Black Ocean

OPEN READING: FULL-LENGTH POETRY MANUSCRIPTS

We welcome work that is rigorous, daring, and shaped by a commitment to language as a site of transformation. We’re drawn to voices that push against convention—not for its own sake, but in pursuit of something more vital. Work that distills feeling and thought into forms capable of surprise. Work that asks the reader to surrender certainty in order to arrive at something more alive, more expansive.

Whether grounded in lyric intensity, experimental architectures, or formal rupture—we are looking for poetry that leaves a mark. That insists on its necessity. That doesn’t so much declare itself as unfolds its presence, slowly or all at once, with precision and force.