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 Good Listener by Kathryn Hargett-Hsu, selected by Kemi Alabi for our 2023 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 life-affirming expression, and we therefore do not discriminate on the basis of age, ability, socioeconomic status, religion, race, national origin, ancestry, sex or sexual orientation, gender identity or its expression, 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 full review.
We at Frontier know the publishing world has historically been and continues to be a source and supporter (both inadvertently and more insidiously) of systemic racism and discriminatory practices. We are proud to stand with our community in pushing this industry in a more intersectional, positive, and uplifting direction toward anti-racism and equity of opportunity, safe self-expression, and justice. We actively seek work by writers from historically marginalized backgrounds and communities or who are living with historically marginalized identities, in particular work by Black and Indigenous writers, writers of color, LGBTQ+ writers, and writers with disabilities. Our intent is to feature diverse emerging voices who otherwise might not find support in the publishing world at large.
We also acknowledge that to identify inequality is not the same as dismantling it, and statements such as these do not count as an active pursuit of true inclusion. As publishers, it is our job to continuously work to create change in spaces we identify as requiring restructuring. Our goal in committing to uphold these values is to better the future of poetry. To reach our editor, please email contact (@) frontierpoetry (dot) com.
mast·head
Editor in Chief
Madeline McConico
Founding Editor
Joshua Roark
Guest Editors (Editorial Feedback)
Heathen Derr, Joseph Ndukwu, Audrey Gidman, Jessica Ballen, Michaela Chairez, Emma Bushmann, Liza Rose, Sam New, Terah Ehigiator, Steven Turrill, Joanna Acevedo
Readers
Adefemi Fagite, Jordan Ranft, Thalia Geiger, Yasmin Goldie, Alexandra Henriques, Clare Labrador, Allen Means, Tamara Raidt, Megan Pastore, Suchita Senthil Kumar, Nick Mayo, TK Hansen, Izraq Jesen, Kashiana Singh, Tran Tran, Nick Vasquez
Founders
Josh Roark
Kim Winternheimer
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.
