Cover 2 0

Fall/Winter 2026

At Common Ground Review, we seek to publish well crafted poems, short stories and creative nonfiction that surprise and illuminate, amuse, inform, and/or challenge--not always all at once. CGR comes out twice a year (except recently, while we adjusted to the on-line format) and accepts submissions from September to May 1: we hold our poetry contest with a guest judge once a year, opening up for entries in January and closing it in mid-March.

Read Issue

2026 Contest

April 15, 2026
$500 First Prize
$200 Second Prize
$100 Third Prize
Lisa Hase Jackson Headshot

We are delighted to announce that Lisa Hase-Jackson will be our 2026 Annual Poetry Contest Judge.

Lisa Hase-Jackson’s second collection of poetry, Insomnia in Another Town (Clemson University Press 2024), was selected by poet Clare Batemen for the 2024 Converse University MFA Alumni Book Prize and was awarded the 2024 Nelson Poetry Book Prize by the Kansas Authors Club. Her debut collection of poetry, Flint and Fire (Word Works) was selected by Pulitzer prize-winning poet Jericho Brown for the 2019 Hilary Tham Capital Collection Series. She has been awarded writing residency fellowships from Vermont Studio Center and the Kimmel Harding-Nelson Center for the Arts. Her work has recently appeared in the anthologies The Crafty Poet and Ice on a Hot Stove as well as in such literary journals as The Cimarron Review, Sugar House Review, Vox Populi, and Verse Daily.

$15.00
Contest Submission Guidelines
Submissions

2025 Poetry Contest Winners

ABOUT THIS YEAR'S JUDGE:

Donald Revell is the author of fifteen collections of poetry, most recently Canandaigua, six volumes of translations from the French, and three volumes of critical writings, including Essay: A Critical Memoir. A former Fellow of the Ingram Merrill and Guggenheim Foundations, he is the winner of the PEN USA Translation Award and two-time winner of the PEN USA Award for Poetry, and he has twice been awarded Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Honorable Mention

(in no particular order):
Katharyn Howd Machan
  • How Spiders Travel
Read Issue

 

"This poem beautifully coaxes Vision out of Fact, gently but powerfully proposing an ethical imperative that turns out to be a spiritual imperative as well." --Donald Revell

 

"In a way that truly reminds me of Dickinson, this poem converts matters of mortality into a peep into eternity. Very quietly, very subtly, disappointment acquires a nimbus of courage." --Donald Revell

 

"I am enthralled by the syllabic magic of this poem, by the way the poet adventures blank verse measures with a natural authority and tact. This poem revels in the juxtapositions of abstraction with plain speaking in a way that can be downright Shakespearian!" --Donald Revell