The Prose Poem

2026 Spring/Summer Results

Our 2026 Spring/Summer Prose Poetry Competition was adjudicated by Ingrid Jendrzejewski whose Judge’s Report appears below.  The winning poems appear in Issue 49: Ends.

The 2026 results are:

First Place

Second Place

  • Map by Gessica Sakamoto Martini

Third Place

Honourable Mention

The shortlist can be found here.

The longlist can be found here.

Judge’s Report

I have now had the opportunity to judge several competitions for The Prose Poem, and every time the task seems to get harder.  This season, we had a field of strong work and our largest longlist yet.  I’m delighted that most of the pieces from the shortlist and some from the longlist will appear at The Prose Poem later this year and next.

I try my best to meet each poem on its own terms and to lean into the mood, imagery, context, experimentation and play it wants to deliver.  Still, it is worth noting that I am a single reader, reading over a few months; at a different time or with a different judge, the results may well be radically different. So many of these poems have stayed with me, and I know I will keep coming back to them, regardless of the official competition results.

With that said, my job for the purpose of the contest was to make a selection, and after spending an inordinate amount of time with this season’s selection, here are the poems I chose.  I would like to take a moment to celebrate these poems and share a bit about what spoke to me in each one.

2026 Spring/Summer Results

First Place: The Disappearances

This is one of those seemingly quiet little poems that spoke louder and louder each time I reread it.  I love how it gently defamiliarises a family observation…we see an adult world mixing with the domestic in a way that is perfect for a poem about growing up.  The poem is perfectly paced, note-perfect, and tugged at my emotions with every read.

Second Place: Map

I love the trust this poem has in itself and its reader.  It leaves an array of dots for the reader to connect which made me feel like I was approaching a fresh new poem each time I came back to it.  I love the focus on hands in the painting of this emotional landscape, and that beautifully effective final image.

Third Place Richard Frost

This poem is clever and heartfelt, dense and light, humble and confident in all the very best ways.  It pulled me right in close to the central relationship and I could feel the emotional roar flow through its faultless construction.

Honourable Mention: Michigan, Collected

I am so impressed at how this poem was able to gently touch big issues like mortality, and endings, but then leave me uplifted, with a sense of calm and confidence.  This poem deftly manages to cover three full acts’ worth of material in such a short space.

Honourable Mention: The World and the Story

I love the timeless, mythic, Borgesian feel of this piece about a storyteller whose life is cleverly intertwined with the story they are trying to tell.  It felt like a poem wrapped up in a story and a story wrapped up in a poem, and it also delivered more each time I revisited it.

I’d also like to take this opportunity to celebrate a number of the shortlisted pieces…I absolutely loved (in no particular order):

  • The dislocation and ellipsis in ‘The Goat’
  • The storytelling and perfectly-pitched ending in ‘Hole in the window’
  • The exuberance and positivity in ‘Electric vehicles are gay’
  • The structure and emotion in ‘Waiting’
  • That oh-so-powerful landing in ‘Ferris Wheel’
  • The way ‘The Price of Sleep’ manages to hold hope and optimism without feeling twee or contrived
  • The sense of character and place in ‘Black Moses’
  • The experiment and play with language in ‘Okay’
  • The gorgeous construction and circularity of ‘The Travelers’
  • The economy and, well, grace of ‘Grace’

…and so much about every poem that will be published here over the coming months.

Thank you so much to everyone who submitted for giving me the chance to spend time with your work.  I genuinely found something to admire in each and every poem on the longlist.  It has been an honour.

— Ingrid Jendrzejewski, September 2026