Contest Submission - Poetry

The BLR Prizes award outstanding writing related to themes of health, healing, illness, the mind, and the body.

2026 John & Eileen Allman Prize for Poetry

Judged by Patricia Spears Jones
 

Patricia Spears Jones is an African American poet, playwright, and cultural activist who is the current New York State Poet and a Poet Laureate Fellow. She is author of The Beloved Community and A Lucent Fire: New and Selected Poems, and nine other poetry publications and plays. She has taught at Barnard College, Hunter College, Adelphi University, and Hollins University as well as for independent literary organizations including Poets House and The Poetry Project at St. Marks Church. She is an Emeritus Fellow for the Black Earth Institute and organizer of the American Poets Congress. 

GUIDELINES

• Deadline: July 1, 2025
• First prize is $1,000 (in each genre) and publication in the Spring 2026 issue of BLR.  Honorable mention winners will receive $300 and publication in the Spring 2026 issue of BLR.
• Poetry: We encourage poems that are accessible to a wide audience. Characteristics we look for are vivid writing, strong narrative, and rendering the familiar new. We encourage you to peruse back issues in our archive to get a sense of our ethos.  You may submit up to three poems per submission (include all three in one file).
• Do not put your name or other identifying information on the manuscript document (or in the filename). Manuscripts are read blindly by reviewers, editors, and judges.
• Work previously published in print or electronically will not be considered. For BLR,  “published work” means published in print in North America, or  published on the Internet in electronic journals, e-zines, academic  websites, and other “public” or “official” websites. Works posted on  personal blogs or websites will be considered on a case-by-case basis.  We ask that authors be honest about web postings. (If a work is  discovered to have been posted or published elsewhere—and not openly  acknowledged by the author in advance—we will remove it from  consideration.)
• Simultaneous submissions are permitted, but we ask that you notify us immediately if your work is accepted elsewhere.  We regret that there can be no refunds or substitutions for withdrawn work.
• All contest entries will also be considered for regular publication.
• Students/friends/colleagues/relations of a judge are not permitted to enter submissions to that judge's genre.
• BLR acquires first-time North American rights, and the right  to reprint in anthologies.  After publication, all other rights revert to the author and the work may be reprinted as long as appropriate acknowledgement to BLR is made.

We encourage you to read BLR before you submit.  Sample writing is available on our website.

We're happy to offer a 50% subscription discount to all authors who participate in the contest. (If you live outside the US, you must select the International option. Otherwise, we'll be unable to ship the journal to you. Thanks!)