Public Poetry

Taking Poetry Public

Public Poetry holds an annual poetry contest, judged by nationally notable poets, which culminates in a published anthology, a book launch reading, and cash prizes.

The prompt for our 2023 anthology contest is HABITS–send us your poems about your own habits or other people’s habits by April 15. Poems included in the HABITS Anthology will be selected blind by our panel of judges. Our judges this year are talented and lauded poets Rosebud Ben-Oni, Kay Ulanday Barrett, and Melissa Studdard.

Three poems will be chosen to receive awards of $250, $150, $100, and winning poets will be invited to Houston for the Fall book launch and reading.

GUIDELINES:

  • Submissions accepted from USA only
  • Multiple submissions allowed
  • Up to 40 lines (white space, title and epigraph not included )
  • Monthly members get an additional free submission (Click HERE for Membership)
  • If submitting multiple poems, each poem needs to be submitted on its own page
  • You can submit previously published poems with acknowledgement
  • Submission must include a cover letter with the following information:
    1. First Name
    2. Email Address
    3. Phone Number
    4. Zip Code and State
    5. Title of each poem Note: If untitled, use the first three words of the first line in brackets [ ]
    *6. Please indicate whether you identify as LGBTQIA+
    *7. Please indicate whether you identify as BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and people of color)
    *8. Please indicate your age
*Optional Fields

Judges:

Melissa Studdard is the author of five books, including the poetry collections Dear Selection Committee and I Ate the Cosmos for Breakfast , the poetry chapbookLike a Bird with a Thousand Wings , and the young adult novel Six Weeks to Yehidah . Her work has been featured by NPR, PBS, The New York Times, The Guardian, and Houston Matters, and has also appeared in a wide variety of periodicals, such as POETRY, Kenyon Review, Psychology Today, New Ohio Review, Harvard Review, New England Review, and Poets & Writers.
Credit: Jess-X-Chen
Credit: Jess-X-Chen
Kay Ulanday Barrett is the author of More Than Organs (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2020), which received a 2021 Stonewall Barbara Gittings Literature Honor Award from the American Library Association, and was a finalist for the 2021 Lambda Literary Award in Transgender Poetry. In 2022, they received the Cy Twombly Award for Poetry from the Foundation of Contemporary Arts. They currently serve as a disability justice and trans justice advocate.
Credit: Brian Lee
Credit: Brian Lee
Born to a Mexican mother and a Jewish father, Rosebud Ben-Oni is the winner of the Alice James Award for If This Is the Age We End Discovery (March 2021), which was also a finalist for the 2021 National Jewish Book Award in Poetry. She is the author of turn around, BRXGHT, XYXS (Get Fresh Books, 2019) and the chapbook 20 Atomic Sonnets, which appears online in Black Warrior Review (2020).

ENTRY FEE:

Through APRIL 15, 2023

  • $10 – Single poem
  • $16 – Up to two poems
  • $21 – Up to three poems 

(members only – 1 free additional entry)

TO SUBMIT:

Click on the number of entries you are submitting. Once your payment has been received you will get instructions for your submissions right away.