“The dead are not dead. / They are pinned to each / siren—hot pink, / green, white, white—like / beaks to a wire.” 

—Hala Alyan, “Interactive :: House Saints”

Think of a moment when the ordinary world feels, briefly, unmistakably charged. Hearing your dead great uncle’s voice near the kitchen sink when the house is completely empty. That recurring dream with plum poppies that feels eerily relevant to your love life. The horoscope that read “avoid shopping after 10:00 p.m.” that you know saved you from something catastrophic. Sometimes, it’s that family ritual—lighting a candle, kneeling down before your god—that offers you a respite of peace. Or it's the opposite. A religious upbringing that’s left you with unanswered questions. 

Spirituality is the concrete world revealing something that feels mystical. And, on occasion, that mystical realm reaches back.

In that vein, Frontier Poetry is excited to announce the 2026 Devotion & Divination Prize. For this contest we’re inviting poets to explore their relationship to spirituality and the supernatural. 

Send us your poems about God(s), ghosts, conjurings, and prophecy. We want to read your poems rooted in traditional religious practice, personal ritual, inherited belief, or the complete absence of belief. This contest welcomes mystery and the innumerable ways we seek to embrace, understand, or withstand the unknown. 

Guest Judge Hala Alyan will select the winners. The first-place winner will receive $3,000 and publication. Second- and third-place winners will receive $300 and $200, respectively, along with publication. All finalists will be considered for paid publication in New Voices.

Submissions open October 12 and close December 13, 2026.

There are no boundaries around what spirituality can look like. Poets of all spiritual backgrounds—and those whose relationships to belief are complicated, evolving, or uncertain—are warmly encouraged to submit.

Further reading for inspiration can be found here: 

• God-Country by Tina Chang | The Poetry Foundation
• First Offering by Adedayo Adeyemi Agarau | African Poetry Book Fund  
• Interactive :: House Saints by Hala Alyan | The Poetry Foundation
• Ode to My Aunt's Last Words / In Front of Me is Death and I Can't Help But Disassociate by Chandanie Somwaru | Hey Zine 

About the Guest Judge: 

Hala Alyan is the author of the novels Salt Houses—winner of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and the Arab American Book Award, and a finalist for the Chautauqua Prize—and The Arsonists’ City, a finalist for the Aspen Words Literary Prize. Her debut memoir, I’ll Tell You When I’m Home, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. She is also the author of five highly acclaimed collections of poetry, including The Twenty-Ninth Year and The Moon That Turns You Back. Her work has been published by The New Yorker, The Academy of American Poets, The New York Times, The Guardian, and Guernica. She lives in Brooklyn with her family, where she works as a clinical psychologist and professor at New York University.

What Alyan Is Looking For:

I’m looking for a poem that startles me into a kind of awakeness, something alive on the page. I’m drawn to surprising, precise imagery and uses of language that feel unusual. I also listen for cadence: a poem should have an energy and musicality that reveals itself when read aloud.

Guidelines

• Submissions are open to new and emerging writers (for this contest, we define this as poets with no more than one full-length work of poetry published or forthcoming at the time of submission). 
• Send up to three poems per submission, for a total of no more than five pages.
• For this contest, we have no aesthetic or formal requirements and will consider all styles of poetry.
• Please submit unpublished poems only. Previously published work will be automatically disqualified.
• You may submit multiple times, but each submission requires a separate $20 fee.
• We welcome simultaneous submissions, but please notify us immediately if your work is accepted elsewhere.
• As part of our dedication to the pursuit of a more inclusive publishing world, we offer a free submission window for poets from historically marginalized groups at the beginning of the contest. Please note the portal will close when we hit our cap of fifty submissions; there will be no additional waivers granted.
• Submissions are open internationally, to any poet writing in English. Inclusion of other languages is welcome, as long as the poem is primarily written in English. Some code-switching/meshing is warmly welcomed.
• Please include a brief cover letter that includes a short, third-person bio with your publication history, if applicable. To safeguard our staff, please include any necessary content warnings as well.
• Do not include any identifying information in the body of your document.
• Work generated by AI will be automatically disqualified.
• Please do not submit work if you have a close relationship with Frontier’s editors or the guest judge.
• Winners and finalists will be announced in the winter of 2027.

If you have any questions, please visit our FAQ page. If you don’t find the answer to your question, you can send an email to contact (at ) frontierpoetry (dot) com.

Additional Feedback Options

The single–letter editorial feedback costs $59 and will provide you with two pages of detailed and actionable feedback by one of our editors on a single poem of your choice from your packet, including suggestions for future submissions. The $149 option will provide you with three letters from three different editors. Our guest editors are paid a significant portion of the fee and all are astute and professional poets. Please allow eight to twelve weeks from the close of the contest to receive your editorial feedback.