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Ultraslant Prize (currently closed to submissions)

2022 Ultraslant Prize Winner: Ty Little for Body Poem I. Order the pamphlet here. 

Finalists:

P.D. Edgar for "@Beach_Bits" and "Tangelos[t]"

Julianne Neely for “TOODOO”

LORRAINE (duo Anne Marie Rooney + Sam Sheffield) for “Start To”

grace (ge) gilbert for excerpts from "holly"

About the prize: Each year or so, the Ultraslant Prize is awarded to one work of visual poetry. The contest is judged by the Ghost Proposal editors. We accept submissions on our Submittable page.

Guidelines:

• Please submit as a PDF document of no more than six pages.
  
  
• Your PDF may include up to two separate contest entries. If you are including multiple entries, please make this clear to us either in the document or in a cover letter.
  
  
• Entries must be previously unpublished.
  
  
• You are welcome to submit as many entries as you like, but you will need to submit a separate Submittable form and pay a separate sliding-scale fee per packet of two entries.
  
  
• We will gladly accept works in color—in fact, we strongly encourage them! However, please keep in mind that while one can create almost endless color combinations with risograph printing, the colors may come out somewhat differently in print.
  
  
• Though you may present your work in any way you’d like when you submit it, your poem should ultimately be printable on a single-sided 11-by-17 sheet of paper.
  
  
• You may include a cover letter along with your submission, but this is in no way required.
  

Reading fee: As a small journal and press, reading fees fund things like web hosting and printing. We will charge a sliding scale reading fee for this contest of $0–$15.  Please choose whatever fee makes sense for you.


FAQs

What is visual poetry? Great question! We would like to find out, too. Send us your best guess.

Okay, but what kind of work should I submit? We are open to a wide range of poems that incorporate visual elements. People may call works like these visual poems, concrete poems, poetry comics, and lots of other terms we are forgetting right now.

How will the layout and printing process work? The Ghost Proposal editors will work with the winner to lay out the pamphlet. The pamphlet will be risograph printed in four colors at Risolve. As such, all manuscripts must be printable on one side of an 11x17 sheet of paper. The paper may be folded into a pamphlet or booklet or the work can be printed as one large image. If you opt for the latter, please understand that we may need to fold the work to some extent to mail it out.

Due to the ephemeral nature of risograph printing, we cannot do a test print prior to the print run. This means we can’t guarantee that the work will look exactly as it does on a computer galley. If you feel very strongly about preserving the exact details of your work (and we totally get it if you do!) this may not be the right contest for you.

Is there anything I shouldn’t submit? As opposed to a broadside competition, the Ultraslant Prize focuses on poetry that already has visual concerns. This is not a contest for poetry with separate illustrations alongside it. We would also discourage you from submitting video, audio, dimensional, or computational works, or other forms not easily translated into print. Finally, if your poem could also be submitted with relative ease and minimal adjustments to a contest whose guidelines read something like: “Please submit your poems in 12-point Garamond font, single-spaced in a Word document,” it is probably not a good fit for this contest. 

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Ghost Proposal Chapbook Contest (currently closed to submissions)

We hold a chapbook contest every year or so. We seek cohesive manuscripts. We are especially interested in work that challenges genre/formal conventions. Visual poems, digital works and interdisciplinary approaches are welcome.

Contest will be judged by the editors. We will accept submissions on our Submittable page. We reserve the right to extend the deadline if a manuscript is not selected from the original reading period. 

Reading fee: In 2022, this contest had a sliding scale reading fee of $0–$20. As a small journal and press, our reading fees fund things like printing and web hosting. Your choice of fee has no bearing on our decision-making process. Please choose whatever fee makes sense for you.

Contest Details:

• Manuscripts should be chapbook-length. Aim for something between 16 and 44 pages. If your work falls slightly outside of this range, it’s all right—please use your best judgment.

• Simultaneous submissions are fine, but please inform us immediately and withdraw your submission if the work is accepted elsewhere.

• No edits to the manuscript are allowed during the reading period. The winning manuscript(s) may be edited in conversation with the editorial staff during the publication process.

• Collaborative manuscripts are allowed. In the event that a collaborative manuscript is selected for publication, each author will receive 10 copies.

• Multiple submissions are fine if submitted separately with a reading fee for each.

• Images and visual poems are permitted and welcomed.

• You may include an acknowledgements page that lists previous publications, but this is not required.

• Manuscript excerpts may have been previously published. However, the chapbook manuscript as a whole should be previously unpublished.

• This contest will not be judged anonymously.

• We will notify all entrants of our decision before we publicly announce the winner and finalists.

We may choose to publish additional manuscripts as "Editor's Choice" selections.