CGR Cover Fall22
Volume 23, issue 2

Fall/Winter 2022

At Common Ground Review, we seek to publish well crafted poems, short stories and creative nonfiction that surprise and illuminate, amuse, inform, and/or challenge--not always all at once. CGR comes out twice a year (except recently, while we've adjusted to the on-line format) and accepts submissions from September to May: we hold our poetry contest once a year, opening up for entries in January and this year closing it in mid-April .

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2023 Annual Poetry Contest

Our 2023 contest is open until April 15th
$500 First Prize
$200 Second Prize
$100 Third Prize
Author Pic Garden

We are thrilled to announce that our 2023 Poetry Contest Judge will be Oliver de la Paz.

Oliver de la Paz is the Poet Laureate of Worcester, Massachusetts, for 2023-2025. He is the author and editor of seven books: Names Above Houses, Furious Lullaby, Requiem for the Orchard, Post Subject: A Fable, and The Boy in the Labyrinth, a finalist for the Massachusetts Book Award in Poetry. His newest work, The Diaspora Sonnets, is forthcoming from Liveright Press in 2023.

With Stacey Lynn Brown, he co-edited A Face to Meet the Faces: An Anthology of Contemporary Persona Poetry.

A founding member, Oliver serves as the cochair of the Kundiman advisory board. He has received grants from the NEA, NYFA, the Artist’s Trust, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, and has been awarded multiple Pushcart Prizes. He teaches at the College of the Holy Cross and in the Low-Residency MFA Program at PLU.

(Photo credit: Meredith Pugh)

There is a $15 fee
Contest Submission Guidelines
Submissions

2022 Poetry Contest Winners

Our 2022 Judge, Abby E. Murray, is the editor of Collateral, a literary journal concerned with the impact of violent conflict and military service beyond the combat zone. Her first book, Hail and Farewell, won the Perugia Press Poetry Prize and was a finalist for the Washington State Book Award. She was the 2019-2021 poet laureate for the city of Tacoma, Washington, and after relocating to Washington DC for two years, she is now in the process of returning to Washington State.


Read Issue

 

Abby Murray says of this poem,

The poet’s handling of this simple but stark imagery shows restraint in a way that lets one lingering encounter with death absorb all the light our eyes can give to it by reading. How does a poem manage to feel so ghostly while rooted in the experience of living? In my notes, I wrote, I love this.

 

Abby Murray says of this poem,

This is a beautiful, dancing glimpse at a single word’s role in the poet’s heart. The way words are used—and by whom—matters. Every word has infinite histories, knowings, possibilities, births, and deaths within it, and it does us good to explore those experiences. This poet accomplishes that exploration while creating a poem that, in the end, instructs us on how to appreciate a word.

 

Abby Murray says of this poem,

A poem that is true to its title: one moment, equal parts prayer and blessing, shared between writer and reader. Exquisite in its simplicity and truthfulness.