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 last year's winning poem by Morri Creech, published in Rattle #90, Winter 2025:
An Ordinary Childhood
Our mother was a mousetrap under the stairs.
She used as bait the things she never said.
We'd hear a snap and find three silver hairs
in an old passport, pinned like something dead.Our father was an occupying force
in a town of collaborators. Good
behavior meant not signaling in morse
enemy troops camped in a distant wood.Our parents paced—her mind a radio
playing the classic dirges until dawn,
his heart a spider web spun in the snow
catching the dusk sun before it was gone.For supper, they would feed us each a crumb
of moonlight. Our house was a moving train.
Evenings they danced in a delirium
of silence, drunk on a thimbleful of rain.
