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December 2025 | Form: Elegy
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December 2025 | Form: Elegy
Elegy for the Last Time I Saw Your Hangnails
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Maren Logan
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Above Ground by Clint Smith 
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Eternal Fame & Glory, Anyone?
$5000 Poet of the Year Prize
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Eternal Fame & Glory, Anyone?
Poet of the Year Award
Searching for a poet whose voice promises one award-winning poem after another.
Award: $5000
March 1 — April 30
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Bob Hicok Fellowship for Poets
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A Year-Long Invitation
Bob Hicok Fellowship
For poets seeking time, guidance, funding, and a community that believes in their work.
Award: $2000
July 1 — August 31
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Can you write the most beautiful poem?
$2000 Leonard Cohen Poetry Prize
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Love, Faith, & Sex
Leonard Cohen Poetry Prize
Honoring poems echoing Cohen’s obsessions: love & loss, faith & flesh, devotion & doubt.
Award: $3500
September 21 — November 7
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Bob Hicok Fellowship for Poets
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Bob Hicok Fellowship for Poets

This poetry award is not for the single best poem but rather for the poet whose body of work we feel is or will be full of one award-winning poem after another.
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Best Young Poets Award
This poetry award is not for the single best poem but rather for the poet whose body of work we feel is or will be full of one award-winning poem after another.
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Best New Poems Series
This poetry award is not for the single best poem but rather for the poet whose body of work we feel is or will be full of one award-winning poem after another.
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Grief & Surrealism
We’ll explore grief through the surreal, and read & write poems that move in and out of dream-logic.
with Karan Kapoor
December 20, 2025
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January 24, 2026
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February 21, 2026
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2026 Updates

Submission Periods and Increased Honorarium
Shannan Mann
11 Jan 2022
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Latest articles

You Are Here: Poetry in the Natural World

Mary Fontana ⟡ Reviewing the Ada Limón edited anthology

Make Oatmeal Cookies, Not War

A parade with tanks versus a parade with tubas...

Sweet Elsewhere #6: Hide & Seek Champions

Matthew Vollmer ⟡ Writing as an outsider

Everything in Life Is Resurrection by Cyrus Cassells

Davin Faris ⟡ Tension between dealing with the state of the world & finding joy

The eulogy I didn’t give (XIII)

A Poem by Bob Hicok

How to Greet the Sun

Darius Atefat-Peckam ⟡ The Sky Was Once a Dark Blanket by Kinsale Drake

Sweet Elsewhere #5: And You, You Ridiculous People, You Expect Me to Help You

Matthew Vollmer ⟡ Inevitability of failure

Indescribable Mishaps: Thoughts on the Work of Aimee Wai

John Arthur ⟡ Restoring faith in poetry

Almost

When someone says "nothing is permanent," ...
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Curated Reading Lists

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7 Books to Bring You Back to Your Body

Antonia Fuller ⟡ Relationship with our physical & sensual selves

6 Reminders to Stay Angry at Attempts to Erase Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

Andreea Ceplinschi ⟡ Exposing systems & empowering poets

6 Culture-Bridging Collections from Bilingual Poets

Andreea Ceplinschi ⟡ Transcending translation and language barriers

10 Poem Pop Punk Playlist to Honor Our Inner Emo

Kaylee Young-Eun Jeong & Maria Gray ⟡ Commit to feeling everything

7 Poetry Collections Inspired by Fatherhood

Emma Mott ⟡ The world of fathers

8 Winter Poetry Collections That Will Reinvent You

Turi Sioson ⟡ Antithetical sweetness of existence

7 Must-Read Poetry Collections on Womanhood

Holli Flanagan ⟡ Love, rage, joy & blood

8 Poetry Collections about Motherhood

Emma Mott ⟡ Because mom poems rock

Which Poetry Collection Are You According to Your Star Sign?

Mary Kelly ⟡ Zodiac poetics
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Interviews & Conversations

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The Poem Is a Construction Site

Stephen Gibson ⟡ Conversations with Ed Falco

Social Media and Reshaping the Creative Attention

Karan Kapoor ⟡ Conversation with Heidi Becker

Navigating the Borders Between the Past, Nature, and Ourselves with Patrycja Humienik

Phil Goldstein ⟡ On landscapes and diaspora

Exploring the Liminal Spaces of Self and Womanhood with Hannah Bonner

Phil Goldstein ⟡ Anguish, abjection, selfhood & solace

On the Edge of Memory and Place with Poet Trina Gaynon

Henry Cristopher ⟡ Intersections of poetry

Embracing Vulnerability & Craft

Karan Kapoor ⟡ Conversation with Marley Aikhionbare

Storytelling as Solidarity

Justine Payton ⟡ Conversation with Elly Belle

Love Poems in Translation: How to Love in Sanskrit

Shannan Mann ⟡ Conversation with Anusha Rao & Suhas Mahesh

The Fallacy of the Literary Citizen

Karan Kapoor ⟡ Conversation with Alina Stefanescu

Book Reviews

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Above Ground by Clint Smith 

Flash Review of Clint Smith's Above Ground

It’s Always Been Love

A Review of Water by Rumi, translated by Haleh Liza Gafori

Red upon red upon red

Review of Carey Salerno's The Hungriest Stars

Her Birth by Rebecca Goss

Flash Review by Emma Mott

A Bastion of Clinicality

On Dami Ajayi’s Clinical Blues

The Knife, the Flame, the Father

Karan Kapoor ⟡ If Nothing by Matthew Nienow

You Are Here: Poetry in the Natural World

Mary Fontana ⟡ Reviewing the Ada Limón edited anthology

Everything in Life Is Resurrection by Cyrus Cassells

Davin Faris ⟡ Tension between dealing with the state of the world & finding joy

How to Greet the Sun

Darius Atefat-Peckam ⟡ The Sky Was Once a Dark Blanket by Kinsale Drake
Next

Essays on Craft & Culture

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So you want to be a writer?

Notes on discouragement, discipline, obsession, and the slow, necessary failure of becoming a writer.

Indescribable Mishaps: Thoughts on the Work of Aimee Wai

John Arthur ⟡ Restoring faith in poetry

Poetry of the Mages: Kay Ryan

Samantha Weisberg ⟡ Different forms of divination

Poetry of the Mages: William Butler Yeats

Samantha Weisberg ⟡ Mysticism & spell poetics

Eco-Fabulism During the Sixth Mass Extinction

Kristin Emanuel ⟡ Finding hope in a dire world

Reading Poems, Revising Ourselves

Lauren Peat ⟡ An essay in five acts

Poetry of the Mages: Sylvia Plath

Samantha Weisberg ⟡ Occult influences & symbolism

Where is the Love?

Svetlana Litvinchuk ⟡ From Rumi to Leonard Cohen

All Work is the Avoidance of Harder Work: Proverb, Aphorism, Poem

James Richardson ⟡ Philosophy & humor
Next

Writing & Publishing Career

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Sweet Elsewhere #6: Hide & Seek Champions

Matthew Vollmer ⟡ Writing as an outsider

Sweet Elsewhere #5: And You, You Ridiculous People, You Expect Me to Help You

Matthew Vollmer ⟡ Inevitability of failure

Sweet Elsewhere #4: Just Missed

Matthew Vollmer ⟡ Taking heart in encouraging rejections

Sweet Elsewhere #3: Not This One

Matthew Vollmer ⟡ Pursuing publication

Sweet Elsewhere #2: Wonderful Verse!

Matthew Vollmer ⟡ Not every acceptance is a success

I’m Not Gonna Write If I Have to Do It Sober

Travis Pettrey ⟡ Substance struggles & writer's block

Sweet Elsewhere: On Yearning, Failing, & the Endless Pursuit

Matthew Vollmer ⟡ Powering through with obstinate confidence

From M.A. to M.F.A. to PhD in Creative Writing

Shannan Mann ⟡ Lit mags as career builders & literary citizenship

Aiming Beyond the Tenure-Track

Shannan Mann interviews Matthew Vollmer ⟡ Fate & future of the creative degreeer
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Poems by Bob Hicok

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All together now

A Poem by Bob Hicok

Scratch the paint off most Americans and you'll find an immigrant underneath

A Poem by Bob Hicok

More than whispers, less than rumours

A Poem by Bob Hicok

My country, ‘tis of thee

A Poem by Bob Hicok

The eulogy I didn’t give (XXIV)

A Poem by Bob Hicok

Make Oatmeal Cookies, Not War

A parade with tanks versus a parade with tubas...

The eulogy I didn’t give (XIII)

A Poem by Bob Hicok

Almost

When someone says "nothing is permanent," ...

A child of the Miranda Warning and First Amendment walks into a poem

A Poem by Bob Hicok
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Editorial Updates & News

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2026 Updates

Submission Periods and Increased Honorarium

2025 Nominations

Poems and Poets Nominated across 6 awards

2025 Wrapped

Stats, Secrets & Surprises

2025 Updates

Things to look forward to in 2025

2024 Wrapped

Highlights of 2024
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