The reading period for the Leonard Cohen Poetry Prize runs from September 21 to November 7 (LC’s birth anniversary to death anniversary).

$1000 will be awarded to a poem that explores the intersection of love, faith & sex. Four finalists will each be awarded $250.

ABOUT THE PRIZE

Poet, novelist, singer/songwriter, artist, music producer, Buddhist monk, Leonard Cohen has won countless hearts.

I found his music six years ago and haven't listened to much else since. Now every morning when I drop my daughter off to preschool, she and I sing along to “Suzanne” on the way. Having spent countless hours with the Leonard Cohen Archive at the University of Toronto, I’m in awe of the devotion he had for his craft, blackening page after page. 

His ability to blend the sacred and the profane, the spiritual and the sensual remains unmatched. We are indebted to him for bridging the world of literature with the world of music.

A couple of times in concerts, he sang this two-liner: “no, it wasn't any good, there's no reason why you should remember me” while having given us a million reasons to remember him.

We hope this will push people who are aware of Cohen's genius as a musician to turn to his poetry. It gives us deep honor to name this prize after the one and only Leonard Cohen and carry a part of his infinite legacy on our slim shoulders.

As Leonard would say, forgive the poverty of these words for they do not reflect the abundance of our gratitude.

— Karan Kapoor, Editor-in-Chief, ONLY POEMS

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

Send us up to 3 pages of poetry.

Each poem starts on a new page.

In the spirit of Leonard Cohen, we ask that your poems deal in some way with the intersections of Love, Faith, & Sex.

We only accept previously uncurated work.  

We love cover letters and would prefer knowing whose work we are reading. You are welcome to share your love for Leonard Cohen, your publication history, if any, though that would not influence our decision. Please make sure that the document of your poems is stripped of any biographical information—use the cover letter field on Submittable for this.

Please withdraw your poems if they get accepted elsewhere.

We will respond to everyone by the end of this year. Winners will be announced and published in January.

There will be no deadline extensions.

Your submission comes with an exclusive 33% discount off any of the annual ONLY POEMS membership tiers ($33-$82 value). 

PLEASE NOTE:

The Leonard Cohen Family Trust does not endorse this award, ONLY POEMS, or the prize winners. It is for their generosity we are allowed to name this prize after Leonard Cohen, the Poet Laureate of the World.

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 within one week.

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

The literary world can be…a lot. We want to provide writers with the resources and insights to make sense of it through published essays and interviews by actual people doing the work of writing, publishing, and running literary magazines. While we do often solicit these contributions, we are opening up to the public to pitch their ideas for an opportunity to be published on the ONLY POEMS website and featured in our newsletter.

If you are interested in submitting a pitch (no more than 500 words) for either an essay or an interview (or something else that is not poetry), please be sure to include the following:

• In your pitch, be specific—we want to know why the essay needs to be written (or why the interview needs to be had), how you will go about it, what insights or resources will be elucidated, and why you are the person to do it. Please also include an outline. 
• Include your portfolio or any previous publications in your bio (we do not require previous publications, but they help us get a sense of your writing style!).
• Let us know where you’re at in the process—Do you have a draft written? Do you already have the interview lined up? 

If we are interested in pursuing your pitch, we will reach out. All published works will receive a $22 payment upon publication. 

Who reads lit mags? Well, YOU, right? 

Engaging with literary magazines goes beyond just submitting to seek publication for your own creative writing. The core of lit mags used to be the readership. Now, readership is apparently in decline everywhere. Yet we all seek communities. This is our way to try and foster, nurture, and grow our ONLY POEMS reader and subscriber community. 

This new feature opens up the floor to our wonderful readers. Your thoughts and insights are invaluable to us. You can choose anything we have published so far, no matter how old or new, how long or short, and critically reflect on it. Select one poem by one poet or their entire portfolio, or perhaps something about a part of their interview resonated with you. Maybe you were inspired to ponder after reading a Poem of the Month. You can also draw parallels between multiple poems/poets we've published. It can be anything as long as the thoughts/criticism is original and the writing captivating.

Anyone who reads or has ever read anything we have published in any capacity is eligible to submit.

Craft your Reader Response as authentically as you like. Be creative, philosophical, academic, or be an antidisestablishmentarian -- whatever you prefer. Ultimately, this is not a creative submission (as a poem or a story might be), but a short opinion piece, essentially.

Only send one piece at a time. 300-750 words. 

We hope to make Readers Respond a regular feature on our website. The pieces we select will be published on our website and shared with our 13K+ subscribers. 

We will pay $22 per piece. 

Submit your Reader Response today and join the conversation!

✅ 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 9 weeks. Sometimes, it might take a little longer. If it's been more than 12 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. 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!