All necessary guidelines are included here and on our website. Please, visit twhpoetry.org. If you have further questions, e-mail us at twhtribe@twhpoetry.org.
TWH is interested in conversations that poets are not having in public and opening that discourse to the wider community. We are looking to publish traditional, poetic, or experimental essays that are reflective, factual, and dynamic. Submissions should speak to issues that affect poets, their lives, the communities they live in, or the larger project of poetry.
Selections will be published on TWH’s website, distributed to our digital mailing list, and promoted on social media and YouTube. Essays will be selected by an editorial committee of TWH Fellows and Graduate Fellows.
Essays must be previously unpublished. Simultaneous submissions are allowed; however, please withdraw your submission if it is picked up elsewhere. While you can submit multiple essays for consideration, each essay must address a single prompt.
Prompts:
- Think of the poetry communities you operate in. Some things work well, and some things work terribly. What creates and maintains a healthy poetry community? How do we unlock that code and share it with others?
- For poets who are not in academia or full-time artists, but maintain active and dynamic poetry practices, how are you sustaining yourself financially, and what does your poetic practice look like?
- What do you want poets to be thinking about?
- Outside of your literary impact by way of readings, publication, and accolades, how are your poetic practices tied directly to the lives of people in your communities?
Guidelines:
- Please submit 500 - 1000 word essays. Traditional, poetic, or experimental essays will be considered.
- In a time of alternative facts, we deeply value the writers who do their own fact-checking.
- Preference will be given to TWH graduate fellows and fellows.
Deadline: September 1st
Contributor Compensation: $100.00
Contributor Promotional Commitment:
Selected writers are expected to record two vertical videos for digital promotion: 1) reading an excerpt from your essay and 2) discussing your essay’s thesis.
Response Time:
All writers will be contacted on or before November 1st, 2025.
This Submittable form will serve as your registration form and payment of your registration fee.
Registration Fee: For Tribe, this submission fee is your entire registration fee. For non-Tribe, this is 50% of your registration fee. We will send an invoice for the second half. If you cannot attend, e-mail us for a refund before the event starts.
Join us for the first iteration of The Watering Hole's Grant Writing and Proposal Writing Workshop taught by TWH's very own in-house grant writer John Bateman.
Come prepared for some lecture, some peer-to-peer review, and some take home assignments. The goal is to make you a more effective grant/proposal researcher and writer to help fund your own writing dreams. This course will be taught in two 90-minute segments.
Date: Thursday, September 11 and 18, 6:30 p.m. - 8:00 EST
Location: Virtual
Fee: $99 (Open to all)
50% discount for TWH Tribe (Fellows, graduate fellows, and participants of previous workshops and slams)
Join us for another installment of The Watering Hole Craft Talk Series. The purpose of these programs is to revisit memorable craft talks that were given at the Winter Retreat and to relive them with everyone.
This Craft Talk was originally developed at The Watering Hole Winter Retreat in 2014, then later expanded and published as Dear Continuum: Letters to a Poet Crafting Liberation in 2015. This talk is in celebration of the ten year anniversary of that book.
Date: Thursday, November 6th, 6:30 p.m. - 7:30 EST
Location: Virtual
Fee: Free for TWH Tribe (Fellows, graduate fellows, and participants of previous workshops and slams)
$35 for all others
REGISTER HERE--Within ten minutes of registering on Zoom, Zoom will send you the meeting link.