Brittingham/Pollak Deadline: September 15, 2025
Translation Prize Deadline: November 8, 2025
Submissions to the Wisconsin Poetry Series are now open! Any poet with an original, full-length collection is eligible for the 41st annual Brittingham and Felix Pollak Prizes in Poetry, judged by Airea D. Matthews. Each manuscript, accompanied by a $28 reading fee, will be considered for both prizes. Each winner will receive $1,500 and publication through the University of Wisconsin Press. At least three additional applicants will also be offered publication.
For the fourth time this year, we are also accepting submissions to the Wisconsin Prize for Poetry in Translation, judged by Daniel Borzutzky and awarding $1,500 plus publication. Translators or original authors are invited to submit a full-length collection of poetry translated into English. Applicants to the translation prize will be asked to confirm they have permission for English translation and publication of the work, by its author(s) and the executor(s) of any active copyright(s). Submissions must be accompanied by a $28 reading fee.
Manuscript Requirements:
- For the Brittingham & Felix Pollak Prizes, the author's name and contact info should not appear anywhere on the document. Please assemble a single pdf including a title page, a table of contents, the manuscript poems, and (optionally) an acknowledgments page listing any magazines or journals where the submitted poems may have first appeared. Manuscripts should be 50 to 90 pages in length on 8.5" x 11" pdf pages.
- For the Wisconsin Prize for Poetry in Translation, the name of the translator and original author should appear on the title page of the document. Please assemble a single pdf including a title/author page, a table of contents, the manuscript poems, 50-to-250-word bios for each original author and translator, a project statement up to 500 words in length, and (optionally) an acknowledgments page listing any magazines or journals where the submitted translations may have first appeared. Manuscripts must include each poem in both its original language and in English translation, comprising 75 to 150 total pages in length, on 8.5" x 11" pdf pages.
This Year's Judges:
Airea D. Matthews is the author of two prizewinning poetry collections: Simulacra (2017), which received the Yale Series of Younger Poets Award, and Bread and Circus (2023), a memoir in verse contending with the realities of class and race, which was awarded the 2024 LA Times Book Prize in Poetry. Matthews is the recipient of a 2024 Guggenheim Fellowship, a 2022 Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship, a 2020 Pew Fellowship, and the 2017 Margaret Walker For My People award. In 2016, she received both the Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award and the Louis Untermeyer Scholarship from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. Her work has appeared in Harper’s Bazaar, POETRY, Poetry Ireland, The New York Times, Georgia Review, Callaloo, Gulf Coast, Best American Poetry, Tin House, Los Angeles Review of Books, Harvard Review, and elsewhere. Matthews is an associate professor and co-chair of the creative writing department at Bryn Mawr College.
Daniel Borzutzky is a poet and Spanish-language translator from Chicago. His most recent books are The Murmuring Grief of the Americas (2024), and Written After a Massacre in the Year 2018 (2021). His 2016 collection, The Performance of Becoming Human, received the National Book Award. Lake Michigan (2018) was a finalist for the Griffin International Poetry Prize. His most recent translations are Cecilia Vicuña’s The Deer Book (2024); and Paula Ilabaca Nuñez’s The Loose Pearl (2022), winner of the PEN Award for Poetry in Translation. His translation of Galo Ghigliotto's Valdivia received the American Literary Translator’s Association’s 2017 National Translation Award, and he has also translated collections by Raúl Zurita, and Jaime Luis Huenún. He teaches in English and Latin American and Latino Studies at the University of Illinois Chicago.
Please upload an original poetry manuscript in pdf format, no fewer than 50 and no more than 90 pages in length. Your manuscript should be formatted as specified below. Please be sure your name and contact information DO NOT APPEAR anywhere in the manuscript. You will be asked to pay a $28 entry fee, by credit card.
All submissions will be considered for both the Brittingham Prize in Poetry and the Felix Pollak Prize in Poetry. Winners will be announced no later than February 15, 2026, and will receive $1,500 each shortly thereafter. Winning manuscripts will be published in the late winter or spring of 2027. Four additional manuscripts will also be selected for publication by UW Press, as part of the Wisconsin Poetry Series.
Your manuscript should include the following:
- A simple title page, which should not include the name of the author.
- A table of contents, with accurate page numbers indicated.
- 50 to 90 pages of poetry, with numbered pages.
- An acknowledgments page (optional, if any of the poems have appeared previously in journals or magazines).
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Please upload a book-length collection of poetry translated into English, in pdf format. The translations submitted must be previously unpublished in book form. The manuscript must include each poem in its original language, as well as in translation, and should be no fewer than 75 and no more than 250 pages in length.
As part of your application, you will be asked to confirm that permission has been granted to the translator(s) of this book for English translation and publication of the original text, by its original author(s) and the executor(s) of any active copyright(s). Alternately, you may declare that the translator(s) hold the rights to the translations because the original text is in the public domain.
Your manuscript should be formatted as specified below. Please be sure both the name of the translator(s) and the original author(s) appear on the title page of the manuscript. You will be asked to pay a $28 entry fee, by credit card.
The winner will be announced no later than February 15, 2026, receiving $1,500 shortly thereafter. The winning manuscript will be published in the spring of 2027. Manuscripts that do not win the prize may still be considered for publication and inclusion in the Wisconsin Poetry Series.
Your manuscript should include the following:
- A simple title page, which should include the names of the original author(s) and translator(s).
- A table of contents, with accurate page numbers indicated.
- 75 to 250 pages of poetry (including both the poems in their original language, and in English translation), with numbered pages.
- A biography page, including 50-to-250-word bios for each author and translator.
- A book description that addresses the project's historical, cultural, and/or artistic significance.
- An acknowledgments page (optional, if any of the poems have appeared previously in journals or magazines).