Submission Guidelines
New Voices
Always open. Always free.
We are thrilled to offer significant payment to our partner poets: $50 per poem.
We warmly invite poets from historically under-represented and marginalized groups to submit. Our aim is to be an accurate representation of the diversity of our community. Your voice is valued here.
Guidelines
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- Submissions are open to new and emerging poets only (no more than one full-length published work forthcoming at the time of submission. For information about self-published works and pieces published via personal or social media pages, please see our FAQ page below).
- 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 eight to twelve weeks for a response.
- To view a list of our most commonly asked questions regarding submitting to us, please see our FAQ page.
Submission Options
- New Voices Free – Always a free way to submit and we always pay for the work. We pay new poets $50 per poem selected. Response time is eight to twelve weeks.
- Editorial Letter – If you’re interested in knowing a little bit more about what we thought of your poem, utilize this option. When we’ve reviewed your piece we will include one to two pages of feedback on your poem including suggestions for revision, where it might be a good fit for publication, and other comments about ways it can be improved. It’s our way of helping you to understand your work better and improve. Our editors are paid a significant portion of the fee.
- Fast Response – It can be hard to wait to hear back, so we've developed a quicker turnaround time for writers who want to hear back within two weeks. There is a reading fee for this category.
- Free Fast Response for BIPOC– Our quick turnaround option offered for free to Black, Indigenous, and other writers of color.
Unless specifically requested, we do not accept AI-generated work.
Current Poetry Contest
2024 Debut Chapbook Prize
July 1, 2024, to September 1, 2024
About Our Judge:
Nancy Miller Gomez’s first full-length collection Inconsolable Objects is forthcoming from YesYes Books in 2024. She is the author of the chapbook, Punishment (Rattle Chapbook Series), a collection of poems and essays about her experience teaching in prisons and jails. Her work has appeared in The Best American Poetry, Best New Poets, Prairie Schooner, The Adroit Journal, TriQuarterly, New Ohio Review, Shenandoah, River Styx, Waxwing, Plume, The Rumpus, Rattle, The Massachusetts Review, American Life in Poetry, Verse Daily, and elsewhere. She received a special mention in the 2023 Pushcart Prize Anthology. She co-founded, with Ellen Bass, an organization that provides writing workshops to incarcerated women and men and has taught poetry in Salinas Valley State Prison, the Santa Cruz County Jails, and the Juvenile Hall. She has a BA from the University of California, San Diego, received her JD from the University of San Diego, and obtained a Master of Fine Arts in Poetry from Pacific University. She lives with her family in Santa Cruz, California.
Guidelines:
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For this contest, we are specifically looking for poets with no prior chapbook, manuscript, or full-length collection of poetry published or forthcoming prior to this contest.
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Writers from historically marginalized groups are welcome to submit for a reduced fee until we reach our cap of fifty. No additional fee waivers will be granted.
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The manuscript should be fifteen to thirty pages of poems, not including front and back matter.
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The manuscript should be unpublished as a whole, although individual poems may be previously published.
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Do not include any identifying information in the manuscript itself or in the file name.
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Please put any acknowledgements in the cover letter field of Submittable and not in the manuscript.
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Submissions are open internationally, to any poet writing in English. Inclusion of other languages, such as in code-switching/meshing, is welcome, as long as the poem is primarily in English.
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Simultaneous submissions are welcome, but please notify us immediately if the chapbook is accepted elsewhere.
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Multiple submissions are allowed, but each manuscript must be submitted separately with the $25 reading fee.
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Work generated by AI will be automatically disqualified.
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Winners and finalists will be announced late fall or early winter of 2024.
Author's Rights
Frontier Poetry holds first publication rights for three months after publication, after which rights revert to the author. Authors agree not to publish, nor authorize or permit the publication of, any part of the material for three months following first publication. For reprints, we ask for acknowledgment of publication in Frontier Poetry first.
