This summer, we invite you to get outside and write some poems! Aimee Nezhukumatathil will judge our inaugural Nature Poetry Prize. Please send us your meditations on the sound of wind, your obsessions with the shape of trees, and your words woven like blades of grass. We are looking forward to reading any and all poems that are interested in the natural world. 

For more thoughts on what constitutes nature poetry, here’s some advice from our guest judge:

“As someone who has taught nature writing for decades, I suggest to my students for any solid piece of writing: Be as specific as you can. Here in Mississippi where I live, I want to know the names of everything I plant: aster, wax mallow, and the difference between bee balm and bee blossom. Knowing names correctly is everything; it’s a key to connection and tenderness and a turn to kindness. Maybe if you know that pipevine swallowtail butterflies nibble swamp milkweed leaves, you wouldn’t be so quick to mow it on the side of the highway. Or maybe if you knew that indigo buntings (which are bluer than a Mississippi summer sky), and not just ‘some birds’ hang around a place called Sky Lake, you wouldn’t dump garbage in their home. Start with the five senses. Knock us back to that time you first smelled a dried sand dollar when you were nine. Let us feel the bits of sand tap out of the lunules and into the palm of your hand.”

           — Aimee Nezhukumatathil

Submissions are open from April 14, 2025 – June 15, 2025. The winner will be awarded $3,000 and publication, the first runner-up will receive $300 and publication, and the second runner-up will receive $200 and publication.

Aimee Nezhukumatathil is the author of the New York Times bestselling illustrated collection of nature essays, World of Wonders: IN praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, & Other Astonishments, which was chosen as Barnes and Noble’s Book of the Year and named a finalist for the Kirkus Prize. She also wrote Bite by Bite: Nourishments and Jamborees (Ecco/Harper Collins), and four previous poetry collections: Oceanic, Lucky Fish, At the Drive-in Volcano, and Miracle Fruit. With the poet Ross Gay, she coauthored the chapbook Lace & Pyrite, a collaboration of epistolary garden poems. Her writing appears twice in The Best American Poetry series, The New York Times Magazine, ESPN, Ploughshares, American Poetry Review, and The Paris Review.

Honors include a poetry fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Pushcart Prize, a Mississippi Arts Council Grant, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. She is the first-ever poetry editor for Sierra Magazine, the storytelling arm of The Sierra Club. Nezhukumatathil is professor of English and creative writing in the University of Mississippi’s MFA program where she received the faculty’s Distinguished Research and Creative Achievement Award.

Submission Guidelines: Please read carefully!

• Submissions are open internationally, to any poet writing in English—inclusion of other languages is welcome, as long as the poem is largely written in English. At this time, Palette does not accept translated work unless you are also the author of the original poem.
• DO NOT INCLUDE your name or identifying information in the document OR submission title box.
• We are only accepting unpublished work. If your nature poem has been published elsewhere, even on a blog or on social media, it is not eligible.
• We accept simultaneous submissions—just please send us a note if your work is accepted for publication elsewhere.
• Your submission must be no more than three poems and under ten pages. Please submit all your poems in ONE document. Please begin each poem on a new page and include each poem’s individual title.
• We do accept multiple submissions (of one to three poems apiece), but each submission will include the $20 reading fee.
• Writers from historically marginalized groups are invited to submit for free until we reach the fifty free entries budgeted for this particular contest. 
• Please include a brief cover letter in the cover letter box with your publication history, if any. This text box is where you can include your name and/or bio! If you select the editorial feedback option, this cover letter is also where you can name which poem you’d like feedback on. To safeguard our reading staff, please include content warnings in the cover letter, if applicable, as well.
• Review our FAQ page for frequently asked questions.
• NOTE: If after submitting you notice an error in your submission, please message us rather than withdrawing and resubmitting your submission. We can open it to editing once so you can correct the error.
• Palette Poetry does not accept AI-produced work.
• Contest closes June 15, 2025. Submitters will be notified of their submission status eight to twelve weeks after the contest closing date.

Discount for Submitters

As a thank you for your support for Palette, we’d like to offer a 10% off discount code on a writing class from The Writing Salon. Find a class and use the code included in the confirmation message at checkout.

Editorial Feedback Option

This option costs $59 and will provide you with two pages of detailed and actionable feedback on a poem of your choice from the submission, including suggestions for future submissions. The three-letter option costs $149 and will provide you with six pages of detailed and actionable feedback on a poem of your choice from the submission, including suggestions for future submissions, from three separate guest editors. Our guest editors are paid a significant portion of the fee and are all incredibly astute poets.

Dear poets,
The 2019 Diversity in Publishing survey found that, on average, 80% of decision-makers in the publishing industry are white. This inevitably creates systematized discrimination in terms of who gets published—without active and deliberate measures, people of color will continue to be marginalized. Important, innovative voices will continue to be passed over and dismissed.
We at Palette Poetry hope to use our platform to actively begin demolishing the discriminatory systems that pervade the publishing industry.  To that end, we welcome Black writers, Indigenous writers, and writers of color (BIPOC) to submit through this category for a quick decision made directly by the editors. We'll do our best to return a decision on your poetry within 2-4 weeks.


Sending every good wish your way,
The Palette Poetry team


Guidelines:

• Submissions of unpublished poems are open internationally, for historically marginalized BIPOC writers ONLY. 
• We accept simultaneous submissions, but please send us a message via Submittable if your work is picked up elsewhere.
• Submissions must be no more than 5 poems and must not exceed 10 pages.
• We do not accept multiple submissions. Please submit all your poems in ONE document.
• Please include a brief cover letter with your publication history, if any.
• Expect 2-4 weeks for a response.
• Publication in our Featured Poetry series includes a $50 per poem payment.