Read a back issue

Support the BPJ this year and receive a special piece of our history--a vintage issue from our extensive archive, which reaches back over 70 years. When you donate this year, you’ll not only be supporting our future poets and poems, you’ll also be able to connect with the poets and editors of our past, who have kept the BPJ’s commitment to “poetry that matters” alive across the decades.

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We’re so pleased to introduce a brand new feature on BPJ.org. In BPJ Poets in Conversation we’ll talk with contributors and other members of the BPJ family about process, community and what sustains their creative life. We’re kicking it off with Jam Kraprayoon, who spoke with us about his poem Selipar, featured in our latest issue.

The editors of the Beloit Poetry Journal are pleased to accept entries for 2022 Chad Walsh Chapbook Series. The series was established in 2017, with the support of the Alison W. Sackett Trust, in honor of former editor Chad Walsh. 

The poet whose manuscript is selected for the series will receive $2,500 and 50 copies of the chapbook and in-depth editorial consultation. The winning chapbook will be distributed to every BPJ subscriber and sold separately, in a print run of approximately 1,500. Previous titles in the series include Jacques J. Rancourt's In the Time of PrEP, Christine Gosnay's The Wanderer and Victoria C. Flanagan's Glossary of Unsaid Terms.

We will remain open for submissions through November 30. For more details, see our guidelines.

Of Taylor Byas’s poem, Natasha Trethewey writes, “'Tell It Like a Movie | Rewind' is a stunning poem that unfolds like a near palindrome, the repetition of images and phrases drawing the action into sharp focus. Through its cinematic lens—the camera’s eye moving in and out of tight angles—a traumatic scene is rendered in harrowing detail, the tension palpable, heightening, and powerfully felt."

We’re grateful to the Adrienne Rich Literary Trust and to all who submitted poems for this year’s contest.

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Our new issue is a tribute to editor, poet, mentor and friend Lee Sharkey. It features work by O-Jeremiah Agbaakin, Deborah Allbritain, Amy Bagwell, Elena Karina Byrne, Kristen Case, William Fargason, Jen Stewart Fueston, Janice N. Harrington, Carolyn Hembree, K. Henderson, Carolina Hotchandani, Hope Jordan, Polchate (Jam) Kraprayoon, Cate Lycurgus, Caleb Nolen, Chisom Okafor, Derek Otsuji, Jacques J. Rancourt, Heidi Seaborn, Tim Seibles, Lee Sharkey, Bradley R. Strahan, Raisa Tolchinsky, Eric Tran and Jim Whiteside.

Cover image by Peter Ralston.

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We stand with the people and with the many magazines and presses who have signed on to this statement written by the staff of The Offing, condemning anti-Blackness in publishing and the world, affirming the rights and righteousness of protestors, and calling on each of us to unlearn oppression.