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…
Carson Wolfe’s poem begins with an almost tender description of this person who, through the course of the poem, becomes a kind of icon for fragile masculinity, the way that women and femmes allow a kind of mutually agreed-upon ignorance…
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…
Adesiyan Oluwapelumi’s poem, “Acoustics,” requires a few reads before you can hear its silence. The poem needs some close attention, but when the reader plays close attention, it becomes clear that the precision and sonic rhythm of the poem are…
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…
Welcome to LINE LEVEL: Craft Lessons from Poets of Color, a monthly column in which writer, editor, and educator Joanna Acevedo zooms in on an element of craft from the work of BIPOC poets. LINE LEVEL unfolds in three parts:…
Perfect for Valentine’s Day, we see Kit Siskin’s quadtina, which is a variation of the sestina, a poetic form requiring six stanzas of six lines with a final triplet, with the final words of each line repeating in a specific…
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…
