Highland Park Poetry Home Page

A Celebration of Words

IN THE MUSES' GALLERY - Trees

New Writing Opportunities

2021 POETRY CHALLENGE - Amateurs, semi-professionals, professionals and students of all ages are invited to submit original poetry in response to the 2021 Poetry Challenge. Deadline is Friday, January 29, 2021. Download Submission Guidelines and Entry Form. This year Highland Park Poetry challenges poets to write a response to one of the following prompts:

Fruits and Vegetables (the United Nations has declared 2021 the year of Fruits & Vegetables; ok to concentrate on one)
Common Threads
Sweetelle (description of this poetic form by Allison Joseph included with submission guidelines)

POETRY BOOK REVIEWS - Seeking poets with books to review (prefer publication within 16 months) as well as poets interested in writing reviews. Highland Park Poetry is now accepting reviews of poetry books for publication on our website and Facebook. For information, contact jennifer@highlandparkpoetry.org.

SEEKING SUBMISSIONS for OUR DAILY POEM POSTS. Send up to 5 poems about the coronavirus pandemic, sheltering-in-place, current events or poems that inspire calm, endurance and peace to jennifer@highlandparkpoetry.org. Shorter poems preferred. No deadline. Previously published okay with acknowledgment of first publication.

Click here to download 2021 Poetry Challenge Submission Guidelines & Entry Form

Check out the 27th Annual Illinois State Poetry Society Contest!

Highland Park Poetry sponsors 1 of 13 possible contests. Ours asks poets to create a huitain which is 8 lines rhymed (ababbcbc), with 8 - 10 syllables per lines. **Cash prizes**

Submission period is between September 1 - October 31, 2020. Download ISPS Contest flyer for details.

Click here to download contest flyer

Check out our newest poetry book reviews

for October 2020

dancing a dizzy holiness

By Larry Janowski

After Hours Press, 2019

91 Pages

ISBN: 978-0-578-56655-9

Review by Ed Werstein

AND

Body Falling, Sunday Morning

By Susana H. Case

Milk and Cake Press, 2019

34 Pages

ISBN: 978-1-7341066-0-2

Review by Joseph Zaccardi

Check out our newest poetry book reviews

for October 2020

Wild Fruition: Sonnets, Spells, and Other Incantations

By Christine Swanberg

Puddin'head Press, 2017

98 Pages

ISBN: 978-0981975634

Review by Barbara Eaton

AND

Still Life With God

By Cynthia Atkins

St Julian Press, 2020

112 Pages

ISBN-13: 978-1733023306

Review by Tina Cole

The coronavirus crisis is still with us. The future remains uncertain. No live-in person events scheduled at this time.

Visit our "Schedule of Events" tab to read poems about the virus, poems about calm or perseverance. Thank you to our September 2020 contributors to this special section:

Shilpa Bahadur, Maureen Brustkern, Cheryl Caesar, Susan Spaeth Cherry, Monica Cardestam, Nancy Cook, Amelia Cotter, Gail Denham, JK Durick, Daniel J. Fitzgerald, Phil Flott, Janea D. Harris, Nancy Heggem, Julie Isaacson, Carol Spielman Lezak, Tricia Knoll, Gert Knop, William Marr, Joan McNerney, Khalid Mukhtar, Marilyn Peretti, Ann Privateer, Barbara Robinette, Sarah Ray Schwarcz, Marjorie Skelly, Alice Solovy, Lynn White, Court Williams, and Martin Willits Jr.

We are posting a poem daily on Facebook. Be sure to like Highland Park Poetry!

Also, if you have a poem to share, please email to jennifer@highlandparkpoetry.org.

Highland Park Poetry congratulates our nominees for Sundress Publications’ Best of the Net Anthology from our 2019/20 Fall/Winter Muses’ Gallery (Water) and 2020 Poetry Challenge: