5th Annual Arthur Smith Poetry Prize (2025)

Deadlines and Prizes

• Accepting Submissions June 1 through September 1, 2025.
• Winners will be announced in January 2026
• Winning poet receives: a $1,000 advance; a standard royalty contract; and 10 copies of the published book.
• Finalists will also be considered for future publication.

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Competition Guidelines

• Simultaneous Submissions: Simultaneous submissions are acceptable. Please notify Madville Publishing immediately if your manuscript is accepted elsewhere.
• Eligibility: We will be happy to receive work by any poet writing in English. Poems published in print or online periodicals, anthologies, or chapbooks may be included, but the manuscript itself must be unpublished. Original work only; translations are ineligible.
• Format: Minimum of 48 pages. There is no maximum length, but we expect manuscripts not to be much more than 90 pages. Pages should be numbered with no more than one poem per page. Please include a title page with title only, a table of contents, and an acknowledgments page.
• Multiple Submissions: Submission of more than one manuscript is acceptable, but each manuscript must be submitted separately and include a separate entry fee.
• International Submissions: We accept international submissions.
•  Revisions: The winner will have the opportunity to revise the manuscript before publication. No revisions will be considered during the reading period.
• SUBMISSIONS SHOULD BE BLIND. PLEASE DO NOT INCLUDE AUTHOR NAME ANYWHERE ON THE MANUSCRIPT.
• Entry Fee: $25
• Deadline: September 1, 2025
• Winner will be announced January 2026.

Judges for 2025

Our head judge for this year is Jeff Hardin, a long-time friend of Arthur Smith.

Jeff Hardin is the author of seven collections of poetry, most recently Watermark,  A Clearing Space in the Middle of Being, No Other Kind of World, and Small Revolution. His work has been honored with the Nicholas Roerich Prize, the Donald Justice Poetry Prize, and the X. J. Kennedy Prize. Originally from Savannah, Tennessee, he has taught for almost three decades at Columbia State Community College in Columbia, Tennessee.

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Author Photo: A. J. Holmes

Preliminary Readers:

Before Jeff gets to read any manuscripts, however, they will be read and ranked by two amazing preliminary readers, Karen George and Brian Griffin.

Animal Psalm – THE WINNER
by DeAnna Stephens

Stephens’s work has appeared in numerous journals including Cherry Tree, Feminist Studies, and Louisiana Literature and has been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize. Additionally, her work has received the George Scarbrough Prize for Poetry (Mountain Heritage Literary Festival), the Sue Ellen Hudson Excellence in Writing Award from Tennessee Mountain Writers, the Tusculum Review Poetry Prize, and the Tennessee Williams Festival Poetry Prize. She is the author of a chapbook, Heliotaxis, (Main Street Rag), and was inducted into the East Tennessee Writers Hall of Fame in 2022. She currently serves as a reader for Rowayat and teaches writing, reading, and literature at Roane State Community College in Crossville, Tennessee.

No Lace Fronts in Iowa City – FIRST RUNNER UP by Meghan Malachi

Meghan B. Malachi is a Bronx-born, Chicago-based poet and educator. She is an Associate Editor at RHINO and the Programming Coordinator at the Guild Literary Complex. Meghan is the first-place winner of the Spoon River Poetry Review 2022 Editor’s Prize Contest and a 2022 Pushcart Prize Nominee. She has also been a finalist for the 2024 Hillary Tham Capital Collection as well as the 2024 Lois Cranston Memorial Prize. Her work is published in Milly Magazine, Rabid Oak, Juked, NECTAR Poetry, Writers with Attitude, and NewCity. Her first chapbook, The Autodidact, was published by Ethel Zine & Micro Press in 2020. She teaches rhetoric and writing at Harold Washington College and Saint Xavier University.

The Rest of the Shortlist

• Meuse is So Close to Muse 
  by Elinor Ann Walker
• On Men 
  by Esperanza Cintrón
• Sometimes I Forget How to Be a Person 
  by Peter Grandbois
• Titanfall by Noah Soltau

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The Longlist

• What the Light Was Like by Sara Dudo
• Animal Psalm by DeAnna Stephens
• Causa Sui by Elizabeth Knapp
• Meuse is So Close to Muse by Elinor Ann Walker
• No Lace Fronts in Iowa City by Meghan Malachi
• Notes on Endings by Clare Banks
• On Men by Esperanza Cintrón
• Sometimes I Forget How to Be a Person by Peter Grandbois
• The 574 Calling Area’s Been Hit By the Blast by David Dodd Lee
• Titanfall by Noah Soltau