While we are no longer putting together or publishing an anthology this year, a long term community member DS Coremans has put together a call for submissions and will publish the 2024 Poetry Marathon Anthology. The anthology is open to submissions from July 15th, 2024 till September 15th 2024. To learn more please see the full guidelines here: https://fodibyli.com/submissions/
The Poetry Marathon
Changes for the 2024 Poetry Marathon
We are very excited for the 2024 Poetry Marathon. Sign up is open here!
This post is mostly focusing on what will change and will stay the same this year, but before I get into that, I want to share that the Poetry Marathon Anthology for 2023 is at the printers, and has been for a while, and we are waiting on them for approval and a proof. We are very sorry it’s taken this long – but we have no control over this stage right now.
There are two big changes to the Poetry Marathon this year.
The first is that, as we warned everyone last year, we will not be continuing on with the anthology. We are grateful to everyone who edited and contributed to it over the years. We are really grateful that we were able to do them as long as we did. They were never part of my initial design for the marathon, and to me they always felt like an additional step. We are hoping that letting go of them will make the marathon more sustainable and easier to run every year. We are still happy to share others’ calls for submissions and the good work they’ve done, but we are not going to play an official role in the running of anthologies for the foreseeable future.
The second is that we are moving away from Facebook and Word Press and on to Circle.
Yes, we know change can be scary but WordPress has gotten increasingly buggy over the years. This year I couldn’t upload any of the image prompts without making major and time consuming file size changes (and even then it only worked half the time). We’d already been considering switching platforms for the last year, but that failure on WordPress’s part is what encouraged us to commit to a new platform.
The other factor is that Facebook played a vital role in community building in many of the marathons, but as more and more people have left the platform it has become less functional and as a social meeting place. Last year less than half the participants were even part of the group. The Circle platform will have many of the same social features that help make the community vibrant, and it won’t be limited to people who are on Facebook. It will be available to all participants.
This year we are paying for two months of hosting from Circle, which is very similar to Facebook in some ways but for only limited groups. No one will have to pay to join the marathon (now are always), we are covering the cost ourselves. If later people want to optionally donate to keep the Circle up, that might be an option, but it should work well even if it isn’t up between Marathons.
Via Circle, we can email all the participants easily, so now all the prompts and announcements will appear in your email inbox and not be lost on the chaos of the websites. Participants can post their poems as responses to the hourly post, and connect with fellow participants via the community discussion area. Everything is pretty intuitive to use, and in fact I’ve hosted four classes on the platform already. So I trust it and know it mostly works well.
We will be sharing the link to the Circle with the first round of acceptances on the 24th of May so everyone should have plenty of time to sign up and feel it out.
We will also be hosting orientation material on Circle so it should be easy for newcomers to understand how the marathon works better.
One of the added benefits of moving to Circle is that all posted poems will be automatically private. That doesn’t mean you can’t share your poems with friends via social media, by all means, please do that, but for those planning to submit to literary journals after the event, this space is now officially entirely private and accessible only to members who have applied to join. Even the strictest literary journal I know of, in terms of rights, (Clarkesworld), does not consider that sort of private sharing published.
Even though every editor I talked to about it had no issue with writers sharing work using the private button on the WP, users were actively worried about sharing work on the site, and this should hopefully ease their fears.
It’s also really easy to DM other participants on Circle, which can help build community too.
If Circle does not work better for most people than WP, we will of course not stick with it as a platform, but given that the current courses I teach on it are also large and prompt based, and work really well, I have every reason to believe that the move will be a good one!
Registration is Open!
Sign up is now open for the 2024 Poetry Marathon! You can sign up here.
The 2024 Poetry Marathon starts at 9 AM ET on Saturday June 15th and will go till 9 AM ET on Sunday June 16th.
Those who are interested in doing a half marathon start at 9 AM ET on Saturday June 15th and go till 9 PM on that same day. Or they can start at 9 PM ET on the 15th and continue to 9 AM on the 16th, which works better for some time zones.
The goal of The Poetry Marathon is to write and post one poem an hour for 24 hours. Half marathoners post a poem per hour for a 12 hour period. You can catch up if you miss an hour, but you cannot get ahead.
This is an international event with participants from all around the globe. Generally 500 people attempt the marathon. You do not have to be a poet to participate. To find out how to convert your timezone go here.
There is a new prompt offered every hour. Some find this helpful, some ignore it completely.
To learn more go here.
To sign up go here.
If you are interested in participating please sign up by 9 PM ET on the 10th of June. We will get reach out to applicants on the 24th of May, and the 3rd and 11th of June, depending on when they apply. Most people who apply will be accepted. If you have not heard from us by the 12th of June please send us an email at poets@thepoetrymarathon.com. Please do not try and contact us through the FB page. We will try our best to make sure everyone who contacts us, gets an opportunity to participate,…
The Online Anthology is Now Available!
Thanks to the hard work of Erin Lorandos, who volunteered their time and energy to take full responsibility for publishing an anthology of poets from the 2023 Poetry Marathon. Erin has asked that we post the anthology here, for everyone to enjoy. The link to the full PDF is below:
Save the Date!
We have an official date for 2024! It will start at 9 AM ET as always, and continue on till the 16th!
The goal of the marathon is to write one poem per hour for 12 or 24 hours.
Sharing a Submission Opportunity
Amanda Potter, an active and long term Poetry Marathon participant has put out the following call: If you have any questions please send her a message at the below address;
“I am pleased to announce a special call for submissions for our first volume of Prompted Poetry, coming out the second quarter of 2024. At Prompted Poetry Publications we hope to encourage more people to read and write prompted poetry. Please find all the requirements below.
When: Submissions open 11/15/2023 and will close 12/1/2023
With Subject line “Poetry Marathon Submission”
In the body of your email please include your name, location, and the WordPress link to each of the poems you are submitting. You can include a short 5 to 7 line Bio and website.
Please attach each poem separately as a google doc or Word doc in Verdana 12pt font for body, 14pt for “Title”, 9pt for author Name under title. Singled Spaced and Center aligned.
What: Poems written during the 9/2/2023 Marathon, poems should’ve been specifically written to the prompts for the following hours: Hour 7, Hour 13, Hour 14, Hour 15, and Hour 22.
Please be sure that your poems are fully edited. Feel free to submit for each of the requested hours.
NOTE: Submission does NOT guarantee acceptance. There is NO payment if you are chosen for publication.”
The Online Anthology is Open to Submissions!
The online anthology is open for submissions! Please send your two favorite poems written during the Poetry Marathon via email by October 21st to the Online Anthology email: poetrymarathononline@gmail.com
Submissions should include: Your Name, Location, and Hour written. If formatting is important, you can attach your poem in a separate document.
Please edit your poems for punctuation, spelling and grammar before sending. Do not send any poems that contain racist or vulgar themes, or contain profanity. If you do, we’ll be unable to include your work in the online anthology.
P.S. The Poetry Marathon organizers are very excited about this anthology, but we are not directly involved in it. Erin Lorandos is organizing it!
Submissions to the 2023 Poetry Marathon Anthology Are Open
Submissions to the 2023 Print Poetry Marathon Anthology are open now and will stay open through the 30th of September. For the first time the anthology will only contain curated submissions. That is to say, this year’s editor, will only be choosing between 80-100 poems to include in the anthology.
We understand that this is a real shift, and we ourselves have lots of doubts about it, but the growing length of the anthology was causing serious logistical issues every year. This is the last year the marathon founders, Caitlin and Jacob, plan to host the anthology, although we hope there continues to be some version of it going forward.
This year, there will also be an electronic anthology that still accepts all submissions. Erin Lorandos, a long time marathoner and compelling poet (you can read one of her poems here), is putting together that anthology and will consider submissions between the 7th and 21st of October.
We are very excited to have Blessing Omeiza Ojo as our print anthology editor this year. He is the Deputy Editor of Litvo Magazine and the Chairman of Hill-Top Creative Arts Foundation, Abuja. His works have been translated into several languages including Yoruba, French and Italian. His poetry has received nominations for Best of the Net, Eriata Oribhabor Poetry Prize, Creators of Justice Awards, Castello di Duino International Poetry and Theatre Competition, Jack Grapes Poetry Prize, Brigitte Poirson Poetry Contest and the Korea-Nigeria Poetry Prize. His literary awards include the Korea-Nigeria Poetry Prize (Ambassador Special Prize 2019), the 2020 Artslounge Literature Teacher of the Year Award, the 2021 Words Rhymes & Rhythm Nigerian Teacher’s Award, 2022 & 2023 Maryam Aliyu Award for Best Teacher (Male) and the 2023 Nigeria Prize for Indigenous Languages (Yoruba). Omeiza is a Creative Writing Mentor with progenies already prize winners and slam champs.
The anthology is only possible if people follow the guidelines, so please follow them.
All poems submitted must be written during the 2023 Marathon, and the writer must have completed the full marathon or half marathon in 2023.
All poems should be completely edited and as much as possible contain no major grammatical errors. Revisions are allowed and encouraged before submitting. Please check your punctuation. All poems should be single spaced. Any extra space will probably be interpreted as a stanza break. The first word of every line should not have a capitalization unless it is intentional.
When you submit you must include in the email the following:
- The subject line should read “2023 Marathon Submissions”.
- The body of the email should make it clear if you are a half or full marathoner.
- You should then state your location (e.g Nigeria, Abuja).
- It should also include the hour of the marathon the poem was written in.
- As well as a link to your poetry marathon page. If your poetry marathon name is different than your name, include both and make it clear which name you want to appear in the anthology.
- Two poems pasted into the body of the email. All submissions must include two poems, no more, no less.
Please follow all these guidelines. Use the above list as a checklist for your email submission and only press send once you’ve reviewed it twice.
All marathon submissions must be made via this email address: poetrymarathonsubmissions@gmail.com
DO NOT email us at the email address we use for all other communications.
Due to issues that happened in the past, no one is allowed to announce that their poem has been accepted for publication till November 15th, unless notified otherwise. Announcements made on the marathon groups before November 15th, will be deleted. Please do not query about the status of your submission via email or the FB page till after November 15th.
Thank you for following the guidelines! I know they might seem strict but they make it possible to put together an anthology in a few months.
After the poems are published in the anthology all rights return to you.
Digital copies will be made available for free to any participant in the marathon, even those not included in the anthology. Print copies will be available for a reasonable price and any money that is made from selling the anthology will go towards covering the cost of the marathon.
Announcing the Finishers of the 2023 Poetry Marathon
Dear Poets,
Here’s our initial list of everyone who successfully finished the 2023 Poetry Marathon. These poets wrote 24 poems in 24 hours. Congratulations to everyone who achieved this incredible challenge! You are amazing!
Please note: This list contains errors. We need your help to correct those errors. If your name is in the wrong list, or missing, when it should be there, please let me know by email poets@thepoetrymarathon.com. Any error was in no way intentional. There are so many participants, it is very difficult to create an accurate list. Your help with correcting any errors is greatly appreciated.
Thank you to everyone who participated this year!
You can see the finishers of the half marathon here.
When you are ready, you are very much encouraged to comment on the many wonderful poems written during the marathon by these wonderful poets. — Jacob
Announcing the Finishers of the 2023 Poetry Half Marathon
Dear Poets,
Here’s our initial list of everyone who successfully finished the 2023 Poetry Half Marathon. These poets wrote 12 poems in 12 hours. Congratulations to everyone who achieved this challenge!
Please note: This list contains errors. We need your help to correct those errors. If your name is in the wrong list, or missing, when it should be there, please let me know by email poets@thepoetrymarathon.com. Any error was in no way intentional. There are so many participants, it is very difficult to create an accurate list. Your help with correcting any errors is greatly appreciated.
You can see the finishers of the full marathon here.
Thank you to everyone who participated this year!
When you are ready, you are very much encouraged to comment on these amazing poets’ work. — Jacob