The 2025 SFPA Speculative Poetry Contest has opened for entries and is open to all poets, including non-SFPA-members. Prizes will be awarded for best unpublished poem in three categories:

• Dwarf (poems 1–10 lines [prose poems 0–100 words])
• Short (11–49 lines [prose poems 101–499 words])
• Long (50 lines and more [prose 500 words and up])

Line count does not include title or stanza breaks. All sub-genres of speculative poetry are allowed in any form. 

The deadline to enter is August 31.

Prizes in each category (Dwarf, Short, Long) will be $150 First Prize, $75 Second Prize, $25 Third Prize. Publication on the SFPA website for first through third places. There is an entry fee of $3 per poem.

The contest judge is Jeannine Hall Gailey, a poet with MS who served as the second Poet Laureate of Redmond, Washington. She’s the author of seven books of poetry: Becoming the Villainess, She Returns to the Floating World, Unexplained Fevers, The Robot Scientist’s Daughter, Field Guide to the End of the World, winner of the Moon City Press Book Prize and the SFPA’s Elgin Award and in 2023 Flare, and Corona from BOA Editions, a finalist for the Washington State Book Award.  She’s also the author of PR for Poets, a non-fiction guide to help poets publicize their books. Her work has been featured on The Writer’s Almanac, Verse Daily, and The Best Horror of the Year. She holds a B.S. in Biology and an M.A. in English from University of Cincinnati, and an MFA from Pacific University. Her poetry has appeared in journals like The American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, and Poetry; her personal essays have appeared on Salon.com and The Rumpus. Her web site is www.webbish6.com. Twitter, BlueSky and Instagram: @webbish6. 

The contest chair is James Machell, a British writer, born in London and matured in Seoul. He is a contributor to the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and the outreach manager for Utopia Science Fiction Magazine, for which he gets to interview his favourite writers and artists, including P. Djèlí Clark, Ken Liu, and Samuel R. Delany. He is also a judge for the Latin Programme Poetry Prize. Find him on X @JamesRJMachell or YouTube, where his channel’s name is Fell Purpose.

Entries are read blind. Unpublished poems only. Per SFPA’s Statement on AI, the submission of AI generated poetry is prohibited. Author retains rights, except that first through third place winners will be published on the SPFA website. Full guidelines here.

[Based on a press release.]