Poetry Life 2026
Magazine1 is proud to host the Poetry Contest for Sarasota’s PoetryLife 2026. This contest hopes to find the poems that represent what we think of as the best of the poetic form - bold language, bravery in form and content, and the immediacy that makes one's breath catch in the throat when read. Please check out our Submission Page to submit an entry. Submissions will be open from 9/1/25-1/10/26.
When submitting, please consider the following:
Submission fee is $5.
Submit only one poem per submission.
Submissions cannot be more than two pages in length (so one poem, up to two pages in length).
You can submit more than once, you just have to pay for each submission.
You do not need to live in Sarasota to submit, this contest is for everyone!
Other than that, there are no strict structures for the poem you submit, so long as it's something you're proud of, we want to read it.
The final judge of the contest will be Rick Hilles, a recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship, Whiting Award, Camargo Fellowship, and the Amy Lowell Poetry Travelling Scholarship. Hilles is the author of Brother Salvage (winner of the 2005 Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize) and A Map of the Lost World (2012), both with the Pitt Poetry Series. His poems, essays, and translations have appeared or are forthcoming in Harper's, Kenyon Review, Literary Imagination, Narrative Magazine, The Nation, The New Republic, Poetry, Ploughshares, Salmagundi, and The Southern Review. He teaches in the English Department and MFA Program at Vanderbilt University and lives in Nashville, TN.
First prize for the contest will be a $150 dollar gift card to Bookstore1, and the winner will be invited to read the winning poem at the Poetry Life event in Sarasota, Florida. The poem will also be published in the upcoming issue of Magazine1.
Runners up will receive a $50 gift card to Bookstore1 and will be published in the upcoming issue of Magazine1.
These gift cards are usable either in person at our store in Sarasota, or in our online store