The Fare Forward

Poetry Competition

The 2024 Fare Forward Poetry Competition was open for submissions from May 15 to July 15, 2024 and is now closed.

Congratulations to our 2023 winners:

First Place: “I must decrease,” by Nadine Ellsworth-Moran
Second: “Immram (A Rowing Out)” by Colm O’Shea
Third: “Moved by that Miracle, Beauty” by Andrew Calis
Honorable Mentions:
“Chaos Theory” by Sally Thomas
“But the Breath of the Spirit, c. 1967” by Mia Schilling Grogan

Fare Forward: A Christian Review of Ideas is excited to host its fourth annual poetry competition in anticipation of our annual poetry issue. Although Fare Forward is a journal edited and primarily written by Christians, we are not seeking exclusively religious or spiritual poetry. We are drawn to poems that engage with the complexity of the human experience, whether or not that includes a religious element. The most important criterion, however, is poetic excellence. We are seeking well-crafted poems with strong imagery, exciting language, and attention to sound. We welcome all styles, from formal verse to the experimental and everything in between.

Submission

Details

THE COMPETITION IS CLOSED.
It ran from May 15 to July 15, 2024.

Prizes:

1st Place — $300 and publication

2nd Place — $150 and publication

3rd Place — $100 and publication

2 Honorable Mentions$75 and publication

The competition opened on May 15, 2024, on Fare Forward’s website. The deadline for contest submissions was July 15, 2024, at 11:59 PM Eastern Standard Time.

Selection Process:

Whitney Rio-Ross, Fare Forward’s poetry editor, will select 25 poems as semifinalists. At that point, the other editors will cast votes to choose 15 poems as finalists. The final judge, Nadine Ellsworth-Moran, will choose the winners and honorable mentions from those finalists.

Winners and honorable mentions will be announced August 30, 2024. The poems will be published in Fare Forward’s poetry issue.

Guidelines:

  • Entrants may include up to 3 poems in a single submission with a $10.00 entry fee. Multiple submissions are allowed with a $10.00 entry fee per additional submission.
  • Submissions must be made online by emailing poems to fareforwardjournal@gmail.com and paying the entry fee through your PayPal account to fareforwardjournal@gmail.com. Do NOT submit the payment through the PayPal widget on this website; it is set up for magazine subscriptions and will automatically charge you $40.
  • No poem may exceed 40 lines, beginning with the first line of text below the title.
  • All submissions must be previously unpublished.
  • Submit your poems in separate documents. Please submit each poem as a Microsoft Word document or PDF.
  • This is a blind competition. Do not include your name anywhere on your submission document or in the title. Submissions that include identifying information in the submission document or in the document’s title will be immediately disqualified. Use a poem’s title as the title of its Word or PDF file.
  • Simultaneous submissions are allowed, but you must withdraw your poem immediately if it is selected for publication elsewhere.
  • Previous contributors and poetry competition finalists (including 2nd and 3rd place) are welcome to submit to the competition.
  • Close friends or recent students of poetry editor Whitney Rio-Ross or the final judge may not enter the competition. Recent students include students who have taken a semester-long or year-long course with either judge in the last three years.
  • All decisions made by the judges regarding the winners are final. No contest entry fees will be returned.
  • By submitting, you are agreeing to all contest rules.

If you have any questions about the competition or guidelines, email us at fareforwardjournal@gmail.com.

About the 2024 Final Judge

Nadine Ellsworth-Moran lives in Georgia where she serves full time in ministry. She has a passion for writing and is fascinated by the stories of the modern South unfolding all around her and seeks to bring everyone into conversation around a common table. Her essays and poems have appeared in Interpretation, Ekstasis, Thimble, Emrys, Structo, Kakalak, and Sonic Boom, among others.  She lives with her husband and three unrepentant cats. Her poem “I must decrease” was the first-place winner of the 2023 Fare Forward Poetry Competition.