James H. Nash Poetry Contest

Congratulations to our 2025 Winners!

FIRST PLACE
Jill Mceldowney
Paradise Woods

FINALIST
Oliver
desertification poem
Time Magazine:

SUBMISSIONS NOW CLOSED

First Prize: $500
2 finalists

First place and finalists will all receive a website feature.

2025 Contest Judge:

Daniel Borzutzky

Daniel Borzutzky is a poet and Spanish-language translator from Chicago. His most recent books are The Murmuring Grief of the Americas (2024), and Written After a Massacre in the Year 2018 (2021). His 2016 collection, The Performance of Becoming Human, received the National Book Award. Lake Michigan (2018) was a finalist for the Griffin International Poetry Prize. His most recent translations are Cecilia Vicuña’s The Deer Book (2024); and Paula Ilabaca Nuñez’s The Loose Pearl (2022), winner of the PEN Award for Poetry in Translation. His translation of Galo Ghigliotto’s Valdivia received the American Literary Translator’s Association’s 2017 National Translation Award, and he has also translated collections by Raúl Zurita, and Jaime Luis Huenún. He teaches English and Latin American and Latino Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Submissions Open:
February 1 – March 15

Entry Fee: $10
(free for SLPC members)

GUIDELINES:

Open to all current SLPC members, and to current residents or students in the St. Louis metro area living within a 100-mile radius of St. Louis City
Saint Louis Poetry Center board members are not eligible to enter the contest
Submit up to 2 typed poems per entry, any form and length
No manuscripts will be returned
Simultaneous submissions are allowed, but previously published or award-winning poems are not eligible (including those that have appeared on social media, websites, blogs, etc)
Additional poems will be accepted with additional entry fees
Entry fee is $10, make checks payable to Saint Louis Poetry Center (NOTE: entry fee waived for current SLPC members, free entry with new/renewed membership)
Enclose a cover sheet that includes: name, address, phone number, email address and the titles of the poems submitted
Name and address on cover sheet only, no identifying information on poems
Contest results will be announced in late April (NOTE: to be notified by mail, include self-addressed stamped envelope with mailed entry)

First place and finalists are invited to read their poems at Saint Louis Poetry Center’s annual Poetry Concert.

HOW TO SUBMIT:

Submit Online – SLPC Member

Submit Online – Non-Member

Email* entries to:
[email protected]

*If submitting entries by email, attach cover sheet & poems as separate Word or PDF documents. Include a copy of your entry fee receipt or new/renewed membership receipt with your poems (if applicable).

Mail entries with entry fee and SASE to:
Saint Louis Poetry Center
Nash Poetry Contest
3301 Washington Ave. # 2D
St. Louis, MO 63103