Palette Poetry is an online literary journal that endeavors to uplift and platform emerging and established poets.
The world is eager for poets. In 2016, more people spent their hard-earned money on poetry books than in any other year on record. When times are dark, the world often turns to poets for insight and for language reanimated. Palette Poetry is here to paint our small part of the world with truth through poetry, as imaginative, eviscerating, and provoking as truth can be.
Our mission is to create a nourishing and brave space for poetic voices, whether new, emerging, or established, especially those that often go unheard or unrecognized. Our goal is to recognize and publish the most innovative and exciting poetry we can.
Palette firmly believes writers should be compensated for their work and is a paying market. We pay $50 per poem accepted. We do not charge fees for Featured Poetry submissions and offer a quick-response submission option for writers of historically marginalized identities. All creative work published in Palette comes through our submission windows; we do not solicit poetry whether for Featured Poetry or for our contests.
By submitting to Palette Poetry, submitters agree to receive correspondence about future work and submission opportunities from Palette Poetry. You can unsubscribe at any time.
**If you haven't already, please verify your email address with Submittable for more consistent communication.**
Unless specifically requested, we do not accept AI-generated work.
We warmly invite all poets to submit to the Resistance & Resilience Prize! For this contest, we are especially interested in reading poems that reflect upon, live within, wrestle with, uplift, or subvert themes of resistance and resilience. We are looking for poetry of pushback and of survival, poetry that troubles power and poetry that nurtures its readers and writers alike. Send us your very best! The winning poet will be awarded $3000, publication, and a brief interview in Palette Poetry. Second and third place will receive $300 and $200, respectively, as well as publication. The top ten finalists will be selected by Palette editors, and Guest Judge Nicole Sealey will then select the top three winners for the contest.
Order Nicole Sealey’s latest collection, The Ferguson Report: An Erasure, here.
NICOLE SEALEY is the author of Ordinary Beast, a finalist for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award and PEN Open Book Award, and The Animal After Whom Other Animals Are Named. Her honors include a Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome, a Hodder Fellowship from Princeton University, and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. She is a visiting professor at Boston University and teaches in the MFA Writers Workshop in Paris at New York University.
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.
• DO NOT INCLUDE your name or identifying information in the document OR submission title box. If your name is on the submission, in the file name, or in the title box, it will be automatically declined.
• We are only accepting unpublished work. If your poem has been published 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 picked up elsewhere.
• There is no page requirement, but your submission must be no more than three poems. 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, but each submission will include the $20 reading fee.
• Please include a brief cover letter in the cover letter box with your publication history, if any. This section is where you can include your name and/or bio! If you select the editorial feedback option, this section is also where you can name which poem you'd like feedback on.
• 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.
• Contest closes on October 15, 2023.
Included Unique Opportunities and Discounts
As a thank you for your support for Palette, we'd like to offer these unique opportunities:
The Poetry School is offering every submitter a 20% off discount code (average $28 value) for one of their online courses. Head to their platform, find a course you're interested in, and use the code included in the confirmation message at checkout.
The Writing Salon is also offering every submitter a 10% off discount code on a writing class. 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.
Submissions for our Featured Poetry category are open year-round to poets at any stage of their careers. We highly encourage new and emerging poets to submit.
We are thrilled to offer significant payment to our partner poets: $50 per poem, up to $150. We are proud to be paying for published pieces but will be highly selective in our choices for publication.
We also warmly invite under-represented and marginalized writers to submit. Our aim is to be an accurate representation of the diversity of our beautiful community. Your voice is valued here.
- Submissions are open internationally, to any poet writing in English—other languages are okay to include, as long as the poem is largely in English.
- Please do NOT include your name or identifying information anywhere within your packet of poems. We do not read submissions anonymously but prefer identifying information to be included in the cover letter, not the packet of poems.
- We accept simultaneous submissions, but please send us a note if your work is picked up elsewhere (we want to say congrats!)
- Submission 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 cover letter with your publication history, if any.
- Expect around 3 months for a response. Please do not ask for an update on your submission until four months have passed.
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,
Sarah & the Palette 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.