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.

The Spring 2020 issue features new work by Michael Bazzett, Tova Benjamin, Erica Bodwell, Susanna Brougham, Lauren Camp, Aaron Caycedo-Kimura, Hedgie Choi, Caleb Curtiss, Carol Ann Davis, Lisa Furmanski, Jenn Givhan, Lisa Beech Hartz, Athena Kildegaard, Elaine Mintzer, Jefferson Navicky, Mark Neely, Linnea Nelson, Dawn Potter, Anna V. Q. Ross, Corinna McClanahan Schroeder, Jeffrey Schwaner, Lauren Shapiro, Matthew Buckley Smith, Eleanor Stanford, Lolita Stewart-White, Adam Tavel, Claire Wahmanholm, David Winter, and Lauren Yates. Also, Dawn Potter reviews books by Denise Bergman and Stacy R. Nigliazzo.

Cover image by Amy Bennett.

In If the House, published in October by the University of Wisconsin Press, Molly Spencer makes clear how a home and its environs can serve as rich ground to explore the inner lives and intimacies of the people who dwell there. These poems give readers a chance to consider how our own lives have been molded by where we’ve planted ourselves and who or what surrounds us. 

The Fall 2019 issue includes “When It Rains in Gaza,” selected by Patricia Smith as the winner of this year’s Adrienne Rich Award, along with poems by finalists  Hillery Stone and  Jeff Tigchelaar and semifinalists Micah Bournes, K. Avvirin Gray, Éireann Lorsung, and Anna V. Q. Ross. Also featured is new work by Threa Almontaser, Daniel Arias-Gómez, Rebecca Aronson, Leila Chatti, George David Clark, Rebecca Cross, Allison Funk, Janlori Goldman, Eamon Grennan, J. Bailey Hutchinson, Donald Levering, Carolyn Oliver, Doug Ramspeck, Elizabeth Lindsey Rogers, Seth Simons, Jennifer Sperry Steinorth, Gretchen Stengel, Jan Verberkmoes, G. C. Waldrep, Laura Paul Watson, and Jonathan Weinert.

Cover image by Holly Farrell.

The editors of the Beloit Poetry Journal are delighted to announce that final judge Patricia Smith has chosen Philip Metres’ “When It Rains in Gaza” as the winner of the 2019 Adrienne Rich Award for Poetry. Philip Metres has written ten books, including Sand Opera (2015), The Sound of Listening: Poetry as Refuge and Resistance (2018), and the forthcoming Shrapnel Maps (2020). We’re grateful to the Adrienne Rich Literary Trust and to all who submitted poems for this year’s contest. Watch our website for details about the 2020 award.