2025 Rattle Chapbook Prize

2025 Rattle Chapbook Prize is now open for entries!

2025 Rattle Chapbook Prize : The 2025 Rattle Chapbook Prize, organized by the Rattle, an American poetry magazine has been recently opened for entries inviting writers worldwide to participate with they best poems.

➜ Short description

The 2025 Rattle Chapbook Prize, organized by the Rattle, an American poetry magazine has been recently opened for entries inviting writers worldwide to participate with they best poems.

Rattle’s mission is to promote the practice of poetry. We’ve always loved chapbooks for their brevity and intensity. At a few dozen pages, a great chapbook is the perfect reading experience for the 21st century - not too long, not too short: They’re the Goldilocks zone of the poetry world. We feel that poetry lost its way in the 20th century, to the point that mainstream readers have forgotten how moving language alone can be. As a result, most people learn to find their feelings in music, movies, and novels, while poetry languishes on its lone shelf in the bookstores, waiting only for the occasional cameo at a university workshop.

But it shouldn’t take a scholar to be moved by the written word - great literature has something to offer everyone. All our lives are compelling, full of joys and burdens and profound experiences we should be sharing - and poetry is the most intimate way to share it. When you read a poem, you become the medium; the poet speaks in your voice, paints the canvas of your inner eye. The winners will be announced on April 15th.

➜ Submission requirements:

➜ Manuscripts may be 15 – 30 pages of poems (not including front - or back-matter), with any reasonable fonts or font sizes (12 pt, etc.).

➜ poems must be written primarily in English

➜ Individual poems may be previously published in any format, but the manuscript as a whole must be unpublished as a collection.

➜ Who may enter?

The competition is open to writers worldwide.

➜ Prize:

Three winners, judged by the editors of Rattle in an anonymized review, will receive $5,000 and 500 author copies of their chapbook, which will also be distributed to all of Rattle’s 7,000+ subscribers along with a future issue of the magazine. At least one of the winners will be a poet who has never published a full-length collection of poetry (48 pages or more) prior to 2024.

➜ Entry fees:

The $30 entry fee is a one-year subscription to Rattle (or a one-year extension for subscribers).