Congratulations Mary Kovaleski Byrnes!

Congratulations to Mary Kovaleski Byrnes on her forthcoming poetry collection So Long the Sky  (Platypus Press)!

Two of Mary's poems, "Centralia, PA" and "X, 1926," appeared in Split Rock Review (Issue 5). 

Mary teaches writing and literature at Emerson College, and is the co-founder of the emersonWRITES program, a free creative writing program for Boston Public School students. Her work has appeared in Guernica, Salamander, the Four Way Review, the Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review, the Boston Globe, Poet Lore, Cimmaron Review, the Best of Kore Press, Best of the Net, PANK, and elsewhere. She served as Poetry Editor for Redivider and has been a poetry reader for Ploughshares since 2009.

So Long the Sky is scheduled to be released on May 11, 2018. You can order it from Platypus Press. 

Congratulations Mary on this wonderful achievement! 

Great Lakes Poetry Anthology

Split Rock Review invites poetry submissions for Waters Deep: A Great Lakes Poetry Anthology, to be published in winter 2018. Submissions will be accepted May 1 - June 30, 2018.

SRR seeks poems that celebrate and emphasize the beauty, uniqueness, diversity, history, ecology, geological wonders, and importance of the Great Lakes and the communities surrounding them.

Do you have poems that explore the history of transportation, migration, shipping and trade of the Great Lakes? Poems about the native or non-native species that inhabit the mysterious waters? Poems that capture the awe-inspiring storms born from the lakes? If so, send your best poems inspired by the Great Lakes to Split Rock Review!

Contributors will receive a complimentary copy of the anthology upon publication. All poems submitted must be previously unpublished. Simultaneous submissions allowed. No submission fee! For more information and submission guidelines, visit: www.splitrockreview.org/submit.

This project is supported in part by a grant from the Chequamegon Bay Arts Council and the Wisconsin Arts Board with funds from the State of Wisconsin. 

Winner of 2017 Poetry Chapbook Contest

Many thanks to everyone who submitted to the 2017 Poetry Chapbook Contest! We received a large number of manuscripts this year, and it was a very difficult decision due to the high quality of submissions. 

We are thrilled to announce that Rosemarie Dombrowski's manuscript The Cleavage Planes of Southwest Minerals [A Love Story] is Split Rock Review's 2017 Poetry Chapbook Contest winner!

Rosemarie Dombrowski is the founder of rinky dink press, an editor at Four Chambers Press, and the inaugural Poet Laureate of Phoenix, AZ. She is the recipient of four Pushcart nominations, an Arts Hero Award, and a fellowship from the Lincoln Center for Applied Ethics. Her collections include The Book of Emergencies, which was the recipient of a 2016 Human Relations Indie Book Award, and The Philosophy of Unclean Things. She teaches courses on poetics, women’s literature, and ethnography at Arizona State University’s Downtown Phoenix campus.

Additionally, we would like to recognize the strong collections submitted by the finalists (in alphabetical order): "Humming at the Dinner Table" by Joanne Esser; "After the Drought" by Jeff Ewing; "Love’s Test" by Jed Myers; "The Sadness of Old Fences" by Robert Okaji; "Homework" by LeRoy Sorenson.

Thanks again for all your interest and support in Split Rock Review! 

SRR Poetry Chapbook Now Available!

We're thrilled to announce the release of Marc J. Sheehan's poetry chapbook Limits to the Salutary Effects of Upper-Midwestern Melancholy!

Winner of the Split Rock Review 2016 poetry chapbook competition, Marc J. Sheehan's Limits to the Salutary Effects of Upper-Midwestern Melancholy often explores a sense of isolation; however, these poems abound with a wry sense of humor and word-play that keeps them from becoming predictable or maudlin. They attempt to find “the invisible grace raining down” upon bullet-riddled road signs, beach weddings, and a cereal maker’s warehouse of decoder rings. Through such particular and carefully-drawn details, Sheehan makes that elusive, invisible grace visible.

You may purchase a copy of Sheehan's chapbook at Split Rock Review's online store, Amazon, or CreateSpace.