Poetry Chapbook Contest

The Choeofpleirn Press Jonathan Holden Poetry Chapbook Contest

This chapbook contest exists for those poets who have not yet published a chapbook or a full-length collection of poems. 

To enter, send 25 to 40 pages of poetry to choeofpleirnpress@gmail.com saved as one file. In your email, provide a 100-word, third person biography to be published along with your chapbook.

Pay the $20 contest fee through the Paypal payment box appearing below. Otherwise, your manuscript will not be considered.

All submitters for the contest who pay the contest fee receive an ebook copy of the winning chapbook (a $15 value).

The winning poet will receive 10 copies of the printed chapbook and $250.

This chapbook contest will be open from January 1, 2024 to April 28, 2024.  Deadline: Sunday, April 28, 2024 by 11:59 PM Central time.

Important details are:

• poems should all be your own original work and should not be part of a previous chapbook or book, although individual poems may have been published in various literary magazines;

• electronic (via our email address) submissions ONLY;

• manuscripts should be paginated and saved as a single Word file (doc or docx); each poem should appear on a separate page, so you should be certain to use page breaks between poems;

• manuscripts should include a Table of Contents and an Acknowledgements* page specifying where and when any of the poems were previously published;

• American English is preferred; we will not publish translated works;

• simultaneous and multiple submissions are permitted, but you must withdraw your chapbook for consideration if it is picked up elsewhere for publication;

• self-published books are published books so are not permitted for this contest;

• refrain from submitting if you have already published a chapbook or a full-length collection;

• chapbooks containing poems created by artificial intelligence will be disqualified;

• please email us at choeofpleirnpress@gmail.com if you have questions.

We are looking for strong, literary poems, so we are not dictating any one poetic style. Send us your best.

Steve Brisendine, author of To Dance with Cassiopeia and Die: New and Collected Small Poems, Salt Holds No Secrets But This, and The Words We Do Not Have, has agreed to serve as the judge for our 2024 contest.

Please realize that Choeofpleirn Press does not publish written works produced by AI, which the U.S. Copyright Office has deemed non-copyrightable.

*We will remove identifying information from your chapbook manuscript, including your name, the Acknowledgements page, and Word macros (which identify the individual's computer and, often, her/his/xis name) before we submit the manuscripts to our judge in order to maintain a "blind" reading to achieve unbiased results.