DEADLINE: September 15, 2025, midnight.
PRIZE: One winner will receive a cash prize of $1,000.00 and publication. Honorable mentions will be noted at the Judge’s discretion.
Winner will also receive 20 free copies of their book; League of Minnesota Poets will sell additional published books.
Winner will be announced at League of Minnesota Poets 2024 Fall meeting in November and posted after the meeting online at the League website (https://www.mnpoets.org). Publication and reading by winning manuscript will be at the following League of Minnesota Poets' Spring meeting. First place winners will not be eligible to compete in the year following their win.
ENTRY FEE: LOMP members $15.00 Non-Members $25.00
Visit https://www.mnpoets.org/rez-award to pay your submission fee. Unpaid submissions will be disqualified
WHAT: A poetry manuscript to be a minimum of 40 pages to a maximum of 60 pages, including any table of contents. No pictures, illustrations, or borders. Submit using docx or word. PDF is also accepted.
Poems within the manuscript may be previously published. Simultaneous submissions permitted but must notify if manuscript wins elsewhere. Manuscripts will be judged anonymously; your name should not appear anywhere on the manuscript and there should be no identifying marks within the submitted manuscript.
Do NOT include acknowledgements or dedication page. Dedications and acknowledgements page will be added to winning manuscript.
This call for submissions is open exclusively to Minnesota poets. Please include your Minnesota address on your submission.
Submissions must include one original poem that the poet considers to be some of his/her/their best work. The poem must not exceed 40 lines. Poems may be previously published. If so, please provide publication information.
Each poem must be accompanied by an essay from the poet that describes why this poem is one of their best. Essays must not exceed 500 words. The essay can describe the originating idea or experience that prompted drafting the poem. The context or place where the poem was written may be significant. The goal of the essay is two-fold: to provide readers with a sense of the poem’s origins and to share how the poem was constructed and revised. For instance, the poem may have been drafted as a free verse persona poem and eventually migrated to a traditional sonnet. What prompted you to make the shift? Is the way the poem appears on the page significant? What about the use of line breaks or rhyme and meter? In sharing details, avoid the temptation to dazzle readers with your knowledge of the technical aspects of writing poetry. Instead, focus on helping convey your own sense of wonder as you sought to put into words something that has moved you deeply.
To get an idea of how an essay accompanies a poem, you might want to check out the selections in Personal Best: Makers On Their Poems That Matter Most (Copper Canyon Press, 2023).
Poems and essays need to be submitted together in the same Word file.
There are no submission fees. There will also be no stipends or prizes awarded to those selected.