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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

  • Aug 25, 2023

    News & Updates

  • Dec 13, 2022

    The End of June

  • Dec 11, 2022

    Hiroshima

  • Dec 11, 2022

    Cleaning

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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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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.
Another poem from our current issue—here’s Shira L Another poem from our current issue—here’s Shira Leah Haus reading “Golden Gate Bridge.”

About this Poem: Like many women, I struggle with judging how much to trust men, even if they're kind to me. This odd little poem came out of me all at once after a long ride from San Francisco to Napa Valley with a very sweet Uber driver who did actually stop the car to show me photos of his kid. The conversation and the poem both widen to encompass aliens, love, spirituality, and God--but at the end, the poem narrows abruptly as the speaker is reminded of the potential--even if unfounded--danger of the situation, and modulates the freedom and confidence she expresses throughout the poem accordingly.

Shira Leah Haus is a queer, Jewish writer from Michigan. She earned an MFA in poetry from the University of Tennessee and is currently a copyeditor for The Offing. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Poetry Magazine, Copper Nickel, Passages North, Poetry Northwest, and Wildness, among others, and her poems have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and Best Microfiction. She has received support from the Napa Valley Writers’ Conference and was a finalist for the PINCH Literary Awards and the ONLY POEMS Leonard Cohen Poetry Prize.
Happy pub day to AFTERMATH by Catherine Broadwall, Happy pub day to AFTERMATH by Catherine Broadwall, available from @girlnoisepress! The collection includes “Love Poem with a Splinter in its Paw,” which first appeared in Shō No. 5.

About this Poem: This poem takes up the ambivalence I felt for a while about the place where I live. When my husband and I moved in, it presented several challenges. At the most extreme, the entire front of the building was replaced except for a very thin layer of dry wall (in winter). Several units, including ours, sustained damage to the dry wall during construction, and we took the repair job as an opportunity to paint the wall a beautiful shade of lavender. After that, things got easier in the building all around, and I began to like our home more. The poem, at its heart, is about allowing room for lots of conflicting feelings while still seeking--and, perhaps, choosing--love.

Catherine Broadwall is the author of Aftermath (Girl Noise Press, 2026), Water Spell (Cornerstone Press, 2025), Fulgurite (Cornerstone Press, 2023), Shelter in Place (Spuyten Duyvil, 2019), and other collections. Her writing has appeared in Bellingham Review, Colorado Review, Mid-American Review, and other journals. She is the winner of the 2023 Paula Svonkin Creative Arts Award and the 2020 COG Poetry Award, as well as a finalist for the poetry categories of the 2021 Mississippi Review Prize and 2021 Pinch Literary Awards. Her website is www.catherinebroadwall.com.
Shō No. 9 sequencing in progress! #litmag Shō No. 9 sequencing in progress!

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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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