Open Calls: Entering and How Judging Works

An open call is an invitation from an organization for poets to submit work — for an issue, an anthology, a prize or a reading. On Stanza you enter with a poem you have already published.

Finding open calls

Open Open Calls to see every call that is still open, with featured calls first. You can filter by genre (Poetry, Fiction, Essays, Mixed) and by deadline (Any deadline, This month, Next 3 months).

Each call shows its description, its Submission Guidelines, its deadline (if it has one) and how many pieces each poet may submit.

Entering a call

1. Read the guidelines carefully — the organization's rules apply on top of Stanza's.
2. Choose Submit to This Call.
3. Pick one of your published pieces from Choose a piece to submit.

A few rules apply:

• The call must still be open and before its deadline.
• You can only submit your own published work — not drafts, and not other people's poems.
• Each piece can be entered once per call.
• If the call has a limit per poet, you cannot submit more than that number of pieces.

Entering an open call on Stanza is free.

After you submit

Your entry shows as "You've submitted – pending review" until the organization decides.

• Selected: you see "Your piece was selected" and receive a notification. Selected pieces are published under the organization and appear in the call's Selected pieces.
• Not selected: you are notified that your piece was not selected this time.

Each entry is decided once.

Calls with a reading period and a results day

Some calls, such as Stanza’s monthly call, publish a timeline: open for entries, a reading period after the deadline, then a results day. The call page shows these as quiet steps.

• During the reading period, decisions stay private. You see your entry as pending until results are published; nobody is notified entry by entry.
• On results day the organization publishes everything at once. Selected pieces appear with a short citation written by the readers, honourable mentions are named on the call page, and followers of the organization are notified.
• Selected poems are collected into a public issue list, a list of the month’s pieces. A poet who has turned off Let others add my work to lists still appears on the call page, just not in the list.
• A selected poem shows “Selected for” the call, with the call’s name, beneath its title. On the day of results it also carries that line in feeds.

A call with no timeline works as above: entries are decided one by one.

Blind judging for anonymous poems

If a poem was posted anonymously, it stays anonymous when you enter it in an open call. The organization's staff — including its admins and judges — see the poem, but not your name or profile. They judge the work alone.

• Notifications the organization receives about a new anonymous entry do not name you.
• If an anonymous piece is selected, it appears in Selected pieces as "Anonymous Poet".
• Entries from poems posted under your name show your name to the organization in the usual way.

Because judges cannot see who wrote an anonymous entry, an organization cannot identify you through Stanza to credit you by name. If you want to be credited by name for a prize or publication, consider entering a poem posted under your own name.