Rattle Poetry Prize
Deadline: July 15, 2025
The annual Rattle Poetry Prize celebrates its 20th 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 win 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 this finalist poem by Stephen Allen, published in Rattle #86, Winter 2024:
The Sadness of Morning Glories Out of Season
Why do their wilted vines still cling to walls,
to porch supports, to trellises? So dry
and desiccated, it seems that they should fall
back in the dirt. The seasons slide on by,winter to spring, and the tattered flags
of leaves and empty sepals hold their own,
until some human intervention drags
them down or brand-new growth from seeds self-sownbegins its reign. But this is a poem about grief,
the grief of things that hold on past their time,
as if all times were well defined. The sleep
of flowers produces wistfulness that climbsaround the spine and twists into the mind,
usurping thoughts and leaving ghosts behind.
