Rattle Poetry Prize
Deadline: July 15, 2026
The annual Rattle Poetry Prize celebrates its 21st year with a 1st prize of $15,000 for a single poem. Ten finalists will also receive $500 each and publication, and be eligible for the $5,000 Readers' Choice Award, to be selected by subscriber and entrant vote. All of these poems will be published in the winter issue of the magazine.
With the winners judged in an anonymized review by the editors to ensure a fair and consistent selection, an entry fee that is simply a one-year subscription to the magazine—and a large Readers' Choice Award to be chosen by the writers themselves—we've designed the Rattle Poetry Prize to be one of the most inspiring contests around.
Past winners have included a retired teacher, a lawyer, and several students. It's fair, it's friendly, and you receive a print subscription to Rattle even if you don't win.
We accept entries online via Submittable. See Rattle's website for the complete guidelines and to read all of the past winners.
Please enjoy one of last year's finalist poems by Luisa Muradyan, published in Rattle #90, Winter 2025:
Paris
Sitting in the cafeteria at Costco, I break apart
my croissant slowly. In this rare moment
I am alone and imagine I am at a cafe
where the Eiffel Tower does the magical
thing that the Eiffel Tower always does
in movies about carefree love and wine
and fromage, where the characters might be
clumsy but in an endearing way and everyone
is hot in an objective way but I am
in my sweatpants and haven't showered in
days and I am not there for perfume but
for the family-sized package of children's Motrin
and you are back home ladling soup
and firing up the thermometer that blazes
red, which is an indication of desire and yes
there is a river of puke in the hallway that rivals
the canals and yes the snot on our toddler's face
has crystallized like the rim of a crème brûlée
but I still want you to meet me at the Champs-Élysées
and tuck a flower into my hair despite the fact that it
has been in a ponytail for weeks. Let us ride
down this street together for just a little
while longer, and remark about how the air smells
like freshly baked bread and when I get home
we can open this box of croissants and pretend
that the hallway covered in crayons
is a new exhibition at the Louvre and the stack
of dishes resembles the Arc de Triomphe
because one day we will go to Paris and stand
inside of Notre Dame and be amazed at how
much a toy car that is left on a prayer bench
reminds us of home, our own cathedral
that we built brick by metaphorical
brick alongside our untrained artists who know
nothing of Monet but everything about the color of
the sunset on the Seine that in this light
looks exactly like the orange cold
medicine in this plastic cup
that you hold in your hand.
