The Prose Poem

2024 Prose Poetry

Our 2024 Prose Poetry Competition is CLOSED for submissions.
Results will be announced by 30 November

Competition Details

Prizes:

  • First place: £100 plus publication
  • Second place: £50 plus publication
  • Third place: £25 plus publication
  • Honorable mention: £10 plus publication

Submission fees are:

  • 1 poem £3
  • 2 poems £4.50
  • 3 poems £6
  • Free submission are available for underrepresented writers and writers who cannot afford the submission fee.  You do not need to give a reason for taking this option.  Your poem will not be at any disadvantage if you use the free entry.

Please enter via Duosuma, our submission manager:

https://duotrope.com/duosuma/submit/the-prose-poem-contest-aH49j

Adjudicator

The Prose Poem’s Consulting Editor Ingrid Jendrzejewski will be adjudicating.  You can read more about her here.

Submission Call

  • We are currently reading prose poems of up to 500 words on any subject.  We welcome micropoetry and other very short forms, as well as hybrid forms and ‘hermit crab’ poems that adopt the structure of other forms of writing (such as lists, forms, recipes, etc.).
  • We only publish prose poetry.  We appreciate that there is a lot of crossover between the prose poem and forms such as narrative poetry, free verse, microfiction, flash fiction, etc.  We are happy to read work that is on (or perhaps a little past) the fuzzy boundaries of these various forms, but we are unlikely to publish anything that looks like formal poetry or poetry consciously formatted in lines and stanzas without some nod to sentences, paragraphs, and/or other indicators of a prose-like sensibility.
  • We publish all poems that receive a cash prize (first, second and third place, plus honourable mentions).  We offer publication to all shortlisted pieces as well, but when you submit, you may opt not to publish with us if you do not win a cash prize.

Timeline

  • The competition is open for submissions from 15 July – 15 October
  • The longlist will be announced by 30 October
  • The shortlist will be announced by 15 November
  • Winners will be announced by 30 November

Unlike many competitions, we will be reading throughout the submission period, so you may receive a notification that you are on the shortlist or that your poem is no longer being considered before the submission window is over.  We will not announce prize winners and honourable mentions until after the competition closing date.

Submission Guidelines

  • You may submit as many times as you like, with a maximum of three poems per submission.
  • We prefer .doc, .docx, .odt, .rtf, and .txt documents. If your piece relies heavily on formatting, please send us a pdf.  (We will request another format if the poem is accepted for publication.)
  • Please submit your work via our submission engine, Duosuma.  Select the call for one, two, or three pieces at https://duotrope.com/duosuma/submit/the-prose-poem-contest-aH49j depending on how many you wish to send.  Please make sure to choose the call with the number of entries you wish to submit so that you are charged the correct amount.  If you send three entries to the one-poem call, we will only read the first poem in the submission.
  • You do not need a paid subscription to Duosuma/Duotrope to enter, but you will need to make a free account if you don’t have one already.
  • You can find an online guide to using Duosuma here, and their customer support webform can be found here.
  • If you unable to use Duosuma, you may make a payment via PayPal at https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/theprosepoem as an alternative.  Please contact us for instructions.
  • If you are taking advantage of our free entry scheme for underrepresented or low-income writers, please email us at hello@theprosepoem.com for instructions on how to submit.  You do not need to give details of why you are eligible.
  •  Please do not include your name or personal details in the title or text of your document.
  • We publish on our WordPress-based website.  It is designed to be readable on many sizes of screens and which may not support unusual formatting decisions.  Please keep this in mind when submitting.  In some cases, we may have to publish poems as an image, or work with an author to find alternative formatting options.
  • We welcome simultaneous submissions but we only accept unpublished work.  Please withdraw your piece via Duosuma asap if it is picked up elsewhere.
  • We define previously published work as work that has appeared in other journals or on personal websites that are freely available.  You are welcome to submit work that has appeared in private, password-protected writers’ forums and crtitique groups.  If you have any questions, feel free to email us.
  • We are interested in human-generated work.  Please respect the limited time of our human readers and editors and do not send AI-generated work or collaborations with AI.
  • No refunds can be given for submission fees or tips.

Terms of publication

  • All winning and highly commended pieces will be published on our website and will remain online for the lifetime of this project.
  • We request first publication rights and a period of exclusivity for six months after publication during which time we ask that you don’t seek publication for the individual poem with another publisher.  However, we very much support opportunities such as collections, anthologies, translations, award anthologies and so forth.  Contact us if you have any questions.  Copyright remains with the author at all times.
  • Payment for prize-winning poetry can be made via PayPal or UK bank transfer.
  • We are unable to offer payment for poems beyond our competition prizes.  This is a small, volunteer-run publication run for the love of prose poetry. We expect to make a loss.