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POETRY submissions are OPEn!

congratulations to erica dawson on winning a pushcart prize!
listen to her poem here.

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

  • Jan 11, 2025

    Audio Feature: Jae Nichelle (Shō No. 6)

  • Jan 10, 2025

    Audio Feature: Danielle Shandiin Emerson (Shō No. 4)

  • Jan 8, 2025

    Audio Feature: Alejandro Lucero (Shō No. 6)

  • Jan 7, 2025

    Audio Feature: T. De Los Reyes (Shō No. 6)

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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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“All night long they sling the fireman’s axes in s “All night long they sling the fireman’s axes in sideways / arcs to chop the saguaro down, the two boys / who’d dared each other to do it.” Listen to James O’Leary read their poem “In the Dark, the Arms Look Like Crosses.”

About this Poem: Saguaro cacti can live to be 200 years old. I was surprised to learn that cacti are in the top 5 most endangered types of living things (orders or families—a biologist would know). In Arizona, my home state, it is illegal to cut down a saguaro without a special permit. In writing this poem, I was thinking about being closeted, and the intersections of ecological devastation, toxic masculinity/homophobia, and shame; and about the special sadness felt when a buried memory resurfaces.

James O’Leary is a writer and educator from Arizona. Their work has been nominated for the Best New Poets, Best of the Net, & Pushcart Prize anthologies, & has appeared in such journals as Booth, Foglifter, Gulf Coast, The Kenyon Review, Poet Lore, & more. James holds an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College, is a graduate of the Tin House Summer Workshop, & serves as Assistant Poetry Editor for ANMLY. For a time, James tried the name Willow James Claire.
A reminder that submissions to Shō Poetry Journal A reminder that submissions to Shō Poetry Journal are free for U.S. Indigenous Poets! Send a cover letter and up to 5 poems; we respond in 30 days or less.

Details: shopoetryjournal.submittable.com

Cover Art: “Hopi Leia” by Sikuyva Dawavendewa (@art_by_sikuyva)
Next up on our Pride Playlist is Iain Grinbergs re Next up on our Pride Playlist is Iain Grinbergs reading “Wakulla” (Shō No. 8).

About this Poem: I have a love-hate relationship with north Florida, a place that shaped me most (even more than England, my homeland). In my later teenage years there, I found a small circle of friends, and that’s where the love part comes in. They helped me realize that being non-heteronormative is perfectly okay, despite what the dominant culture still demands. I also discovered, through the Beats, Buddhism there. A Zen monastery was even built near my home; the priest helped me with my social anxiety at the time and intensified my ecological interests. In short, we can’t flourish without others. The poem grew out of this.

Iain Grinbergs (he/they) is an English professor and the author of Vanity Twist, a chapbook (Bottlecap Press). He earned his Ph.D. in English from Florida State University. His work appears in or is forthcoming from South Florida Poetry Journal, Meridian, Rogue Agent, and other journals.

Photo Credit: Cynthia Brown
New interview on our website and in your inbox: A New interview on our website and in your inbox: A Conversation with Mckendy Fils-Aimé, author of “sipèstisyon,” out this month from @yesyesbooks.

JeFF Stumpo speaks with Shō No. 5 contributor Mckendy Fils-Aimé about superstitions, language, generational trauma, and the role of truth-telling and love in writing about culture and inheritance. Read the interview at: tinyurl.com/mckendy-sho

Mckendy Fils-Aimé (@mr.mack88) is a New England based Haitian-American poet, organizer, and teaching artist. He has received fellowships from Callaloo, Cave Canem, The Watering Hole, and Periplus. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Best New Poets, Adroit, Muzzle, the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day series, and elsewhere. His debut poetry collection, sipèstisyon, was published by YesYes Books in 2026.

JeFF Stumpo is the author of these are the waterfalls in my head, which won the 2026 Granite State Poetry Prize and is available from Yas Press (University of New Hampshire). His work has appeared or is due in Prairie Schooner, Rattle, The Journal, Gordon Square Review, and elsewhere. He, Mckendy, and Beau Williams performed the first group American-Sign-Language-based poem at a National Poetry Slam as teammates in 2010.
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Publishing Stats

Since our revival issue was published in Summer 2023:

375

Poems Published

269

Total Poets Published

158

Audio Features Published

61

Prize Nominations

6

Poems chosen for inclusion in anthologies

Shō Poetry Journal


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