NatureCulture® 2026 Poetry Award

Deadline: February 28, 2026

NatureCulture® announces its first poetry award. This award is for place-based and ecopoetry of all kinds. If your poetry is about Nature, humans’ membership as part of Nature, place, love of land, animism of the natural world, or the history, present, or future of the natural world, then please consider submitting to this contest.

Details:

• Submission period for the award: December 25, 2025 through February 28, 2026.

• Submission fee is $5 per poem.

• You may enter up to 3 poems.

• Poems should be unpublished or self-published or published electronically only (that is, please don’t submit poems you’ve already had published by a publisher other than yourself in a printed book, including any NatureCulture® books).

• The contest will be judged by a leading Writing the Land® poet, to be announced.

• The amount of the monetary prize is calculated by dividing the funds collected into 4 equal parts: 1) 1 portion for future award fund, 2) 1 portion for the judge, 3) 1 portion for the awardee of the prize, and 4) 1 portion for NatureCulture for managing the prize and expenses such as advertising, and boring stuff like bank fees. We don’t know how much this will be since 2026 is the first year of the prize. Other aspects of the prize: besides whatever money may come, bragging rights and some stickers announcing you were chosen for the award that you can stick onto your books, or if you’d rather we can make you other media with which to share the news. And of course we will proudly display your poem on the NatureCulture® website. We will also consider your unpublished manuscript for publication if you wish.

• To submit poems, please follow this 3-part process by the deadline of February 28, 2026:

  • part 1) fill out this form

  • part 2) email your poem to Lis at Annondras@gmail.com Poems should be in a word or pages document, not a .pdf. Please name the file only with the name of your poem, so that your name only appears once, just under the title of your poem. Lis will create a file without your name so that the judge will not have that information during their judging process.

  • part 3) submit payment, $5 per poem (up to 3 poems) via paypal: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/natureculture

• The prize will be awarded Summer 2026

• Thank you, and good luck with your submission! If you still have questions, please email Lis at AnnOndras@gmail.com