YEAR OF THE SESTINA

Please send us one sestina by December 1, 2025.

Cash prize $100 for top three poets.

This is a literary contest, open to all. The winning poems shall be displayed on Instagram and the “publishings” page.

Contest revised May 22, 2025: poetry music video cut to enable further focus on the free Narrow Road Writing Workshop.

Questions or one sestina to:

subject line “SESTINA QUESTION”

or

“SESTINA SUBMIT”

Honoré de Balzac, patron saint of all caffeinated writers and our obliteration.

metta to Filo gèn' of "French WIkipedia" for publishing this image under a creative commons license.

Full Details on the “Year of the Sestina” submission call

Revised monday, april 7, 2025

One

Primary sestina contest:

Please submit one sestina by December 1, 2024. The top three poets will receive 100$ dollars and Fish will select one to submit a narration to a poetry music video consisting of landscape shots and original electronic music.

Please submit 1 (one) sestina as a PDF or RTF. Do not include visual art or other poems. We are not accepting simultaneous submissions for this contest.

In your submission, please include a brief (one paragraph) cover letter. Please also include whether you prefer payment over Venmo, Paypal, or CashApp. Paypal is preferred for international applicants. We can also mail a check. Do not send your payment info in your submission email, or it will be rejected.

The top three poets will receive 100$ dollars. The sestinas will not be ranked.

Announced B.Hl.L.M Project Number two, seeking collabs

“100 Sonnets about Ukraine by People who Were and Were Not There”

Q1 2027, proceeds to MA Refugees

Fish is soliciting:

Craft and devotional essays. Reach out to Fish personally. We prefer 250 to 2,000 words for craft, and under 10K for devotional. Unpaid, for the love of literary criticism.

DISCLOSURE ON OUR SUBMISSIONS PROCESS, USING LEGAL NAMES

B.H.L.M does not commit to a full anonymous or “blind” reading process, and also does not commit to the inclusion of more than two (2) interns to prune the overall submission load to 10% per final selection by Ms. Kleiner.

Should submission volume necessitate, Ms. Kleiner will designate two readers to reduce the overall submission load to between 10 and 20 percent, then remove all identifying info from the remaining sestinas. Otherwise, Ms. Kleiner will consider the poems herself. If overall submission volume exceeds 300 sestinas at any time, Ms. Kleiner is likely to invoke this clause.

Ms. Kleiner believes this is a reasonable compromise between ignoring the biographies of poets, which tends to dis-favor new, international, and non-academic poets, and including them.

B.H.L.M will notify all submitters at the conclusion of the submission period, December 1, as to whether volume necessitates additional readers. Until then, Ms. Kleiner may correspond or answer questions with poets, but any transmission of an original sestina to her above B.H.L.M email shall constitute a submission. She may conduct lessons and post guides on this form in the meantime.

Legal Details for “Year of the Sestina” primary writing contest

Submissions policy for “Year of the Sestina” cash prize:

A: 1 poem per poet

B: submit a .PDF or .RTF of your poem once submissions open on April 1.

(the prior submission call listed May 1, Fish, as CFO and current literary editor of B.H.L.M, decided to open them formally to field questions and receive already finished sestinas)

C: B.H.L.M will retain no rights to any sestina upon publication.

D: payment is 100$ cash prize transmitted via Venmo, Paypal, CashApp, or, least preferred, Zelle. The raw payment is $125 to cover fees.

E: formal submissions shall be over a gmail address not registered to our domain beginning May 1.

F: submissions shall close December 1, 2025.

G: Three winners shall be announced, published, and monetarily compensated no later than March 1, 2025.

H: Removed: a section about the poetry music video.

I: All winning poems shall be published by January 31, 2026.

J: MODIFIED MAY 10, 2025: B.H.L.M has departed all age gated platforms. The winning poem with shall be published on Instagram, this site, and a YouTube channel, if B.H.L.M maintains one at the conclusion of the contest. Our YouTube channel is currently reserved.