It’s the moment we’ve all been waiting for. We made a list, we checked it twice. It was the 2024 Debut Chapbook Contest. So we checked it thrice. There were some difficult decisions, and some amazing manuscripts. Our incredible team…
Welcome to LINE LEVEL CHAT! Launched in 2023, LINE LEVEL is a monthly column started by writer, editor, and educator Joanna Acevedo, focusing on craft lessons from the recent or forthcoming work of contemporary poets of color. LINE LEVEL CHAT…
Warm congratulations to the winner of our Hermit Crab Challenge, Joshua Lavender! “ni·loo (a personal definition)” caught our attention for its unique take on one of the most tried-and-true hermit crab forms, the dictionary entry. While this is a very…
Many thanks and congrats to Eliza Gilbert, second place winner of our Hermit Crab Challenge! “Mad Lib,” has the sweet spot balance of irony and emotion, existing in a place where humor and vulnerability meet. The poem finds itself in…
Join us in celebrating our third place winner of the Hermit Crab Challenge! Steven C. Wright’s “The Timesick Poet.” Wright’s poem immediately caught our eye as the irreverent mixture of a lighthearted form hijacked to address the very real and…
Our Hermit Crab 10 Day challenge this fall invited submitters to try out a new technique, and poets were writing and submitting “hermit crab,” poems, which are poems that borrow form found in other sources—a poem built from a grocery…
Welcome to LINE LEVEL CHAT! Launched in 2023, LINE LEVEL is a monthly column started by writer, editor, and educator Joanna Acevedo, focusing on craft lessons from the recent or forthcoming work of contemporary poets of color. LINE LEVEL CHAT…
Our last installment of finalist bring us three poets intimately engaging with language, but not always in the ways you’d expect. Starting with Chennelle Channer’s poem, “Talkin With My Hands These Ain’t Gang Signs,” we find ourselves thrust into Channer’s…
Part two of our installment of poems chosen as finalists brings poems from Nicole Santalucia, Kate DeLay, and Robin Wang. Another diverse group, Santalucia’s explorations with form take us immediately into the female body, shifting into and out of fantasy…
Our first installment of poems chosen as finalists includes Sighle Meehan’s eerie and echoing “half-doors, bolted and broken,” which creates a call and response that haunts readers well after they leave the poetic space. By contrast, Imani Cezanne’s “I found…
