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POETRY submissions reopen JUNE 1.

Shō Poetry Journal

Established in 2002, revived in 2023

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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.

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"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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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Shō No. 5

Summer 2024

Shō No. 5 features 68 poems by 47 poets.

Cover art: “Lucy” by Harim Choi.

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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.

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Shō No. 3

Summer/Fall 2023

Shō No. 3 features 62 poems by 42 poets.

Cover art: “Grandfather Autumn” by Juanita Violini.

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Shō Poetry Journal on Instagram

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Listen to Aileen Bassis read “Not Knowing.” This p Listen to Aileen Bassis read “Not Knowing.” This poem was published in Shō No. 5 and appears in “Among Sinners and Saints” (Shanti Arts, 2026). 

About this Poem: This is a memory poem of a turbulent time when I was trying to figure out what I wanted out of life and how to follow my dreams of being an artist. This poem revolves around relationships, the "you" in the poem points to someone who is sharing this memory and traveling with me in that journey. Central to the poem is the marriage of Luis and Jane, a warning of the dangers of relationships gone wrong and the test of parenthood.

Aileen Bassis is a visual artist and poet in New York City. She’s the author of two chapbooks, The Other Side of the Mirror (Unlikely Books)  and Advice for Travelers and other poems (Black Sunflowers Press), and of the full-length collection Among Sinners and Saints (Shanti Arts, 2026). She was awarded two poetry residencies to the Atlantic Center for the Arts, a fellowship in poetry to Yaddo Foundation, grants in literature from NYState Council on the Arts, and the Queens Arts Fund.
Shō No. 8 features two poems by Sean Cho. A. Liste Shō No. 8 features two poems by Sean Cho. A. Listen to him read ”Thesis Proof 9.5.”

About this Poem: This poem was a “sonnet” in its original form. I was interested in memory as a form of revision. So I'd hurriedly write a sonnet before work each morning, then memorize as much of it as I could, then I'd dramatically throw the poem away, and go to work all day. When I got back home, I wrote down what I remembered of the poem.

Sean Cho A. is a writer living in the southern united states.
Listen to Olivia Jacobson read “We Stick Out In th Listen to Olivia Jacobson read “We Stick Out In the Suburbs” from Shō No. 7 and our playlist for #mentalhealthawarenessmonth.

About this Poem: When I wrote this poem I was thinking of Grant Woods’ painting American Gothic—I was thinking of what it meant to be warped. Off. A bit slant. It’s said that Woods’ initial interest in painting the farmhouse was the unusual gothic-style window centered in the painting behind the farmer and his daughter. Woods thought it an opportunity to critique the farmhouse for pretending to be bigger and better than it was. I know what it’s like to pretend. Us writers do it all the time. When I sat down to write this poem, the biographic had its way of seeping in, of course. The speaker’s age and concerns are like the early symptoms I experienced before I knew I had OCD.  This poem initiated the hard work of dissecting memories that’ve helped me discover more about the distorted nature of myself and my work. It’s difficult to put yourself on display, but I always find myself better on the other side of the poem. Or I’m at least taken with that possibility. 

Olivia Jacobson is an MFA candidate in poetry at Syracuse University. She is the editor-in-chief of @salthilljournal. Her chapbook, On Junkyards, won the Etchings Press Book Prize for Poetry (October 2025). Winner of the Charles Simic Poetry Prize (2025), her work appears or is forthcoming in Hole in the Head, The Florida Review, Moon City Review, and Outskirts Literary. Her work has also received support from The Rockefeller Brothers Fund and The Hudson Valley Writer’s Center.
Ngoc Pham reads “Portrait of My Family’s Poet, Ali Ngoc Pham reads “Portrait of My Family’s Poet, Alive” from Shō No. 8 and our #aapiheritagemonth playlist.

About this Poem: “Portrait of My Family's Poet, Alive” is part of an ongoing series in which I imagine conversations with a family member who was killed during Vietnam's Resistance War against America, known as the Vietnam War in the U.S. Before his death, he was a poet. These poems attempt to use language as the common lineage to bridge familial history disrupted by war while reckoning with the inherent contradictions of writing about violent history in the language of those who perpetrated that violence. While writing this poem, I was reading his posthumously published collection Nửa Sau Khoảng Đời (literally translated to "the latter half of life") to get an idea of what he might have been like since he died before I was born.

Ngoc Pham (@leaf.rust) is a Vietnamese poet. Their poems have been featured in The Adroit Journal, Couplet Poetry, The Penn Review, Shō Poetry Journal, and the anthology Dear Human at the Edge of Time. They currently write and teach in Ithaca, New York.
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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


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