The Comstock Review

GUIDELINES AND ENTRY FEES

FINAL JUDGE: Juan Felipe Herrera, Poet Laureate, 2015-2017



First Prize: $1,000 (The Muriel Craft Bailey Memorial Award)
  Second Prize: $250    Third Prize: $100     
Honorable Mentions receive a one-year subscription.

Here’s how it works — Editors review and score each poem. The highest scoring poems (25 or so) are Special Merit poems. Special Merit poems go to the judge. The judge determines the top three prize winners. The entire editorial staff then selects the Honorable Mentions from the remaining Special Merits.

The Rules:

1. Name, email, home address and any other contact information must be included in the cover letter.  No poet info should be on the poems, to facilitate blind judging.

2. The entry fee per submission is $27.50. ($25.00 contest fee plus $2.50 to defray the cost of submittable fees). This includes up to 5 poems.  There is no limit to the number of submissions.

3. No poem may exceed 40 LINES, beginning with the first line of text below the title. DO NOT count blank lines. Please also consider our 64-character line width when submitting.

4.  Poems should be submitted in .doc or .docx form.

5. Poems must be original, unpublished in ANY medium, print or electronic. We do not accept simultaneous submissions. The Comstock Review reserves the first refusal rights if there is any error in the poet’s records that results in simultaneous submission. Editors have the right to disqualify all poems submitted by a poet if there is any question of previous publication or notice of acceptance elsewhere by accident.

6. All Prize Winners, Honorable Mentions, and Special Merit Poems are considered accepted work, and will be published in our Fall/Winter 2018 issue.

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