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P – Frontier Poetry’s 2024 Nature & Place Prize. Theme: Nature & Place

April 28, 2024 @ 8:00 am - 5:00 pm

$20


2024 Nature & Place Prize

February 22, 2024, to April 28, 2024

In our pursuit of gentleness, nostalgia, and a reimagining of “home,” Frontier Poetry is reviving the Nature & Place Prize. In her poem “Drowning Creek,” Ada Limón takes us into the countryside, “Past the strip malls and the power plants, / out of the holler, past Gun Bottom Road / and Brassfield and before Red Lick Creek, / there’s a stream called Drowning Creek….” On her journey, she has the strong urge to stop the car and observe the kingfisher perched on the transmission wire “eyeing the creek / for crayfish, tadpoles, and minnows.” She has aptly combined the urge to be in communion with nature, with the visceral landscape of place observed from the loneliness of a car ride. In this same vein, we invite you to submit work to the 2024 Nature & Place Prize.

We’re looking for poems rich and robust in language, technique, and form that pay homage to the natural world and all of the small marvels that occur in nature. We’re also interested in poems that observe geography and the landscape of home. Frontier Poetry warmly encourages poets of all backgrounds, identities, and ethnicities to enter.

The first-place winner will receive $3,000 and publication. Second- and third-place winners will receive $300 and $200 respectively, as well as publication. All shortlisted writers will also be considered for paid publication in New Voices.


About the Guest Judge:

Flower Conroy is a LGBTQIA+ artist, NEA and MacDowell Fellow, and former Key West Poet Laureate. Conroy’s books include Snake Breaking Medusa Disorder (winner of the Stevens Manuscript Prize), A Sentimental Hairpin (Eric Hoffer Finalist), and Greenest Grass (winner of the Blue Lynx Poetry prize). Her work has appeared/is forthcoming in New England Review, American Literary ReviewThe Yale Review, and elsewhere. Currently she is curating a series of Ephemeral Altars that celebrate poetry collections through assemblage art.

What Flower Is Looking For:

When I initially heard the theme “Nature & Place,” I had a confident (albeit vague) idea what that might mean; however, the more I thought about it, my sense of nature and place became excitingly less certain, amorphous, vast. I want (from these submissions) what I’d want from any poem: I want to encounter that which I didn’t know I needed to encounter; I want surprise of detail and syntax, for a microcosm of a perspective and language (or languages) to flesh out a world I get lost in, to be entranced by keenness of being and experience retold; I want nuance, subtext, and imagery to awe me. The theme of “Nature & Place” strikes me as abstractly concrete and concretely abstract—it conjures landscape, yes, but perhaps landscape as a presence in relation to a self or selves. It’s flesh and dirt, past and future, internal and external. I’ve no preconceived notions of what the poems should be beyond being visceral.


Guidelines:

  • Submissions are open to all poets, regardless of publication history.
  • Send us only your best, polished work—unpublished poems only, please.
  • As part of our dedication to the pursuit of a more inclusive publishing world, we are offering a free submission window for poets from historically marginalized groups at the beginning of the contest until we reach our cap of fifty. Please note the free portal will close when we hit our submission cap.
  • Please do not include any identifying information in the body of your document.
  • We accept simultaneous submissions, but please notify us if your work is accepted elsewhere.
  • We ask for no more than three poems (five pages) per submission. Please submit all your poems in ONE document. We have no particular aesthetic or formal requirements and consider all styles of poetry.
  • Each entry requires a submission fee of $20.
  • Multiple submissions (of up to three poems apiece) are allowed, but each requires a separate entry fee.
  • Please include a brief cover letter with your publication history and personal bio. Also include any content warnings in consideration of our reading staff.
  • Work generated by AI will be automatically disqualified.
  • Submissions are open internationally, to any poet writing primarily in English. Some code-switching/meshing is very welcome.
  • Please do not submit work if you have a close relationship with the guest judge.
  • If you have any questions, please visit our FAQ page. If you don’t find the answer to your question, email us: contact (at ) frontierpoetry (dot) com.
  • The deadline is April 28, 2024. We plan to announce winners and finalists in Summer 2024.

Editorial Feedback Option:

This option costs $59 and will provide you with two pages of detailed and actionable feedback on your submission, including suggestions for future submissions. The $149 option will provide you with three letters from three different editors. Our guest editors are paid a significant portion of the fee and all are astute and professional poets. Please allow eight to ten weeks after the contest closes to receive your feedback letter.

Details

Date:
April 28, 2024
Time:
8:00 am - 5:00 pm
Cost:
$20
Event Category:
Website:
https://www.frontierpoetry.com/poetry-awards/

Venue

Frontier Poetry

Organizer

Frontier Poetry
View Organizer Website