Submission Fee: $20 for up to three poems
1st Place: $500
2nd Place: $250
3rd Place: $100
Honorable Mentions: Up to 20 poems will be selected as honorable mentions.
All winners and honorable mentions will be published on the Nebraska Poetry Society’s online publication, The Poet Rabble.
Guest Judge: Lisa Fay Coutley
Lisa Fay Coutley is the author of HOST (Wisconsin Poetry Series, 2024), tether (Black Lawrence Press, 2020), and Errata (Southern Illinois University, 2015), winner of the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry Open Competition, In the Carnival of Breathing (BLP, 2011), and winner of the Black River Chapbook Competition, Small Girl: Micromemoirs (Harbor Editions, 2024), and she is the editor of In the Tempered Dark: Contemporary Poets Transcending Elegy (BLP, 2023). Her poetry has been awarded an NEA Fellowship, an Academy of American Poets Levis Prize (chosen by Dana Levin) and the 2021 Gulf Coast Poetry Prize (selected by Natalie Diaz). Recent prose & poetry appear in the Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day, Barrelhouse, Brevity, North American Review, and The Massachusetts Review and on The Slowdown. She is an Associate Professor of Poetry & CNF in the Writer’s Workshop at UNO.
Submission Guidelines
Submissions will close as soon as we receive 100 entrants or on October 31, 2025, whichever comes first. By submitting poems to our contest, you give us permission to post them to our website. Please do not submit poems that you don't want posted online. Poems cannot be withdrawn from the contest after winners are announced.
Eligibility/Rules:
- Submissions are open to anyone. You do not need a connection to Nebraska or a membership to the Nebraska Poetry Society.
- Only unpublished work is accepted – this includes self-published works (print or digital) as well as personal blogs, social media, and other online platforms.
- Simultaneous Submissions are accepted provided you notify us immediately if the work has been accepted or received recognition in another contest.
- We accept all forms of poetry. No images please, text only.
- By submitting to our contest, you give us permission to post your poem(s) to our online publication. Do not submit poems that you don't want posted online.
- Formatting: Please format your poem the way you want us to read it. We appreciate the use of a 12-point Times New Roman font. We also appreciate poems that are under three pages long. All entries must be in English. Do not include your name on the poem as all entries will be judged blind.
Nonrefundable Submission fee is $20. This includes up to three (3) poems.
The submission fee is a tax-deductible donation to the Nebraska Poetry Society, a non-profit organization whose mission is to make poetry accessible to all. The submission fee includes a subscription to our quarterly newsletter.
Winners will be announced in early 2026.