Naugatuck River Review is temporarily closed for submissions. The 16th annual narrative poetry contest submissions will be open July 1, 2024 through September 1, 2024. There is a contest submission fee of $20 that covers the journal expenses for a year (both issues). Thank you for your support of narrative poetry.

GUIDELINES: PLEASE READ THE GUIDELINES BEFORE SUBMITTING YOUR WORK.

We accept ELECTRONIC SUBMISSIONS ONLY through Submittable. Please submit no more than 3 unpublished NARRATIVE poems (for our definition of narrative poetry, see below). Please, no more than 50 lines per poem in ONE MSWord file, Times New Roman 12 or Callibri 11 preferred (.doc or .docx or .rtf preferred). Please remove your name from the file with your poems, as the poetry is read blind by our editorial staff.

Questions ONLY: Feel free to email us with questions at naugatuckriver@aol.com. All poems will be considered for publication. Accepted poems will be published in the summer/fall issue of NRR. Simultaneous submissions are fine as long as you let us know right away if your poem has been picked up by another publication. We claim first North American publication rights, so rights revert to the author after the initial publication period, just please give us credit.  We will only consider work that has not been previously published.  Member CLMP.

WHAT IS NARRATIVE POETRY?
We get this question quite often. What NRR is looking for are poems that tell a story, or have a strong sense of story. They can be stories of a moment or an experience, and can be personal or historical. A good narrative poem that would work for our journal has a compressed narrative, and we prefer poems that take up two pages or less of the journal (50 lines max). We are looking above all for poems that are well-crafted, have an excellent lyric quality and contain a strong emotional core. Any style of poem is considered, including prose poems. Poems with very long lines don’t fit well in the format. Hope this helps.