2026 Chapbook Poetry Contest
Aimee Nezhukumatathil says about Laura’s chapbook Common Name:
“These poems keep turning toward the world—toward the child’s voice, the river’s body, the small, bright pop of a flower—and in that turning, they make a place where wonder and worry can stand side by side without shame. They remind us that close attention is its own kind of devotion, that to name what is fragile, fleeting, and alive means to love it more fully.”
Congratulations to Laura Candler, the 2026 Chapbook Competition Winner
Watch the recording of Laura’s reading and her conversation with 2026 Chapbook judge, Aimee Nezhukumatathil.
Pre-orders are now open for Laura’s chapbook, visit our partner’s website—Toad Hall Editions, and pre-order your copy now. Books will ship in September.
Common Name, by Laura Candler, is a collection of lyric poems exploring motherhood, identity, and the greater than human world. Candler devotes poems to single species like the Tennessee Cave Salamander and American Persimmon, while also marveling at the humorous language of her children and their fleeting youth. She moves between handmade quilts to the backyard flower garden to the ecosystem of the South Cumberland Plateau, all with an ear toward what sparks wonder. With seriousness and play, tenderness and urgency, this collection interrogates what it means to both assert and accept a sense of self during a time of personal and ecological transformation.
Our Two Honorable Mentions
Hilary McDaniel
The Hoosier Sonnets for James Dean
“I love how the language in these poems keeps reaching—toward stars, toward memory—refusing to let even the smallest life or loss go unnamed.”
—Aimee Nezhukumatathil
Donna Spruijt-Metz
The Awful Hours
“These poems hold grief with a kind of unflinching tenderness, letting the ordinary world—eggs, clocks, drawers, dogs—become a place where love keeps speaking after loss.”
—Aimee Nezhukumatathil
We also want to honor our 8 other contest finalists:
Liz Ahl - This Route Includes a Ferry
Carol Bachofner - A Place for What’s Missing
Jenny Isaacs - Latin Names
Gus Peterson - Back Toward Luminescence
Hayden Saunier - News from the Neighborhood
Sarah Schweig - The Failures of Love
Veronica Tucker - North of Everything I Carried
Ziyi Yan - The Wasteland
And a huge thank you to all of you who submitted your chapbooks for this contest. We read 250 chapbooks containing the most creative and amazing writing—you gave our jurors food for lengthy and thoughtful deliberations. Our contest judge, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, selected one winner and two honorable mentions from among our eleven finalists.
Watch the video of the 10 finalisits reading from the work they submitted.
We will be announcing the winner and finalists of the 2026 Chapbook Poetry Contest, May 16, 2026
This year The Poets Corner teamed up again with Toad Hall Editions and the Camden Festival of Poetry to offer our 2026 Chapbook Contest.
Submissions were open January 2 -February 28, 2026—with a submission cap of 250.
“The word poet means to make… You don’t have to necessarily make with words, you can make a pie, you can make a sketch. I feel like if you are actually intentional about making things in your life… you’re making a little bit more beauty in the world.”
This year’s contest judge was NYT best-selling nature writer, poet and essayist Aimee Nezhukumatathil. Aimee is the author of four books of poetry, most recently Night Owl, published this spring by ECCO press. Her book Oceanic, won the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Award in poetry. Other awards for her writing include fellowships and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, Mississippi Arts Commission, and MacDowell. Nezhukumatathil is poetry editor of Orion and her writing has appeared in Poetry, The New York Times Magazine, ESPN, and Tin House.
The winner was announced on Saturday, May 16th at the Camden Festival of Poetry where Aimee Nezhukumatathil was our keynote speaker.
The winner received a $1,000 prize.
Two additional chapbooks were awarded Honorable Mentions and a prize of $250.
The winning chapbook will be designed, printed and published by Toad Hall Editions and the author will receive 20 copies of the printed edition.
A reading with the contest winner is planned for The Poets Corner on Sunday, June 7th, with an introduction by Aimee Nezhukumatathil.
Honorable Mentions and the remaining finalists will be invited to read live on The Poets Corner on Zoom on July 12, 2026.
There is an opportunity for feedback on your chapbook from one of our established reading poet/editors after the contest selections have been made for an additional fee of $75.00. If interested, you may contact thepoetscornermaine@gmail.com.
2024 Winner
Previous Chapbook Contest Winners
2022 Winner
