll be back to post new links as I identify more fall 2008 competition deadlines.