271st Weekly Poetry Contest

•  $50 Winning Prize
•  $20 for Honorable Mentions
•  Eligible for Pushcart Prize nomination

•  Free Entry
•  Prior Publication Okay
•  Ends Sunday, Results by Next Sunday

Each week's Winner will receive a $50 cash prize, sent via PayPal to the user's registered e-mail address. Entry is free.

There may occasionally be one or more additional poems that receive an Honorable Mention. This will not necessarily be awarded every week, but when awarded, the poet(s) will receive a $20 cash prize, sent via PayPal to the user's registered e-mail address. All Winners and Honorable Mentions will be eligible to be included in future print anthologies.

Every year we will nominate up to six poems from among our winners and honorable mentions for the Pushcart Prize. Please set your user name to the name you would like use for the nomination.

Any type of poem is welcome! Formal or informal, long or short, rhyme or free verse, haiku or epic—we like all kinds of poems. Original translations are also welcome and will be evaluated as English poems. However, please include the original poem with any translations.

Each week's winner will be selected by Poetry Nook's editorial staff within seven days of contest end. Contest winners can be found in the Contest Winners forum; Honorable Mentions can be found in the Honorable Mentions forum. We read the poems with an eye to their overall impact, not for any particular style, form, or subject matter. We're looking for poems that will grab us right from the beginning and linger in our imagination. Things like vivid and concrete language, fresh perspectives, rhythm, lyricism, vibrant imagery, and human understanding can help, but are not necessarily decisive: it is the organic impression and memorability that matters.

Note: Most literary magazines consider web-published poems to be "published" and will not consider those poems, so if you want to publish a poem in a literary magazine, we recommend that you wait until it is published and are allowed to re-publish before submitting here. Poems submitted to a contest cannot be removed once the contest is over.

Rules
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1. Any length.
2. Any theme.
3. You must be a registered user of this site to post (registration is free).
4. By posting you certify that this is your own work, you hold the copyright, and you are granting us permission to publish it on our site and in a printed anthology.
5. Prior publication is fine, as long as you hold the rights to republish. Please credit the prior publication beneath the poem, in italics.
6. Posting on social media or other sites is encouraged. We actively follow user likes and insightful comments on the poems.
7. Non-English poems are welcome as long as you have an English translation beneath it. You are welcome to submit your own translation of public domain foreign poems or poems where you have received written permission to translate. We will evaluate these translations as English poems and will not consider the original. However, please include the original poem with any translations.
8. Winners will be announced within seven days of the contest end. For example, if the contest ends on Sunday, the winner will be announced by the following Sunday.
9. Payments will be made only via Paypal, sent to your registered email address within one week after the winner is announced. The recipient is responsible for any Paypal fees. We will not send payment by any other method.
10. No feedback will be provided if your poem did not get chosen.
11. If your poem did not get chosen in a given week, you are welcome to resubmit it in a subsequent week.
12. Poets with winning or honorable mention poems are welcome to enter subsequent contests with a different poem. A poem that has already won or earned an honorable mention will be disqualifiied if entered into  subsequent contest.
13. We recommend copying your poem into the editor from Notepad or some other program that does not add text markup for best formatting results. Please review your formatting after posting to make sure it looks how you want it to look. In the worst case scenario, if you can't get line breaks to work correctly, please disable rich text.
14. Every contest begins on Monday at 12:00 AM and ends on Sunday at 11:59 PM (New York time).

Thank you for participating! We look forward to reading your work.

Editors
Fab (contests ending 6-0)
Ryan Stone (contests ending 1-5)
Frank Watson

Fab and Ryan Stone will split editorial duties. Fab will judge contests ending in 6-0 (for example, contests 276-280) and Ryan will judge contests ending in 1-5 (for example, contests 271-275). They will be eligible to participate in contests they don't judge. Frank Watson will also judge all contests.
 

Press the blue "Compete" button below to participate (viewable to registered users who are logged in and viewing an active contest). You can only participate in active contests, not "Upcoming" contests. Please check the date the contest begins before attempting to participate. The active contest can be found on the home page.