September 2025 Deadlines: 10 Contests and Magazines With Deadlines This Month
As we inch toward the next season, it’s as good a time as any to make strides toward sharing your work. Consider sending your poems out to these contests and publications. Some of them might land you with a whole collection of poems! And remember, rejection is part of the process toward eventual acceptance and publication. As always, submit poetry for free to our New Voices. This list is powered by the deadline service Literistic.
Through their special call, “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness,” Tab Journal encourages poets to reconsider Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration and Thomas Paine’s preceding Common Sense that had popularized these concepts. Tab Journal is interested in work that recasts these documents’ words and principles in light of our mutual pledge to each other, past and current threats to our inalienable rights, and the anniversary of this nation’s founding. Tab Journal invites submission of text selected directly from these founding source documents that can be rendered as a poem. This special call builds on Tracy K. Smith’s poem “Declaration.” As Smith said of her own process, the new poem should use “fragments of this founding document to say this other thing that [the words] seem very intent upon saying to me now.” Surprise us!
Deadline: September 2 // No Fee
Terrain.org’s 16th Annual Contest is judged by Blas Falconer. The grand prize is $1,000, and finalists will be awarded $200 each. All poems are considered for publication. Submit 1-5 poems per entry, maximum of 7 pages total. Combine all poems into a single document. For poetry, Terrain.org seeks a single poem or set of poems to select as the contest winner, especially material that reaches deep into the earth’s fiery core, or humanity’s incalculable core, and brings forth new insights and wisdom. All poems must be previously unpublished, and simultaneous submissions are accepted.
Deadline: September 2 // Fee
In addition to general unthemed content, Volume 15 of Constellations will include a selection of material related to “invisibility.” If you have material that you feel is especially well-suited to this topic, please send it in! Wildly varying interpretations are welcome. Tell the team a little about yourself, and mention what connection (if any) you have to the Cambridge or Boston area. Constellations has a special interest in Cambridge/Boston writers, but all writers are welcome and encouraged to submit. Payment at this time is one copy of the issue of Constellations in which your work appears.
Deadline: September 10 // No Fee
Burningword Literary Journal is a quarterly publication that seeks to discover and showcase the most exciting new voices in literature. It features an eclectic mix of poetry, short fiction, short nonfiction, and visual art. The journal is available in print, e-book, and online. Burningword seeks poetry in any form or style. Your poetry submission may contain up to three poems, may be submitted as one file, should run fewer than 6 pages in length, and must be unpublished.
Deadline: September 10 // Fee
C&R Press offers a $1,000 grand prize and publication for one manuscript of poetry 55-110 pages. All styles, genres, approaches, and voices are encouraged to submit. All manuscripts will be considered for standard publication. Winner, short lists, and longlists will be announced in December 2025. The selection will also receive a promotional campaign across social media and other ad networks valued at $2,000.
Deadline: September 15 // Fee
CIRQUE Short-poem Contest
Cirque is a literary journal, based in Alaska, soliciting submissions from writers, poets and artists who live in the region loosely referred to as the North Pacific Rim. Cirque invites emerging and established writers and artists living in Alaska, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Hawaii, Yukon Territory, Alberta, British Columbia and the Russian Far East. Enter Cirque’s “A Moment in Time” short-poem contest and share a fleeting moment that lingers—on the page and in the heart. Poetry is sometimes described as an “act of attention.” With that in mind, poems submitted should zero in descriptively on time, place or persona. Trouble, transcendence or grace. Gratitude, grandeur or a really funny story (short). Cirque seeks brief, brilliant poems that distill memory, experience, or insight into a powerful poetic instant for this contest.
Deadline: September 22 // Fee
Submissions to The Kenyon Review will open from September 1 until September 30, 2025. Themes will be announced upon the opening of the submission window, and The Kenyon Review invites work that broadly interprets these themes. When you submit, you will have the option to identify your work for general submission or the themes. You may submit up to 6 poems formatted as a single document. Translated work is also accepted.
Deadline: September 30 // No Fee
Established in 1998, The X. J. Kennedy Poetry Prize highlights one full-length collection of poetry per year. Since 2024, the Prize comes with a $10,000 advance, TRP’s X. J. Kennedy Poetry Prize Fellowship at Vermont Studio Center, a standard royalty contract, and 10 copies of the published book. This year’s judge is Shane McCrae. Open to any poet writing in English. Translations are not eligible, and although this is not a first book prize, first books are welcomed. The Prize is open to poets at any stage of their career. There are no formal restrictions for this prize; manuscripts of any style/form are welcomed. Manuscripts must be between 50 and 100 pages in length.
Deadline: September 30 // Fee
Fork Apple Press seeks poetry for its publication, The Core Review. Fork Apple Press is a small independent literary press publishing work that expands beyond a core, essentialized “truth” to challenge a monolithic point of view. Poetry submissions should be no more than 10 total pages of poetry, in a 12-point font. Please include a title at the top of each poem, which should begin on a new page. They accept simultaneous submissions. If your piece is accepted elsewhere, please let them know as soon as possible.
Deadline: September 30 // No Fee
