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.
This category is always open for free submissions!
We are looking for both pitches and completed drafts of poetry craft essays. We love work that engages with specific elements of poetic craft, and welcome any writing that dives deeply into the nuts and bolts of how poetry works. We’re also interested in hybrid craft essay forms, and welcome work which is not easily classifiable, including work with a personal essay element, experimental forms or formatting, or anything that explores the boundaries of genre—as long as it has a clear craft focus and aims to educate, inform, and inspire working poets.
We are especially interested in craft concepts inspired by books from independent publishers, writing advice that puts more than one text into conversation with another, or essays that highlight underrepresented or marginalized voices. We would prefer that at least one of the texts that you are engaging with was published within the last year, although this is not a hard-and-fast rule.
Our ideal length for these pieces is between 1,000 and 3,000 words. If you need additional space, please leave us a short explanation in your cover letter.
For pitches, please submit:
- a brief (500 words or fewer) summary of what element of craft you would like to explore, and what writers or books you are planning to highlight;
- a biographical statement (100 words or fewer) with any relevant credentials; and
- 1-3 samples of similar work, if possible.
If you would like to send a finished draft, please indicate your word count at the top of your submission. We would especially love to work with emerging writers on drafts, so if you’re not sure if something is publication-ready, send it along and see if it’s a good fit—we’d be happy to work on it with you! Drafts should be double-spaced, 12-point Times New Roman, with regular margins, unless specific formatting requires otherwise.
Accepted essays pay $50.
We can’t wait to read your work!
Palette Poetry is delighted to continue our tradition of celebrating previously published work. We appreciate the curatorial work of our fellow literary magazines, and we want to support poets as they continue to expand their publishing careers. Submissions to the Previously Published Poem Prize must have been already published in a literary magazine or an anthology.
The winner will be awarded $3,000, publication, a brief interview in Palette Poetry, and a limited edition broadside of the poem. Second and third place will receive $300 and $200, respectively, as well as publication. Winners will be selected by Palette editors. Learn about last year's winners here.
Submission Guidelines: Please read carefully!
- For this prize, we are only accepting previously published work. Please indicate in your cover letter which literary magazines the poem(s) first appeared in. When we narrow down our shortlist and winners, we will be checking the original publication to make sure we can give credit.
- 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.
- We accept simultaneous submissions. If your previously published poem happens to be selected for a different reprint or anthology during this contest, please do not automatically withdraw, but contact us because we may still consider it for this prize.
- 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.
- Please include a brief cover letter in the cover letter box with a list of where your work was first published. 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.
- Writers from historically marginalized groups are invited to submit for free until we reach the fifty free entries budgeted for this particular contest.
- 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 on December 8, 2024. Submitters will be notified of their submission status 8-12 weeks after the close of the contest.
Included Unique Opportunities and Discounts
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.
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.
Please join us for the Palette Chapbook Launch Party!
TUESDAY, December 3, 2024, 6 PM EST / 3 PM PST
We invite you to celebrate Ava Chen, the winner of Palette Poetry's 2023 Chapbook Prize! Her chapbook, Habitual Prayer, was chosen by Danez Smith. Here is what they had to say about the collection:
Habitual Prayer seems like a fitting and off title all at once. Sure, these poems indeed are imbued with all power, intention, mystery, and beauty of prayer, but nothing is habitual, routine, or ordinary about how this poet approaches language. In a collection where “too many dahlias/grow taller than angels” where the speaker proclaims “I expect blood/when I crack open the softening door—,” again and again in this brief but stunning collection I found myself tripping over language so fresh and wise, at times ancient and at times from from electric dreamy future, making new all the places we poets have looked to find out work: into death, into the garden, towards love, and into the mirror. Habitual Prayer has made me a fan of this poet’s magic, how they transfigure language into these precise, lush spells and invocations that unsettle me so. The greedy prayer I cast out to my gods: please, please, more of this, more from this poet.
Following this launch, readers can download the whole chapbook for free on Palette Poetry.
This event will be moderated by Palette's Editor-in-Chief, Marcella Haddad, and will be held virtually over Zoom. Please fill out the submission form to obtain an email link to the event.