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 adjusted to the on-line format) and accepts submissions from September to May 1: we hold our poetry contest with a guest judge once a year, opening up for entries in January and closing it in mid-March.
We are thrilled to announce the winners of our 2026 Annual Poetry Contest, judged by Lisa Hase-Jackson.
Winners will be published in our Spring/Summer issue coming out in mid-June. Thank you to all who entered!
CGR 2026 Contest Winners
First prize ($500): Jed Myers, “Railbed Letter”
A haunting lyric bringing to mind long journeys, migration, history, unhoused peoples, and the interstices of rural and urban settings.
Second prize ($200): Dawn McGuire, “How Forever Works”
A convincing narrative of an elementary school classroom. I immediately resonated with both the speaker and the students. Very apt smiles and metaphors as well.
Third prize ($100): Jonathan Chibuike Ukah, “My Sister's Eyelashes”
For its vivid imagery and surprising juxtapositions.
Honorable Mention: Deborah Doolittle, “Eponymous”
For its clever use of language and surprising imagery.
Again, our sincere thanks to all those who entered, and to Lisa Hase-Jackson for judging.
Lisa Hase-Jackson, our 2026 Annual Poetry Contest Judge.
Lisa Hase-Jackson’s second collection of poetry, Insomnia in Another Town (Clemson University Press 2024), was selected by poet Clare Batemen for the 2024 Converse University MFA Alumni Book Prize and was awarded the 2024 Nelson Poetry Book Prize by the Kansas Authors Club. Her debut collection of poetry, Flint and Fire (Word Works) was selected by Pulitzer prize-winning poet Jericho Brown for the 2019 Hilary Tham Capital Collection Series. She has been awarded writing residency fellowships from Vermont Studio Center and the Kimmel Harding-Nelson Center for the Arts. Her work has recently appeared in the anthologies The Crafty Poet and Ice on a Hot Stove as well as in such literary journals as The Cimarron Review, Sugar House Review, Vox Populi, and Verse Daily.
Donald Revell is the author of fifteen collections of poetry, most recently Canandaigua, six volumes of translations from the French, and three volumes of critical writings, including Essay: A Critical Memoir. A former Fellow of the Ingram Merrill and Guggenheim Foundations, he is the winner of the PEN USA Translation Award and two-time winner of the PEN USA Award for Poetry, and he has twice been awarded Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts.
"This poem beautifully coaxes Vision out of Fact, gently but powerfully proposing an ethical imperative that turns out to be a spiritual imperative as well." --Donald Revell
"In a way that truly reminds me of Dickinson, this poem converts matters of mortality into a peep into eternity. Very quietly, very subtly, disappointment acquires a nimbus of courage." --Donald Revell
"I am enthralled by the syllabic magic of this poem, by the way the poet adventures blank verse measures with a natural authority and tact. This poem revels in the juxtapositions of abstraction with plain speaking in a way that can be downright Shakespearian!" --Donald Revell
