Welcome home, poet.
Frontier Poetry began with the simple mission of being a platform for emerging poets—to uplift, to prepare, and to inspire.
We are looking for poets and poems that strive to place themselves at the edge of what language can do. This does not mean we are only concerned with experimental poetry. We believe sonnets can be at the frontier, book-length poems can be at the frontier, confessional poetry can be at the frontier—as long as a piece is constructed with exceptional consideration for language, craft, and heart, that poem is a fit for us.
Work by new and underrepresented voices is one of our priorities in publication. We take our role as a mediating platform between poet and world seriously and strive to use this role as fairly and justly as we can. The frontier land of poetry, that distant landscape where all voices can be heard clearly and in abundance, where poets from all contexts feel empowered to step into their writing—we seek that place, and hope to plant ourselves in its beauty.
By submitting to Frontier Poetry, submitters agree to receive correspondence about new work and submission opportunities from Frontier Poetry. You can unsubscribe at any time.
**If you haven't already, please verify your email address with Submittable for more consistent communication.**
Unless specifically requested, we do not accept AI-generated work.
To honor the remarkable voices shaping contemporary poetry, Frontier Poetry invites submissions to the 2025 OPEN—our premier prize of the year. This annual competition welcomes both emerging and established poets to share their most resonant work. One outstanding poem will be awarded $5,000 and featured on Frontier’s website where we celebrate poetry that lives on the edge of what language can do.
In addition to the winner, nine finalists will also receive an award of $100 each with publication. The Frontier Poetry editorial team will work together to select winners and finalists for this contest.
While we primarily serve as a platform for new and emerging writers, the OPEN is meant to support and elevate the poetry community as a whole. Every year, we look forward to this prize, for which emerging and established poets are considered in equal measure and as a result are often published side by side in Frontier Poetry. We’re excited to read your work!
The contest is open from May 5, 2025, to June 29, 2025.
Guidelines
- Submissions are open to all poets, regardless of publication history.
- As part of our dedication to the pursuit of a more inclusive publishing world, we offer a free submission window for poets from historically marginalized groups at the beginning of the contest. Please note the portal will close when we hit our cap of fifty submissions; there will be no additional waivers granted.
- Do not include any identifying information in the body of your document.
- Send up to three poems per submission, for a total of no more than twelve pages.
- For this contest, we have no aesthetic or formal requirements and will consider all styles of poetry.
- Please submit unpublished poems only. Previously published work will be automatically disqualified.
- Work generated by AI will be automatically disqualified.
- We welcome simultaneous submissions, but please notify us immediately if your work is accepted elsewhere.
- You may submit multiple times, but each submission requires a separate $20 fee.
- Please include a brief cover letter that includes a short, third-person bio with your publication history, if applicable. To safeguard our staff, please include any necessary content warnings as well.
- Submissions are open internationally, to any poet writing in English. Inclusion of other languages is welcome, as long as the poem is primarily written in English. Some code-switching/meshing is warmly welcomed.
- Winners and finalists will be announced in the fall of 2025.
- Please do not submit work if you have a close relationship with Frontier’s editors.
If you have any questions, please visit our FAQ page. If you don’t find the answer to your question, you can send an email to contact (at ) frontierpoetry (dot) com.
Editorial Feedback Option
This option costs $59 and will provide you with two pages of detailed and actionable feedback on a single poem of your choice from your packet, including suggestions for future submissions. The $149 option will provide you with three letters from three different editors. Our guest editors are paid a significant portion of the fee and all are astute and professional poets. Please allow eight to twelve weeks from the close of the contest to receive your editorial feedback.
We have a problem in publishing. The 2019 Diversity in Publishing survey found that on average almost 80% of people shaping the publishing industry are white. When this was published, that statistic had not shifted significantly for years. This reality perpetuates the systematic exclusion of historically marginalized writers that will not change unless those with literary platforms and thus some degree of power actively strive to change it.
Toward that end, we at Frontier are offering this space as an opportunity for Black writers, Indigenous writers, and writers of color (BIPOC) to get fast results on their submissions. We'll do our best to get you a decision on your poetry within two to four weeks. Your voice is valued here, and we welcome your work.
These submissions will be considered for our New Voices poetry category.
Guidelines
- Submissions are open internationally for historically marginalized BIPOC writers only.
- Submissions are open to new and emerging poets with no more than one full-length published work forthcoming at the time of submission—email us about self-published works)
- We accept simultaneous submissions—just please send us a note via Submittable if your work is picked up elsewhere (we want to say congrats!)
- All submissions must be no more than ten pages and no more than five poems.
- We do not accept multiple submissions. Please submit all your poems in ONE document.
- Please include a brief cover letter with your publication history, if any.
- Expect two to four weeks for a response.
- Publication in our New Voices category includes a payment of $50 per poem.
- Please review our FAQ page for more information. Almost all other questions are answered here: www.frontierpoetry.com/faq
Submissions for our New Voices poetry category are open year round to any new and emerging poet who has not published more than one full-length collection of poetry. New Voices are published online only and will feature a number of poems from new authors each month.
We are thrilled to offer significant payment to our partner poets: $50 per poem, up to $150. We are proud to be paying for published pieces but will be highly selective in our choices for publication.
We also warmly invite under-represented and marginalized voices to submit. Our aim is to be an accurate representation of the diversity of our beautiful community. Your voice is valued here.
Guidelines
- Submissions are open to new and emerging poets only (no more than two full-length published works forthcoming at the time of submission—email us about self-published works)
- We accept simultaneous submissions—just please send us a note if your work is picked up elsewhere (We want to say congrats!)
- All submissions must be no more than ten pages and no more than five poems.
- We do not accept multiple submissions. Please submit all your poems in ONE document.
- Please include a cover letter with your publication history
- Expect six to eight weeks for a response
- Please review our FAQ page for more information. Almost all other questions are answered here: www.frontierpoetry.com/faq
Editorial Feedback Option
This option costs $59 and will provide you with two pages of detailed and actionable feedback on a poem of your choice from the submission, including suggestions for future submissions. Our guest editors are paid a significant portion of the fee (at EFA rates) and are all incredibly astute and professional poets. Please note, the time frame for Ed Letters is eight to twelve weeks from the time of submission.
Hello, poets! Frontier Poetry is looking for a couple new readers to join our wonderful team!
This position involves two to three hours per week of volunteer reading through poetry submissions.
Please note: We are committed to welcoming and amplifying voices previously underrepresented and/or silenced in the publishing sphere. Poets from historically marginalized communities are especially encouraged to apply.
After we review your initial materials, we will reach out if we'd like to invite you to a second step in this process, to make sure this is a good fit for us both.
Thank you for supporting Frontier! Our reading team keeps this journal going!
With gratitude,
The Frontier Poetry Team