The 42nd annual William Carlos Williams poetry competition, sponsored by the Department of Family and Community Medicine at Northeast Ohio Medical University (NEOMED), opens on September 1, 2023 and will accept submissions through December 31, 2023. Please preview the Submission Details and Eligibility Criteria below before submitting your work. Submissions will be judged on the merits of craft, originality, and content. Winning poets will be notified by March 1, 2024.

Each year, this national competition receives hundreds of submissions, which are judged by the Wick Poetry Center at Kent State University. The top three prize-winning poems receive a monetary award ($300, $200, and $100 for first, second, and third place, respectively) and will be considered for publication in the Journal of Medical Humanities. In addition, the first-, second-, and third-place winners are invited to present their work alongside a featured reader at the annual awards ceremony, to be held in conjunction with the Health Humanities Consortium’s annual conference in Phoenix, AZ, April 10-13, 2024.

Consult NEOMED's poetry competition website for more information and please direct all queries to wcw@neomed.edu.

Submission Details:

· Online submissions must be received before midnight (eastern time) on December 31, 2023.

· All entries will undergo blind review and should contain no identifying information other than the title of the poem; a cover sheet including name and contact information will be submitted separately.

· Students may submit up to three poems; one poem per page.

· Each poem submitted is not to exceed 750 words.

· Poems must be written in English.

· Poems may address medical and/or non-medical subjects. 

Eligibility Criteria: 

· Entrants must be actively enrolled in programs leading to a Doctor of Medicine (MD) or Doctor of Osteopathy (DO) degree in the United States, Puerto Rico, or Canada.

· Submissions must be original, unpublished (with the exception of college publications), and must not have won a contest at the time of submission.

· Previous monetary winners of the William Carlos Williams poetry competition are not eligible to compete again in academic year 2023-2024.