If you are a poet, or if you just like poems, you need to know about Rattle. Rattle is a poetry journal published by the Rattle Foundation, an independent non-profit whose mission is to promote the practice of poetry.

I love Rattle because it is full of poetry of the caliber I aspire to write. That’s not to say that I like every poem, but many of them are so delightful that I will immediately reread them to try to discover what the poet did to make it resonate with me.

I first discovered Rattle because of the contests that the Rattle Foundation runs. One is for chapbooks (small books of poems). The prize is $5000, publication, 500 author copies, and distribution to their 7000+ subscribers! Over the years, I’ve entered four different chapbooks, though I haven’t won yet. That won’t stop me from trying. The current contest deadline is January 15, 2024. (Surely you can write 15-30 pages of poetry by then. I’m working on it.) The fee for entering is $30, but for that fee they will also give you a one year subscription to Rattle (or extend your subscription for another year—I have several years racked up now). Rattle is published four times a year, and they choose up to three winners for the annual Chapbook contest. They also publish an annual Young Poets Anthology, made up of 20 poems from poets aged 15 or younger. That means your issue of the journal is usually sent with an accompanying prize-winning chapbook, or the Young Poets Anthology for the year (in June). What a deal!

Rattle also has an annual contest for a single poem. The Rattle Poetry Prize is $15,000. Yes, you read that right. $15,000 for a single poem. Obviously, the competition is great for this award. (I send them all my best poems.) The judges also choose ten finalists who win $500 each, and one of those will receive the $5000 Reader’s Choice Award, which is chosen by votes from subscribers. Again, your $30 entry fee also gets you a year’s subscription or extension. All the winners are published in the Winter issue.

You can sign up to have a free daily poem delivered by email.

You can listen to a two-hour weekly podcast called Rattlecast.

And I haven’t even told you about all the contests.

Have I convinced you yet to check out Rattle? What are you waiting for? What do you have to lose?