BMP Celebrates National Poetry Month 2020

 

Poetry Contest: Interconnection & Community

Open All April – Fee Free For this year’s National Poetry Month at BMP Voices, we seek to celebrate the ways in which we’re interconnected — highlighting community, gratitude, and the ways in which creativity redounds upon itself, fed by collective energy and goodwill. Our fee-free contest is open to all styles and forms of poetry, with an eye toward our mission of discovering voices that are immediate, immersive, and urgent. Poems inspired by the work of others are welcome. We also welcome poems written to other poems or poets.

Submission Guidelines

Please submit 1-3 poems in a single document, a doc, docx, or PDF, free of identifying information. If your poem does respond to another poet’s work (by using an “after” form or any of their work as excerpted text) we require not only the name of the poet you are responding to but also the title of the original poem. Additionally, if a submitted poem quotes lines from another poet, we ask that the source text be properly attributed as an endnote. In the cover letter, please include contact information, a short bio, description or explanation of the poems (as appropriate), social media links, and a headshot (optional). Submissions will be reviewed for suitability by Brain Mill Press staff. For submissions selected for reproduction on BMP Voices, you will receive a contract granting Brain Mill Press the limited right to reproduce your piece. You will retain all other rights to your work. Your poetry and profile will be published on bmpvoices.com and promoted on our social media outlets. Your post will contain your headshot and bio, as well as information you may wish to include about recent work and your website and social media links. Brain Mill Press strongly encourages submissions from people of color, women, LGBTQIA+ writers, First Nations writers, and disabled writers. Please direct inquiries not answered in this call to inquiries@brainmillpress.com.

Prizes

The Brain Mill Press editors will select one or more submitted poems as the editors’ choice pick(s) approximately once a week through the month of April. Those authors whose poems are editors’ choice selections may choose any poetry title from the Brain Mill Press catalog for their prize. In early May, the editors will select a winning poem, and the poet will receive the full collection of Brain Mill Press poetry titles for themselves, as well as a second collection to gift to an organization of their choice.