New Verse Review Gold Star Program Gold Star

New Verse Review: A Journal of Lyric and Narrative Poetry features work that renews the ancient affinities among poetry, song, and story.

While open to well-crafted free verse, NVR is especially interested in lyric and narrative poetry written in meter. Some journals advise submitters to stay away from meter, rhyme, and even alliteration. NVR welcomes them. That said, the journal is interested in living form with a healthy pulse, not the mummified.

NVR consists of a weekly (sometimes twice weekly) substack newsletter, which publishes reviews, essays, interviews, and a monthly links round-up, and a companion website, which hosts issues of the poetry journal.

Two full issues are published each year, one in summer and one in winter, with occasional special mini-issues.

Halloween Mini-issue Free Tip Jar Option Open

Closes on Sunday, September 20, 2026 11:59 PM EDT (in 15 days).

New Verse Review is open for submissions to its 2026 Halloween mini-issue from September 1 through September 20. Submit up to five creepy, gothic, and/or autumnal poems. Poems can also be about the fall season and its holidays: Halloween, All Souls, All Saints, Día de los Muertos. We are interested in poems that range from the horrific to the hilarious, from the macabre to the moving. While focus on metrical poetry, we are open to well-crafted free verse.

You may want to take a look at the 2024 and 2025 Halloween issues.

Some other guidelines:

Simultaneous submissions are welcome, but please send a prompt follow-up message if a submitted poem is accepted elsewhere.
We are not interested in AI forgeries of human poems. AI should not be used in any way in the writing of poems submitted to NVR.

NVR's full guidelines can be found here.

Thank you for sharing your work with us!

The NVR Editors (Steve Knepper and Zina Gomez-Liss)

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