The 2025 Furious Flower Poetry Prize:

The Furious Flower Poetry Center at James Madison University, the nation’s first academic center devoted to Black poetry, offers a $1,500 prize for a group of three poems through its annual prize. The Furious Flower Poetry Center is committed to ensuring the visibility, inclusion, and critical consideration of Black poets in American letters, as well as in the whole range of educational curricula. The Center seeks to support and promote Black poets at all stages of their careers and to preserve the history of Black poets for future generations. Submissions that support this mission are welcome. Poets with no more than one published book are invited to submit up to three poems for consideration. 

Prizes:

Winner: $1,500 

Honorable mention: $750 

Both the winner and honorable mention will be invited to read as part of the Furious Flower Poetry Reading Series in September 2025. The winner, honorable mention, and select finalists will also be published in Obsidian. 

2025 Judge: 

aracelis girmay is the author of three books of poems for which she was a finalist for the Neustadt International Prize for Literature. Her most recent work is the chapbook and was a flower, made in collaboration with book artist Valentina Améstica. Her newest full-length collection will be out with BOA Editions in the fall. Other recent work has been published in Astra, The Paris Review online, and e-flux. girmay curated How to Carry Water: Selected Poems of Lucille Clifton and served as the editor of So We Can Know: Writers of Color on Pregnancy, Loss, Abortion, and Birth (Haymarket, 2023). She is currently completing her last year in her editor-at-large role for the Blessing the Boats Selections. girmay is on the editorial board of the African Poetry Book Fund.

Submissions are read blind and the judge will not see any identifying information.

Submission Guidelines: 

• Submit up to 3 poems that do NOT exceed 6 total pages. Please put all poems in a single PDF document.
• Upload all work through our submission manager in a PDF file format only.
• No previously published work will be accepted.
• Simultaneous submissions are welcome. If your work is accepted elsewhere, please notify us immediately by e-mailing us at furiousflower@jmu.edu. 
• Please do not put your name in the poems, in the submission or in the file name. We read these submissions blind.

Eligibility rules: 

• Authors with 1 or more published or self-published books of poetry are not eligible. This does NOT include chapbooks; this rule is only relevant to full-length collections.
• You may only submit one submission entry up to three poems that do NOT exceed six total pages. Multiple submission entries will disqualify you.
• Please note: Current JMU employees and students are note eligible for this prize.
• Submission fees are non-refundable.