About Frontier
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.
See our What We Look For post for more details. For additional insight into our tastes, see our New Voices poets, our previous contest winners, or our Exceptional Poetry series.
If you'd like to read up on advice from working poets, browse our Editors Talk or In Class With mini interview series. For updates on deadlines from around the writing community, please see our Monthly Deadlines posts!
We also invite you to check out our catalogue of free digital chapbooks, available under our Poetry & Chapbooks drop-down menu. Most recently, you can read In my dreams/I love like an idea by Tyler Raso, selected by Tom Sleigh for our 2022 chapbook prize.
Please view our submission options here.
Offering more than a byline, Frontier strives to be a resource not only for new poets, but for agents and other writers to discover new work. We are a paying market, offering $50 per poem accepted. We do not solicit—our published poetry comes through our submission windows. We sincerely look forward to reading your work! Please visit our FAQ page with questions, and if you don't find an answer, or email us at contact (@) frontierpoetry (dot) com.
our values
We believe in poetry as a space for free and safe expression, life-affirming expression—we do not discriminate on the basis of age, religion, ability, socioeconomic status, gender identity or expression, race, national origin, ancestry, sex or sexual orientation, or for any other reason. Neither will we tolerate discrimination in the poetry we consider for publication. Any discriminatory or harmful work we find in our submissions will be declined without review.
We at Frontier know the publishing world has been and continues to be a feature of systemic racism and discriminatory practices. We are proud to stand with our community in pushing this industry in the right direction, toward anti-racism and equity of opportunity, expression, and justice. We actively seek out and feature work by writers from historically marginalized writers, in particular work by Black and Indigenous writers, writers of color, LGBTQ+ writers, writers with disabilities, and writers at the intersection of these and other marginalized identities.
We also acknowledge that to identify inequality is not the same as dismantling it, and statements such as these, and talk in general, do not count as an active pursuit of true inclusion. Our community today owes so much to our historically marginalized writers, who give so generously of themselves to lead the evolution of a space quick to meet them with hostility or dismissal even as they benefit from their work. As publishers, it is our job to continuously work to change this reality.
We also value and offer our platform as a safe space for survivors—as the VIDA/CLMP #saferLIT originally phrased it, we commit “to believe victims who come forward about their experiences, and to do what [we] can to assist in getting help and address the situation immediately. To not deny the experience, gaslight, or dismiss those who come forward.” We commit to removing from our platform any writers we’ve published if we learn of their bigotry or harassment elsewhere. To reach our editor, please email megan (@) frontierpoetry (dot) com.
mast·head
Founding Editor
Joshua Roark
Guest Editors (Editorial Feedback)
Heathen Derr // @cuvaj_se
Joanna Acevedo
Yael Aldana
Readers
Abu Bakr Sadiq, Abdulkareem Abdulkareem, Adefemi Fagite, Ai Li Feng, Ben Pinkard, Cara Waterfall, Dylan Gilbert, Jessica Hudson, Madina Tuhbatullina, Maya Pemble, Steven Sanchez, Tamara Raidt, Zack Lesmeister
Founders
Josh Roark // josh (@) frontierpoetry (dot) com
Kim Winternheimer // @kwintern
fron·tier
noun
1
Definition
the extreme limit of understanding or achievement in a particular area.
2
Synonyms
brink, boundary, borderland.
3
Frontier Poetry
a quality home for new poets.
