Hot take: Writing is hard.

There are all these rules—you use commas one way and everyone freaks out, but you use them another way and you just won the Pulitzer. It’s confusing. Sometimes you gotta wonder if they’re being confusing on purpose. If you feel strongly about something, why don’t you say so, instead of iambic pentameter, or whatever Kendrick Lamar did. 

Poetry frees us from all of those constraints—and lets us throw out the rule book. Let’s face it, words are everywhere. They’re here to stay.  Or: If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em—instead of resisting the rules, why not experiment with them, change them and mess with them in ways no one has before? For the 2025 Misfit Poems Prize, we want your rulebreakers.

Frontier wants your misfits, your experiments, your alphabet fridge poems and the scribbles on your kid’s brown bag lunch. We want to see the poems that, like us, didn’t fit in during high school. If you were hiding in the library and writing poetry, just like we were, all those times you were cutting gym class, now’s the time to show us what you’ve got, and we can’t wait to see!

Further Reading:

Karisma Price, “My Phone Autocorrects ‘Nigga’ to ‘Night’”

Allison Blevins, Cataloguing Pain

Jenna Lanzaro, “Self Portrait as Crab Nebula”

Stephanie Rogers, Fat Girl Forms

The first place winner will receive $2,000 and publication. Second- and third-place winners will receive $300 and $200 respectively, as well as publication.

About Our Judge: 

Marianne Chan grew up in Stuttgart, Germany, and Lansing, Michigan. She is the author of All Heathens (Sarabande Books, 2020), which was the winner of the 2021 GLCA New Writers Award, and Leaving Biddle City (Sarabande Books, 2024). Her poems have appeared in Poetry, Best American Poetry, New England Review, Kenyon Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, and elsewhere. She is an assistant professor of creative writing at Old Dominion University and teaches poetry in the Warren Wilson College MFA program for Writers.

What our judge is looking for: 

I want to read that one oddball poem that refuses to belong in your book—the one too irreverent for your mother, too unsettling for your roommate, too ruckus for your most ruckus friend. I want to read the sonnet about your bunions, the ode to frozen burritos, the anti-ode to the rising seas. Give me your reverse abecedarian, your sideways contrapuntal, your jumbled sestina, your warped rondeau redoublé. I want to read a poem that is willing to be uncertain, willing to be wrong. I want to read a poem that—in the strangest and most electrifying way—speaks truth to power. I want to read poems that are awake to their own powers. Give me the poem that upends everything I thought I knew about poetry, the one that makes me want to do what you’re doing, have what you’re having.

Guidelines:

• Submissions are open to new and emerging writers (for this contest, we define this as poets with no more than one full-length work of poetry previously published or forthcoming at the time of submission).
• 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. Each new submission requires a $20 reading fee.
• 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 (BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, disabled community, et cetera) at the beginning of the contest until our cap of fifty. This category is now closed. 
• Do not include any identifying information in the body of your document.
• 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.

 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.