• Skip to main content
  • Skip to header right navigation
  • Skip to site footer

POETRY submissions reopen JUNE 1.

Shō Poetry Journal

Established in 2002, revived in 2023

  • Read a Poem
  • Listen
    • Shō Number Eight
    • Shō Number Seven
    • Shō Number Six
    • Shō Number Five
    • Shō Number Four
    • Shō Number Three
    • Themed Playlists
      • Black History Month Playlist 2026
      • Native American Heritage Month (2025)
      • Filipino American History Month (2025)
      • Hispanic Heritage Month Playlist (2025)
      • Pride Month Playlist #2 (2025)
      • Asian/Pacific American Heritage Month Roundup (2025)
      • Black History Month Playlist (2025)
      • Women’s History Month Round Up (2025)
      • Pride Month Playlist #1 (2024)
  • Interviews
    • Nicholas Pierce Interviews Bobby Elliott
    • A Conversation with Arah Ko
    • A Conversation with Nathan Xavier Osorio
  • Buy
    • Forthcoming Issue
    • Current Issue
    • All Issues
  • About
    • Mission Statement
    • Our Story
    • Masthead
    • Accolades
    • Contact
  • Shō Family
    • Contributors
    • Contributors (by issue)
    • Nominations
    • Cover Art
    • Books from Shō No. 3 Poets
  • Submit
    • Submissions
    • The Sita Martin Prize
    • The Shō Poetry Prize
    • Prize Winners
  • Donate
  • Cart

Shō Poetry Journal is a nonprofit print journal emerging from a 20-year hibernation. We publish an eclectic range of poetry twice a year and publish audio features on a rolling basis. We strive to champion voices that have been historically underrepresented or overlooked. Browse a list of our contributors and follow us on Instagram for updates.

Learn More
"Hopi Leia" relief print by Hopi artist Sikuyva Dawavendewa

CURRENT ISSUE

Shō No. 8

winter 2025/2026

This issue features 72 poems by 48 poets: Sean Cho A. • Hiwot Adilow • Elisa Luna Ady • courtney alyce • Seth Amos • Jack B. Bedell • Shlagha Borah • Apollo Chastain • Lyn Li Che • Chen Chen • Stephanie Choi • Lindsay D’Andrea • Loisa Fenichell • Cheyenne C. Fletcher • Reuben Gelley Newman • Carlos Andrés Gómez • Iain Grinbergs • Shira Leah Haus • Sarah Jordan • Joan Naviyuk Kane • Aiman Tahir Khan • Sophie Klahr • Whitney Koo • Giljoon Lee • Elizabeth Loudon • Betsy Mitchell Martinez • Rebecca Morton • Lisa Mottolo • James O’Leary • Mollie O’Leary • william o’neal ii • Konstantinos Patrinos • Ngoc Pham • Jessica Nirvana Ram • Jemma Leigh Roe • Adrie Rose • Rukan Saif • SM Stubbs • Virgil Suárez • Will Summay • Tiezst “Tie” Taylor • Tianyi • Reed Turchi • Margaret Wack • Joey Wańczyk • Gwenyth Wheat • Ross White • Yan Zhang

Cover art: “Hopi Leia” by Sikuyva Dawavendewa.

Order now
A girl in a long white dress and a bird head mask sits on a bough under a full moon in a night forest landscape. Her hands are folded in her lap and her feet can't be seen. Text says: Shō Poetry Journal No. 7 Summer 2025.

PREVIOUS ISSUE

Shō No. 7

SUMMER 2025

This issue features 67 poems by 48 poets: Amber Adams • Emily Adams-Aucoin • Hannah Keziah Agustin • Ai Khanoum • Aldo Amparán • sterling-elizabeth arcadia • Michael Bazzett • Jared Beloff • Aaron Caycedo-Kimura • M. Cynthia Cheung • Christian J. Collier • Will Cordeiro • Crystal Cox • Sean Thomas Dougherty • Bobby Elliott • Danielle Shandiin Emerson • Clare Flanagan • Matthew Gellman • Kelly Gray • Saúl Hernández • Sara Hovda • Amorak Huey • Olivia Jacobson • Vasvi Kejriwal • Daniel Lurie • Jenna Martínez • Malia Maxwell • Rishona Michael • Tim Moder • Asheley Nova Navarro • Ohia, Ernest Chigaemezu • Kunjana Parashar • Paige Passantino • Nina C. Peláez • Sofia Rasic • Remi Recchia • Mallory Rodenberg • Brooke Sahni • Joan Jobe Smith • February Spikener • Jessica Q. Stark • Claire Taylor • J.K. Tsosie • Matthew Tuckner • Han VanderHart • Fred Voss • Nicholas Yingling • Aleks Zywicki

Cover art: “Interim” by Tanya Rastogi.

Order now

Online Features

  • Apr 29, 2026

    Mental Health Awareness Month Playlist

  • Apr 29, 2026

    Asian/Pacific American Heritage Month Playlist 2026

  • Apr 29, 2026

    Jewish American Heritage Month Playlist 2026

  • Apr 21, 2026

    Audio Feature: Susanna Lang

Next Page

Past Issues

Shō No. 6

Winter 2024/2025

Shō No. 6 features 57 poems by 40 poets.

Cover art: “In Gilded Walls” by Tanya Rastogi.

Purchase Now

Shō No. 5

Summer 2024

Shō No. 5 features 68 poems by 47 poets.

Cover art: “Lucy” by Harim Choi.

Purchase Now

Shō No. 4

Winter 2023/2024

Illustration of girl wearing a large deer head mask with antlers. She is clothed in a dark blue tshirt and pants and stands in a high desert landscape, holding plastic flowers. A ghostly girl’s head is placed beside her in the grass.

Shō No. 4 features 73 poems by 47 poets.

Cover art: “Girl with Deer Mask” by Harim Choi.

Purchase Now

Shō No. 3

Summer/Fall 2023

Shō No. 3 features 62 poems by 42 poets.

Cover art: “Grandfather Autumn” by Juanita Violini.

Purchase Now

Shō Poetry Journal on Instagram

shopoetryjournal

The next offering on our playlist for #mentalhealt The next offering on our playlist for #mentalhealthawarenessmonth is “Of Course I Tried” by Sophie Johnson, from Shō No. 5.

Sophie Johnson is a poet who once lived in Seattle with her kitten where she completed an MFA program. Her work appears occasionally.
Up next in our #aapiheritagemonth playlist is Aaro Up next in our #aapiheritagemonth playlist is Aaron Caycedo-Kimura reading his ekphrastic poem, ”Summer Evening” (after Edward Hopper).

Aaron Caycedo-Kimura is the author of Common Grace (Beacon Press, 2022) and Ubasute (Slapering Hol Press, 2021). His honors include a MacDowell Stanford Calderwood Fellowship, a Robert Pinsky Global Fellowship in Poetry, a Connecticut Office of the Arts Artist Fellowship Award, and a St. Botolph Club Foundation Emerging Artist Award in Literature. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Beloit Poetry Journal, RHINO, The Cincinnati Review, Consequence, Shenandoah, Gordon Square Review, Cave Wall, and elsewhere. Caycedo-Kimura earned his MFA from Boston University and teaches creative writing at University of Hartford and Trinity College.
Next up on our #aapiheritagemonth playlist is M. C Next up on our #aapiheritagemonth playlist is M. Cynthia Cheung reading “Common Disaster No. 3.”

This poem appears in Shō No. 7 and in Common Disaster (Acre Books, 2025), “a remarkable debut collection that chronicles the experience of anxiety and anguish in the face of COVID-19...Confronting not just the coronavirus but also war crimes and the death of loved ones, Cheung shows us that the pandemic is only one of many disasters we hold in common. In poems that look to both the past and future, she takes a stand against the extinction of self and memory, challenging the violence of erasure.”

About this Poem: “Common Disaster No. 3” is essentially fiction, except for the bit about growing up with tornados and the scientific factoids. I wrote it during the early phases of the genocide in Gaza, and even though I did not explicitly mention it, I can feel its shadow traveling through the negative white spaces of the poem.

M. Cynthia Cheung is the author of Common Disaster (Acre Books). Her poems can be found in AGNI, Gulf Coast,The Massachusetts Review, Pleiades, and swamp pink, among others. She is the recipient of the Robert H. Winner Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America and a fellowship from Idyllwild Arts Writer’s Week. She serves as a judge for Baylor College of Medicine’s annual Michael E. DeBakey Medical Student Poetry Award and as a poetry editor for Pulse: Voices from the Heart of Medicine. She practices internal medicine in Texas.
Listen to Alyssandra Tobin read “Egg on My Face” f Listen to Alyssandra Tobin read “Egg on My Face” from Shō No. 6 and our playlist for #mentalhealthawarenessmonth.

About this Poem: This poem came about when my Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder was particularly out-of-hand, and had me constantly spiraling over the existence of life after death. Don't we all want to believe there's something else, something After, both for ourselves and for our loved ones? My brain gets stuck on the not-knowing, and this poem was an attempt to document that distress.

Alyssandra Tobin is the author of the chapbook, Put Eyes on Me Not Like a Curse, published by Quarterly West in 2022. Her poetry appears in Poet Lore, New Ohio Review, Poetry Northwest, Grist, The Boiler, Fugue, The Pinch, and elsewhere. She lives in a "census-designated place" in Montana.
Follow Shō on Instagram

Publishing Stats

Since our revival issue was published in Summer 2023:

375

Poems Published

269

Total Poets Published

131

Audio Features Published

61

Prize Nominations

5

Poems chosen for inclusion in anthologies

Shō Poetry Journal


is a proud member of the Community of Literary Magazines and Presses.

Our Story
Masthead
Accolades
Donate
Contact
Submit
FAQ
Newsletter

  • Twitter
  • Instagram
  • Facebook
  • Bluesky

Copyright © 2026 · Shō Poetry Journal · All Rights Reserved

Privacy policy

We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you continue to use this site we will assume that you are happy with it.