Our next submission opportunities…
- Our next competition is our Spring Short Competition for prose poems of up to 150 words on any theme. Submissions for this contest will be open from 1 April – 15 May 2024. Find our more here.
- Our next open submission window for prose poems of up to 500 words will be from 1 June – 30 June 2024. To submit to this call, please follow the submission guidelines below.
- Our next competition for prose poems of up to 500 words will be open for submissions between 15 July and 15 October 2024. Details will be announced later in 2o24.
General Submission Guidelines
We welcome submissions of prose poems of up to 500 words on any subject for online publication in our new prose poetry project.
Please send us your work via Duosuma, our submission manager:
https://duotrope.com/duosuma/submit/the-prose-poem-aH49j
Submission Call
- We are looking for 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.).
- Accepted poetry will be published online on this website. Poems will remain online indefinitely.
- 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.
Submission Guidelines
- You may submit as many times as you like.
- 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.
- 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, please contact us.
- Please do not include your name or personal details in the title or text of your document.
- We publish on our website which 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 are looking for unpublished word. We define previously published work as work that has appeared in other journals or on personal websites that are or have previously been 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.
- It is free to submit work.
- We are unable to pay authors at this time.
- We gratefully accept tips and will use them to offset costs such as Duosuma fees, website hosting, pay small honorariums to our guest readers, etc. We do not expect to meet our costs. No refunds can be given for tips.
- Your work will be at no advantage or disadvantage whatsoever based on tipping.
- We cannot accept work with song lyrics unless the song is in the public domain or rights have been secured and paid for by the author. If this is the case, please provide details in your cover letter.
Terms of publication
- We request first publication rights and a period of exclusivity for six months after publication. Copyright remains with the author at all times. We are happy to be flexible with the period of exclusivity if your poem is selected for an award anthology, or you wish to publish it in a collection, etc.; if you have questions, feel free to contact us. We are mainly looking to avoid conflicts with other journals for individually-published poems that can easily happen with the delays involved between submitting, acceptance and publication.
- To nominate pieces for awards such as Best of the Net, the Pushcart Prize, etc., we sometimes need to share a nominated author’s name and email address (and sometimes social media or other contact details if we cannot reach you by email) with the competition organiser. This information is shared so that the award body can contact you for permission to use your work in award anthologies should they select your work. Given this, if you do not wish us to nominate you for awards, please let us know in your cover letter. This will in no way affect your chance of publication.