Shō Poetry Journal

10/01/2025

If you've ever enjoyed reading Water~Stone Review and have the capacity to donate, please find the donation link here:

https://www.givecampus.com/campaigns/19517/donations/new?designation=waterstoneliteraryjournal&

October first usually marks the beginning of our one month open submission period. Last spring the internal university budget for Water~Stone Review was cut. Sadly, we are not opening submissions for 2025.

However, new university leadership listened to our case over the summer and just last month granted us the opportunity to raise funds for the operational and other associated costs of Water~Stone Review. We are anticipating a brief submissions hiatus this fall to reevaluate our structure and strategy, and to mobilize.

Like all the presses, journals, writing centers, theatres, and public media we know, we will ask you, our community of readers, contributors, editors, and alumni family, to sustain its future, to celebrate its legacy, extend its reach, and help us to expand our community programming initiatives. We hope to be fully funded and calling for submissions to Volume 29 by the fall of 2026.

More information about how to help us in our fundraising efforts coming soon.

07/25/2025

Listen to Jo Bear read “After the Gulls” from Shō No. 6 (Winter 2024/25).

About this poem: In Ireland, where I lived for several years, a town called Balbriggan is the only place in the country that has been given permission to cull its seagull population. On a national level, the gulls are protected, but Balbriggan was able to successfully lobby for an exemption to address the severity of the conflicts between gulls and town residents. While doing further research, I learned that gulls intentionally return to the same nest year after year; they return to a place of familiarity to rear their family, regardless of what may have been built around them in the meantime. This policing of migration—the natural movement of the living world—struck me as drawing instructive and alarming parallels to the processes through which fear leads to the dehumanization and disappearance of bodies deemed expendable in pursuit of the false promise of safety.

Jo Bear is a poet, scholar, and educator with an MFA in poetry from North Carolina State University and an MA in Drama and Performance Studies from University College Dublin. They are a 2024 Pushcart Prize nominee and a 2023 Zoeglossia Fellow. Their poems appear or are forthcoming in ONLY POEMS, The Adroit Journal, The Offing, Shō Poetry Journal, West Branch, Poetry Ireland Review, and elsewhere.

07/24/2025

Listen to Richard Collins read “Wind Flows Over Stone Nest Dojo” from Shō No. 4 (Winter 2023/24). We nominated this poem for Best Spiritual Literature.

Richard Collins is the Abbot of the New Orleans Zen Temple and lives in Sewanee, Tennessee, where he directs Stone Nest Zen Dojo. He has taught at universities in Romania, Bulgaria, and Wales, as well as Louisiana (where he was editor of Xavier Review) and California (where he is Dean Emeritus of Arts and Humanities). His recent poetry has appeared in BarBar, Clockhouse, The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, Marrow, Pensive, Think, The Plenitudes, Shō Poetry Journal, Urthona: Buddhism and the Arts, and Willows Wept Review. His books include No Fear Zen (Hohm Press, 2015) and, most recently, In Search of the Hermaphrodite: A Memoir (Tough Poets Press, 2024) and two forthcoming volumes of poetry: Stone Nest (Shanti Arts) and Cartoons for the Chaos (Shanti Arts).

07/24/2025

Listen to Shawnte Orion read “Poem Yet To Be Written By Erik Bitsui (who wrote the book Mosh Pit Etiquette Volume One: Secrets of a 21st Century Navajo Headbanger)” from Shō No. 6 (Winter 2024/25).

Shawnte Orion is the author of Gravity & Spectacle (a collaboration with photographer Jia Oak Baker from Tolsun Books) and The Existentialist Cookbook (NYQBooks). He is an editor for rinky d**k press and his poems have appeared in Threepenny Review, Barrelhouse, Sugar House Review, New York Quarterly, and on the flipside of a split 7inch vinyl record with San Francisco band Sweat Lodge.

07/22/2025

Read Charles Rammelkamp's review of THE SCREW CITY POEMS (Roadside Press), a new and selected poetry collection by Shō No. 4 contributor Richard Vargas.

Review:
https://londongrip.co.uk/2025/07/london-grip-poetry-review-richard-vargas/

Buy the book:
https://www.magicaljeep.com/product/screw/194

from the author: I am at an age when some poets get lazy and decide it’s time for the “New and Selected” collection of their work. Those of us who are smiled upon by the big publishing houses (don’t look at me) most likely get gentle nudges to just do it and generate some quick book sales. I...

06/29/2025

Welcome to the world, Shō No. 7!

Can you believe it’s been two years since we released our revival issue?

We can’t wait to share this issue with you.

We’ll start shipping copies out this coming week.

Get your copy here:
https://shopoetryjournal.com/product/sho-no-7/

06/25/2025

🏳️‍🌈

For Pride Month, observed annually during the month of June, we asked the many independent literary presses and magazines that make up our membership to share with us some of the literature by authors identifying as LGBTQ+ that they recommend reading in celebration.   Fiction   Who Killed Buster S...

06/19/2025

We are thrilled to announce the winner of the Sita Martin Prize for our summer issue: Ohia, Ernest Chigaemezu for his poem “somehow.” Congratulations, Ernest!

“somehow” will be published in Shō No. 7 (Summer 2025). Get your copy at: shopoetryjournal.com

Ernest Ohia is a q***r Nigerian poet and editor, currently pursuing an MFA in poetry at the University of Alabama, where he also serves as Design Editor for Black Warrior Review. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Lolwe, The Muse, 20:35 Africa, Agbowo, Rigorous, and elsewhere. His chapbook manuscript, The Wanting Flesh, was a finalist for the 2025 Garden Party Collective Chapbook Contest.

06/19/2025

We are thrilled to announce the winner of the Shō Poetry Prize for our summer issue: Christian J. Collier for his poem “Nocturne.” Congratulations, Christian!

“Nocturne” and two other poems by Christian J. Collier will be published in Shō No. 7 (Summer 2025). Get your copy at: tinyurl.com/shono7

Christian J. Collier is a Black, Southern writer, arts organizer, and teaching artist who resides in Chattanooga, TN. He is the author of Greater Ghost (Four Way Books, 2024), and the chapbook The Gleaming of the Blade, the 2021 Editors’ Selection from Bull City Press. His work has appeared in The Atlantic, POETRY, December, and elsewhere.

06/19/2025

Congratulations to Nina C. Peláez, runner-up of the Sita Martin Prize for her poem “Doubt.” Nina’s poem will be published in Shō No. 7 (Summer 2025). Get your copy here: tinyurl.com/shono7

Nina C. Peláez (www.ninapelaez.com) is a poet, essayist and educator based in Maui, HI where she works as Associate Director for The Merwin Conservancy. An adoptee and daughter of a Cuban exile, she was born in Las Vegas, Nevada and raised in Brooklyn, NY. A Best New Poets nominee, recent work appears or is forthcoming in journals including Prairie Schooner, Narrative, Rattle, Electric Literature, Willow Springs, Waxwing, diode, Pleiades, Swamp Pink, Only Poems & Verse Daily, among others. She was recently awarded the Walt Whitman Birthplace Association/ Gwenn A. Nusbaum Scholarship, a Barbara Deming Memorial Fund Grant, and the Coniston Prize by Radar Poetry, judged by January Gill O’Neil, and her work has been supported with scholarships and fellowships from Yaddo, Tupelo Press, Key West Literary Seminars, and the Association of Writers and Writing Programs, among others. She holds an MFA in Poetry from Bennington College where she is a 2025 Alumni Teaching Fellow. She is working on her first book. Find her on social media .

06/19/2025

Congratulations to Aldo Amparán, runner-up of the Shō Poetry Prize for their poem “Symptoms of Ghosts,” forthcoming in Shō No. 7 (Summer 2025)! Preorder your copy of our summer issue here: tinyurl.com/shono7

Aldo Amparán is the author of Brother Sleep, winner of the Alice James Award & finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry, & The House Has Teeth, forthcoming from Alice James Books in 2026. They have received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts & CantoMundo. Amparán's work has appeared in POETRY, Ploughshares, Kenyon Review, The Georgia Review, New England Review, AGNI, the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day, & elsewhere.