Open Status

One thing I forgot in the last post: Everyone will still see their manuscripts in an "open" status on the system until we announce the 50 picks for the anthology. As stated on our FAQs page, we don't release who's in 180 poems going to the guest editor and who is not--just the final 50.

Getting Closer

I'm a little behind schedule at Best New Poets this summer. Must be the heat -- and it's supposed to be 102 today. The weather people forecast a bone-chilling 89 on Monday.

This year at BNP, we had nearly 1500 entries, with one to two poems in each entry. A pool of six readers narrowed this pool down to 180 finalist poems, which we've sent along to our guest editor, Claudia Emerson. She picks the final 50.

We expect results sometime in mid- to late-August. I had hoped to be much further along than I am, and I apologize to those of you who are eagerly awaiting a final e-mail. Remember, like at many literary magazines, you can simultaneously submit to BNP and elsewhere. We don't expect you to put your lives on hold for us.

Stand by to stand by, but we're getting toward done.

--Series Editor

Getting There

Sorry for the lack of blog postings. As of 6/29, we've read just over 1,000 of the submissions and have about 500 to go.

Our open competition on ManuscriptHub.com is taking submissions, but we're still collecting nominations from magazines and writing programs through April 10. We'll be e-mailing those nominated poets soon with directions on how to upload their work.

We like to joke that we're one of the few books where becoming ineligible means good news (since one of our criteria is that our poets do not yet have a book in print).

So, here's a quick list of new books from our now-ineligible alumni:

Alex Grant (BNP ’07) Fear of Moving Water

Martha Greenwald’s (BNP ’08) Other Prohibited Items

and Laura Newbern (BNP ’07) is the winner of this year's 2010 Kore Press First Book Award for her book Love and the Eye. See the Kore Website for details.

Don't think BNP is taking any credit here. We were just lucky enough to grab a poem along the way ...

2010 Submissions

We're about to open up submissions for Best New Poets 2010. Magazines and writing programs are making their final nominations right now, and our open competition starts on manuscripthub.com April 5 and runs through May 20. Our eligibility rules remain pretty much the same as last year (a few new restrictions). See our eligibility page for full details.

This year's guest editor is Claudia Emerson.

We kicked off the Best New Poets 2009 reading series up in New York with an Oct. 19 reading at Housing Works, 126 Crosby Street (http://www.housingworks.org/events/detail/best-new-poets-2009/). All sales proceeds went to support Housing Works’ mission to end homelessness and AIDS. There was standing room only thanks to the stellar efforts of the poets. They included Alex Dimitrov, Caitlin Dube, Eric Weinstein, Stephanie Rogers, Michael Grabell, Adam Giannelli, David Silverstein, Caitlin Doyle, Rebecca Keith, Caitlin Doyle, and Sally Dawidoff.

Pictured here: Caitlin Doyle.