NatureCulture® 2026 Poetry Award
Deadline: February 28, 2026
Submissions are now closed for 2026—-see this page this summer to see the winning poem, and for future deadlines. Thank you!
We are excited to have collected 117 poems from 47 poets! CMarie Fuhrman will be reviewing the poems and we will be letting everyone know the results summer 2026 (we’ll be in touch with a more specific date soon). The cash prize, based on the # of submissions, is $150. More information will be posted here as available.
Poetry Award Specifics
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: see this spot for submission period next year.
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Poems should be unpublished or self-published or published electronically only (that is, please don’t submit poems you’ve already had published by a publisher other than yourself in a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 2026 contest will be judged by CMarie Fuhrman.
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 We will also consider your unpublished manuscript for publication if you wish.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 your file with the name of your first poem, so your name is found below the title of your poem(s) on the interior only. Lis will create a file without your name so that the judge will not have that information during their judging process. All 1-3 poems should go into 1 file.
part 3) submit payment, $5 per poem (up to 3 poems) via paypal, or via check. Payment must arrive before the deadline for poems. Please make only 1 payment: 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