Ars Poetica Prize

The Riddled with Arrows
Ars Poetica Prize

for exceptional poetry about poetry

The 2022 Ars Poetica Prize is now CLOSED. We will respond to all pending contest submissions by early August. Winners and finalists will be announced in our upcoming summer issue. 

First Place: $50 USD
Second Place: $25 USD
Third Place: $10 USD

All winners and one entrant selected by lottery will also receive a signed copy of JUBILEE, a novel by critically-acclaimed author and poeta Jennifer Givhan(International winners will receive an e-copy and a signed note from the author.)

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“More like a raffle”: Riddled with Arrows Statement on fundraising and transparency

Let’s be clear about one thing. It’s not your job to keep Riddled with Arrows (or any other journal) financially afloat. We plan to keep publishing in one form or another for the foreseeable future, so long as the world doesn’t end. This project is and always will be a labor of love. 

Why support Riddled with Arrows?

Riddled with Arrows does not charge fees for general submissions. In top form, that’s at least 4 issues a year. We don’t use Submittable or any other submission service, so we have no excessive costs to leverage from hopeful writers. We don’t charge to expedite submissions, because we’re already one of the fastest-responding markets out there.

Riddled with Arrows pays authors, poets, essayists, and visual artists for their work, with preferences for new and under-published writers. We can’t pay a lot, certainly not top-tier, but we ante up more than “exposure” and gratitude. We know your work has worth.

We get by with a little help from our friends. Riddled with Arrows runs two fundraising events a year: “Feed the Writers”, a crowd-funding campaign at the Winter Solstice, and the Ars Poetica Prize summer contest. We call it a contest but really it’s more like a raffle with poems. Every penny goes back into the till to pay future writers. 

We pay it forward. Thanks to proceeds from the 2022 Ars Poetica Prize and private donations, we have enough in our inkwell to fund one more issue of Riddled with Arrows in 2022. How cool is that???