Brick Road Poetry Book Contest
Postmark Deadline: November 1, 2014
The first place winner receives a publication contract with Brick Road Poetry Press and a $1,000 prize, publication in both print and ebook formats, and 25 copies of the printed book. We may also offer publication contracts to the top finalists.
Adhere to all the "general submission" manuscript guidelines. Entry fee $25, payable through the online submission manager. If sending hard copy, please include a check or money order payable to "Brick Road Poetry Press, Inc." See the complete guidelines for details.
The poetry we publish is best characterized as entertaining, amusing, edifying, and/or surprising. Some of our favorite poets are Kim Addonizio, Billy Collins, Jane Hirshfield, Jane Kenyon, Ted Kooser, Thomas Lux, and Mark Strand.
Qualities we admire: coherent human voice, sense of humor, narrative mode, playful use of words, surprise twists, personas, spiritual or philosophical ideas illustrated concretely (in imagery or narrative), and intense depictions of a dramatic scene, setting, or experience.
Dislikes: overemphasis on rhyme, obscurity or riddling, highfalutin vocabulary, didactic expressions of religion, hazy themes or topics, and excessive abstractions.
Please enjoy this poem from The Alp at the End of My Street by Gary Leising, winner of the 2013 Brick Road Poetry Prize:
My Wife's Brassieres
Strange flocked birds frighten,
clipped on the basement clothesline,
splayed open, hanging by shoulder straps,
nearly flat, curveless, lacking a bodied,
embracing circle. I duck
through them, a cold metal clasp
brushes my cheek. I turn on the lights;
they change, become no flock, but a menagerie.
A satiny blue butterfly, dark swirls
mimicking eyes. Further back,
skin-toned cups bulge
like the sightless tan lumps
of a cave lizard's eyes.
A dark one hangs like a bat
waiting night. One plain white,
rust stained, dries on its perch.
She's rinsed and washed the right cup
time and again,
this biopsy-born slaughtered dove.
She'll wash again tonight.
