➡️ The first ever ONLY POEMS PRIZE is NOW OPEN. 

The $15 entry fee includes a complimentary 2-month Substack subscription (worth $14). We hope that every single poet who submits to the ONLY POEMS Prize receives more than just a contest entry. If you already have a paid subscription, we’ll add two complimentary months to that). So, technically you’re paying $1 for the contest.  

Our Grand Prize winner will be named Poet of the Year and receive $3000. 

Two runner-ups will be awarded $300 each. 

The Poet of the Year will also receive a lifetime comped subscription to the ONLY POEMS Substack. 2 Runner-ups will receive a 3 year comped subscription. All honorable mentions will receive a one-year comped subscription.

As we do with our Poet of the Week series, we will publish 3-10 poems of all 3 winners alongside an extensive interview. The winners will also be published in our first end of year print anthology. 

Indie lit is full of award-winning poems while awards for poets are reserved mostly for their books. We want to publish poets who make a home in our hearts with their voices and never leave. That’s why 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.  

➡️ SUBMISSION GUIDELINES
 

• Your submission must be between 5-10 pages.
• Submissions are open internationally to any poet writing in English.
• The poems must have been previously unpublished at the time of submission.
• Submit all your poems in a single document (.doc or .pdf). Begin each poem on a new page.
• Do not include your name or identifying information in the document or the title of your submission. 
• We encourage simultaneous submissions. Once you’ve submitted, you are not required to withdraw any poems. Even if all the poems in your submitted packet get published, that’s fine (and so freakin’ cool!). You will not be ineligible for the ONLY POEMS PRIZE — if we are interested in your work, we will find a way to work with you.
• We do accept multiple submissions, but each submission must come with the reading fee. Though we do not encourage these, sometimes you might have two or three different sets of poems you’d like to try for an award and we welcome those.
• All submissions will be considered for general publication for our Poet of the Week series.
• We want to provide poets the opportunity to get comprehensive feedback on their work. We understand how hard it can be to receive affordable, quality feedback. If you’d like, you’re welcome to use one of the options below when making your submission.  (25 slots available for each editorial feedback category — first come first serve).

Send us up to 10 pages of poetry.

We only accept previously uncurated work.  Please refer to this article for a more in-depth understanding of what that means. 

We encourage simultaneous submissions. Feel free to submit your work to all the wonderful places you think will be a good home for your poems. We request you drop us a message if your poem(s) get accepted elsewhere, we want to congratulate you!

We like EB Garamond, 13 point font-size, and 1.15 line-spacing. If you are submitting prose poems (which, we repeat, we love) please justify your paragraphs. If you are unable to use our preferred formatting because of technical reasons, that is totally fine.

If we have previously declined your submission, you can submit again the following month.

We are open to translations as long as you have the rights from the author/publisher.

We will respond in 3 days. 

We offer $55 to all our poets. This is per contribution and not per piece. 

✅ For all feedback options, we‘ll first review your package and cover letter to see if  we can adequately work with your style and provide you with the promised editorial feedback. If we feel we might not be able to serve your style and vision best, we will refund you the full feedback fee.

✅ All poems are automatically considered for publication. If we decide to publish any part of your submission, we will refund you the full feedback fee. 

✅ We strive to respond within 6 weeks. Sometimes, it might take a little longer. If it's been more than 9 weeks, we will provide you the feedback and also refund you the full feedback fee. 

➡️ PICK YOUR POISON

1️⃣ Workshop

This feedback style is rooted in the MFA space. Focused on being highly constructive, we will excavate what is primarily working in your poems. This is not to say that we will not offer a critical reading to indicate what is not working and what needs further attention. Both are present in harmony. When compared with the "Merciless" option below, however, the Workshop style can be easier to digest and is recommended for newer poets looking for encouragement to chart a positive path forward in their poetic journey. 

2️⃣ Merciless (No getting mad, please)

Hopefully, the name says it all, but here’s more of a breakdown.
 

The nature of this feedback will not follow the traditional MFA-workshop style. If you have more questions about the differences, then please do reach out to us via email and we’ll be happy to chat.
 

We do want to make it clear that this Editorial Feedback tier is, as “advertised”,  merciless and brutally honest. Please, don‘t get mad at us. We care about poetry. We’ll do our best to help you improve yours.

➡️ PICK YOUR TIER

Please select which tier of editorial feedback you’d like to receive below. The cost ranges from $10-$150. Everything we make from offering our editorial services goes right back into running ONLY POEMS.

We prefer 13-point EB Garamond and 1.15 line spacing. If you are submitting prose poems (which, we repeat, we love) please justify your paragraphs. If you are unable to use our preferred formatting because of technical reasons, that is totally fine.

➡️ THE EDITORS

The people reviewing your work will be either Founding Editor Shannan Mann or Editor-in-Chief Karan Kapoor, depending on whose sensibility best matches your poetry.
 

Here are our bios:

Shannan Mann has been awarded or placed for the Palette Love & Eros Prize, Rattle Poetry Prize, Auburn Witness Prize, Foster Poetry Prize, Peatsmoke Summer Contest and Pacific Spirit Poetry Prize among others. Her poems appear in Poetry Daily, Black Warrior Review, Poet Lore, Gulf Coast, The Literary Review of Canada, EPOCH, december, & elsewhere. She is the Poet Laureate’s pick for Exile. Her essays appear in Tolka Journal & Going Down Swinging and have been awarded the Alta Lind Cook Prize and the Irene Adler Essay Prize. She also translates Sanskrit poetry. Having worked as an editor and educator for nearly a decade, she now raises her baby, studies, writes, and runs this magazine.
 

Karan Kapoor is an MFA candidate at Virginia Tech. Originally from New Delhi, they have many years of experience in publishing, design, and editing. A finalist for the Diode, Tusculum Review, and Iron Horse Literary Review chapbook prizes, their poems appear in AGNI, Shenandoah, Colorado Review, Cincinnati Review, North American Review, The Margins, Rattle and elsewhere. Their poetry has been honored with the Red Wheelbarrow Prize, James Hearst Poetry Prize, and Bellevue Literary Review Poetry Prize, and more. Their fiction appears in JOYLAND and the other side of hope, and translations in The Offing and The Los Angeles Review.

We look forward to working with you!

Whether you want to polish an already revised manuscript or develop a draft from new poems, we're happy to help you! Every manuscript is unique, just like every poet. For this reason, each Manuscript Editing Package will include:

1. Extensive line edits throughout the document

2. Personalized list of presses and agents (if relevant) to submit/query for publication.

3. 1-hour Zoom call after we have delivered our initial document edits to discuss any concerns, developmental editing, the overarching themes the manuscript explores, and the poet's intent and purpose. 

Please do not hesitate to reach out to us with any questions before, during, or after this process.