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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

  • Oct 21, 2025

    Audio Feature: Kate Pyontek

  • Oct 16, 2025

    Audio Feature: Aleks Zywicki

  • Oct 1, 2025

    Filipino American History Month Round Up

  • Sep 29, 2025

    Nicholas Pierce Interviews Bobby Elliott

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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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Listen to Kate Pyontek read “Nocturne with Const Listen to Kate Pyontek read “Nocturne with Construction Detour” from Shō No. 5 (Summer 2024).

About this poem: I wrote the first draft of this poem in an online class I took with Aimee Nezhukumatathil on writing aubades and nocturnes. The poem considers a period where I wasn’t sure whether I still had feelings for someone. There’s a point for me at the end of love where my heart is confused by the habit or memory of love, and it takes a difficult negotiation to find my way. That negotiation never gets easier, but there is a path through.

Kate Pyontek is a poet, writer, and artist who has been awarded fellowships from arts institutions including Brush Creek Foundation for the Arts and The Volland Foundation. Their work is published or forthcoming in POETRY, Southeast Review, Ecotone, Mississippi Review, Consequence, The Glacier, Shō Poetry Journal, Another Chicago Review, Southern Indiana Review, and elsewhere. Kate lives and works outside of Boston.
Please help us congratulate Mollie O'Leary, whose Please help us congratulate Mollie O'Leary, whose poem “Late Summer Study” was chosen for inclusion in @orisonbooks's anthology of Best Spiritual Literature! “Late Summer Study” appeared in Shō No. 4 and will be republished in Best Spiritual Literature 2025 in December. Congratulations, Mollie!

Mollie O’Leary is a poet from Massachusetts. She holds an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Washington. Mollie’s chapbook "The Forgetting Curve" was published in 2023 through @poetryonl’s chapbook contest and is currently in its fifth printing. Her work has appeared in @mcneesereview, @chestnutreview, @wildnessjournal, and elsewhere. Find more of her work at mollieoleary.com.
Exciting things are on the horizon: Announcements, Exciting things are on the horizon: Announcements, a meeting to discuss editors’ prizes for our winter issue, another meeting to discuss Pushcart nominations, sequencing, proofs, more audio features… 

Pictured: Triangle of sunlight on Shō No. 8, which is being laid out very slowly.
Aleksander Zywicki’s debut poetry collection ZOU Aleksander Zywicki’s debut poetry collection ZOUNDS! was released yesterday, and is now available for purchase from @barrowstreetpress! Listen to Aleks read “rewatching the film,” which appeared in our summer issue (Shō No. 7).

About this poem: “rewatching the film” is an ekphrasis poem inspired by the 2013 film, Under the Skin.
 
I don’t really like violent movies and I’m not even sure that I can say I enjoyed seeing this one. But right in the middle of it, there’s this incredible—though deeply unsettling—scene that I just couldn’t shake. I think it has something to do with the strange dream logic of it: one-by-one people (a whole family) following each other into the ocean, to drown—just this clear-headed, uncanny, & sudden vanishing. 
 
There are so many movies that I love more and much prefer to think about, but this scene and the way it startles, moved through me the way a poem does and I felt a really strong compulsion to make something of that.

Aleksander Zywicki was raised in Bayonne, New Jersey. He is the author of ZOUNDS! (selected by Kevin Prufer as the winner of the 2024 Barrow Street Book Prize). He holds an MFA from The New School and his work appears (or is forthcoming) in: Plume, Gulf Coast, Hunger Mountain, Seneca Review, Laurel Review and elsewhere. Aleks has received a poetry fellowship from the Martha’s Vineyard Institute for Creative Writing and a teaching fellowship from the Folger Shakespeare Library. He teaches English and creative writing at @thehudsonschool.
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Publishing Stats

Since our revival issue was published in Summer 2023:

327

Poems Published

224

Total Poets Published

78

Audio Features Published

28

Poems Nominated for Prizes

1

Poem chosen for inclusion in Best Spiritual Literature

Shō Poetry Journal


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