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.
2023 Award for New Poets
This fall, we’re delighted to bring back our Award for New Poets! We’re looking to uplift an up-and-coming poet, with no more than one full-length collection forthcoming or published at the time of submission. We award $3,000 for the winning poem, selected by our guest judge. Our second- and third-place winners receive $300 and $200, respectively. All three winners will be published.
Our judge this year is torrin a. greathouse, whose “Burning Haibun” Frontier Poetry first published in 2017, and who is now an award-winning poet and professor. We love seeing a poet’s origins and the many ways they move and grow in their work, and this award is an opportunity for us to help you along that path! Send us your innovative poems, your passion projects, the work you can’t wait for the world to share in!
About Our Judge:
torrin a. greathouse is a transgender cripple-punk poet and essayist. She received her MFA in creative writing from the University of Minnesota. Their work has been featured in Poetry Magazine, The Rumpus, the New York Times Magazine, Ploughshares, and The Kenyon Review. She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Effing Foundation for Sex Positivity, Zoeglossia, the Ragdale Foundation, and the University of Arizona Poetry Center. They are the author of Wound from the Mouth of a Wound (Milkweed Editions, 2020), winner of the 2022 Kate Tufts Discovery Award, and DEED (Wesleyan University Press, 2024). She teaches at the Rainier Writing Workshop, the low-residency MFA program at Pacific Lutheran University.
Guidelines:
- Submissions are open to new and emerging writers (for this contest, we define this as poets with no more than one full-length published work forthcoming at the time of submission).
- As part of our dedication to the pursuit of a more inclusive publishing world, there is a free submission window for BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, person of color) poets at the beginning of the contest until our cap of fifty. Please note the portal will close when we hit our cap.
- 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 five pages. We have no aesthetic or formal requirements and consider all styles of poetry.
- Please submit unpublished poems only.
- 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 provide a brief cover letter that includes a short, third-person bio with your publication history and any applicable content warnings.
- 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.
- Please do not submit work if you have a personal relationship with the judge.
- If you haven't already, please verify your email address with Submittable for more consistent communication.
- We will not accept AI-generated work for this contest.
- If you have any questions, please visit our FAQ page first. 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 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.
Included Opportunities / Discounts:
Alice James Books is also offering a 25% discount code on any of their preorders! Go to www.alicejamesbooks.org to find amazing new work and use the code during checkout.
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 10 pages and no more than 5 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 8-12 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.
We have a problem in publishing. The 2019 survey of industry professionals found that, "There is no discernible change to any of the other racial categories. In other words, the field is just as White today as it was four years ago." If we all don't work to individually push for progress, then progress stagnates. We can't rely on anyone but ourselves to move the needle.
Toward that end, we're offering this space as an opportunity for BIPOC writers to get fast results on their submissions. Your voice is valued here.
These will be considered as submissions for our New Voices poetry category. 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.
Guidelines
- Submissions are open to all self-identifying BIPOC authors
- Submissions are open to new and emerging poets only (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 if your work is picked up elsewhere (We want to say congrats!)
- All submissions must be no more than 10 pages and no more than 5 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 2-4 weeks for a response
- Please review our FAQ page for more information. Almost all other questions are answered here: www.frontierpoetry.com/faq