Best New Poets Open Competition

Best New Poets, an annual anthology of 50 emerging writers, is now accepting submissions for its open competition. See www.bestnewpoets.org for details. Submission deadline is midnight, June 1, 2009.

Entering poets cannot have published a book-length poetry collection by November 2009 (chapbooks do not affect your eligibility). Full eligibility requirements posted here. Entry fee: $3.50. Each entry can contain two poems. Selected poets receive five copies of the print anthology. This year's guest editor is Kim Addonizio.

In 2009, we're taking entries through ManuscriptHub. To create your submission:

1. Save your poems to new files that do not have your name or contact info in the text/header or in the file names. Save the files as either .rtf, .doc, .txt, or .pdf documents. Our system does not yet accept MS Word’s .docx file format, so use the “save as” feature to save to one of the above formats.

2. Then, go to http://www.manuscripthub.com and either login or create a new account.

3. Click on the blue icon that says “Your Manuscripts”

4. Click on the “Add a New Manuscript” link.

5. Click on the gray “Browse” button and attach the file with your poem in it. (This button may read “Attach” on some Web browsers.) Enter the title of your poem and click the gray “Upload” button. Repeat for your second poem. However, this does not complete your submission; you still need to direct it to our competition.

6. To do so, click on the blue “Submit Work” icon at the top of the screen.

7. Scroll down and click on the link that says “Best New Poets 2009”

8. Use the first drop down menu to select one of the manuscripts you just uploaded. Use the second drop down to select the other. Then click “Submit.” This step takes a little while to run … be patient.

9. Verify your submission and click “pay now” to go to the University of Virginia credit card gateway.

10. After paying, you can click on the blue “Submission Status” icon to double-check that your submission went through. It should be in an “Open” status. You can use this icon to check back and see if the work has been read. We plan to announce full results by the end of July 2009 or early August.