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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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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.

CURRENT ISSUE

Shō No. 7

SUMMER 2025

This issue features 67 poems by 48 poets, including:

– Christian J. Collier (Winner, Shō Poetry Prize)
– Aldo Amparán (Shō Poetry Prize Runner-Up)
– Ohia, Ernest Chigaemezu (Winner, Sita Martin Prize)
– Nina C. Peláez (Sita Martin Prize Runner-Up)

Cover art: “Interim” by Tanya Rastogi.

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Online Features

  • Aug 26, 2024

    Audio Feature: Mckendy Fils-Aimé (Shō No. 5)

  • Aug 7, 2024

    Audio Feature: Nyree Abrahamian (Shō No. 5)

  • Aug 2, 2024

    A Conversation with Nathan Xavier Osorio

  • Jul 29, 2024

    Audio Feature: Corey Baron (Shō No. 5)

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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

shopoetryjournal

Listen to Erica Abbott read her poem "Portrait of Listen to Erica Abbott read her poem "Portrait of a Wildfire Photographer in a Near-Apocalyptic World," published in Shō No. 4 (Winter 2023/24).

Erica Abbott (she/her) is a Philadelphia-based poet and writer whose work has previously appeared or is forthcoming in Epiphany, Shō Poetry Journal, Pirene’s Fountain, Midway Journal, and others. She is the author of "Self-Portrait as a Sinking Ship," is a Best of the Net nominee, and is a poetry editor for @variant.lit. She is currently pursuing her MFA at Randolph College, where she is the assistant managing editor and lead poetry editor for @revolutelit. Visit her website at erica-abbott.com.
BIPOC poets, get your packets ready! Shō Poetry J BIPOC poets, get your packets ready! Shō Poetry Journal is offering fee-free BIPOC submissions on July 4. Submissions are capped at 75.

Native American and Indigenous Canadian poets, our fee-free submission portal for you remains open until September 1.

・ Send 3 to 5 poems
・ No theme
・ If you have a submission pending with Shō, please wait for our response.

#bipocpoets #callforsubmissions #poetrycommunity #amsubmitting #bipocwriters
100% recycled padded mailers are more expensive th 100% recycled padded mailers are more expensive than plain unpadded envelopes, but we use them because (1) we know how it feels to receive a contributor copy that’s been knocked around, and (2) we don’t have the subscriber base to meet bulk mail rates anyway (yet? 🌝)

@_johnnycordova has spent the last couple of days addressing envelopes by hand, or sticking addresses on them. Shoutout to the patient folks at the Chino Valley, AZ post office for manually processing our stacks of Media Mail. (One day, we will automate this process).

Thank you to everyone who has ordered a copy! 💚
Shō Poetry Journal's Summer 2025 issue is here an Shō Poetry Journal's Summer 2025 issue is here and features two poems by Amber Adams. Read the poem “Okinawa, 2016” online or in print.

About this poem: This poem begins with the appearance of a kijimuna, which is a Japanese spirit particular to Okinawa. It is a mischievous, child-like yokai, and statues of them (which look like little red-haired woodland fairies) are all over the island. I was thinking about them in relation to my brother and how, in the years before he died, he became more easy-going, boyish after he moved there—almost an embodiment of a kijimuna. In this poem, I was trying to capture the kind of adult sibling relationship we had which was compassionate but not overly demonstrative. There was often a subtext to our expressions of care that were rarely verbalized. Like in the final line of the poem, where the ordering of uni was a sly response to the encounter with urchins previously experienced in the poem, or the buying of shisa dogs which was an acknowledgment of my misfortune and an attempt to protect me from evil spirits. These were nonverbal extensions of the clipped conversation about life, but they were actually more conversant than a deep heart-to-heart conversation.

Amber Adams is a 2025 National Endowment for the Arts fellow and the author of BECOMING RIBBONS (Unicorn Press, 2022) which was a finalist for the X.J. Kennedy Prize. Her writing has appeared in POETRY, Poetry Northwest, American Literary Review, Narrative, Witness, and elsewhere. She received 	her MA in Literary Studies from the University of Denver and her MA in Counseling from Regis University. She lives in Longmont, Colorado.

#litmag #contemporarypoetry #shopoetryjournal #poetrygram #readapoem #writingcommunity
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Publishing Stats

Since our revival issue was published in Summer 2023:

327

Poems Published

224

Total Poets Published

75

Audio Features Published

28

Poems Nominated for Prizes

1

Poem chosen for inclusion in Best Spiritual Literature

Shō Poetry Journal


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