CRWROPPS Post: Split This Rock Poetry Contest

$1,000 Awarded for Poems of Provocation & Witness

Send poems by November 1, 2019 

Split This Rock's 13th annual national poetry prize is open to all poets at any stage of their journey whose work is socially engaged. 

From our location in Washington DC, Split This Rock meets this consequential election year with urgency. With our best bravery, we ask you to send poems of consequence, intervention, and possibility. What poems will be read at protests, at vigils, and at city council meetings? What poems will enliven and sustain you in the year ahead? Send us those. 

We are grateful that Richard Blanco joins us to read and select the winning poems in 2020. From his role as a history-making inaugural poet to his astounding 2017 counter-inaugural poem "Declaration of Inter-dependence," Richard has embodied poetry that beats at the heart of public life. We look forward to sharing with you the poems he selects. 

 

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Contest Details

 

Prizes: 

First place $500; 2nd and 3rd place, $250 each. Winning poems will be published on Split This Rock's website as part of 

The Quarry: A Social Justice Poetry Database. All prize winners will receive free festival registration to Split This Rock Poetry Festival 2020 and be eligible to apply for need-based travel scholarships. The 1st place recipient will be invited to read the winning poem on the main stage at the festival. Editors may consider other finalist poems for Split This Rock's Poem of the Week Series.

 

Reading Fee: $20
All proceeds support Split This Rock Poetry Festival 2020. For the first time, we are offering an option through Submittable to donate an additional reading fee to make contest entry accessible for someone who otherwise could not enter.  To donate a contest entry fee without entering the contest yourself, please contact info@splitthisrock.org.  

 

Themes: Submissions should be in the spirit of Split This Rock's work: socially engaged poems, poems that reach beyond the self to connect with the larger community or world; poems of provocation and witness. This theme can be interpreted broadly and may include but is not limited to work addressing politics, economics, government, war, leadership, issues of identity (gender, sexuality, race, indigeneity, ethnicity, disability, socioeconomic class, body image, immigration, heritage, etc.), community, civic engagement, education, activism, and poems about history or cultural icons. We welcome poetry on a wide range of social justice themes and in a wide range of poetic styles. Visit Split This Rock's website to read winning poems from previous contests.

 

For full submission guidelines and to submit, visit the contest Submittable page.

Need accessible submission instructions? 

Visit the contest web page.